Today, many clubs are just for making a “spec*” and many students are just focused on that, but, there is something different in the Angels’ Choir. Angels’ Choir does not aim to make specs. Instead, it aims to share love and warmth by singing a song. The Sookmyung Times (SMT) met this club’s leader, Lee Hyungyu (LEE), to know more about their way of sharing love.
SMT Your club is introduced as “a gathering of people who follow their hearts.” Then, what kind of activities does Angels’ Choir do?
LEE Angels’ Choir is the club which gives love, happiness and hope to a neglected class of people. For these activities, this club is comprised of only undergraduate volunteers who follow their hearts and who do what gives love. Our activities are largely separated into two parts, volunteer activities and chorus. However, those two parts do not take place separately. We join together voluntary work and chorus activities for creating a larger synergistic effect. We go to Severance Hospital Children’s Cancer Ward for sharing love and hope with sick children and their tired parents by singing. Also, we go to be a grandson or granddaughter for the elderly who live alone and keep their company in their boring days. Also, above these activities, nowadays we start to widen our activity area. We do voluntary work and chorus activities with an expectation of being a foundation of our local community.
SMT Unlike other chorus clubs, Angels’ Choir does both volunteer activities and chorus. There may be many advantages when doing them together. What kind of benefits do you find from doing those activities together?
LEE When we do both volunteer activity and chorus together, we can create larger synergy. First, when we consider music, it has a great power in changing people’s minds. Music can transcend the national boundaries, gender, and age. This power of music becomes bigger when many people sing together in chorus. And when we see the volunteer activity, it has the power to warm people’s hearts. If we give a hand to neglected or sick people, both we and they feel the love. So, when we combined two activities, singing and volunteer activity, we can create better synergy. We can change people’s dark, depressed attitudes to be bright and hopeful. I think this is the strength of harmony of volunteer work and singing.
SMT Ultimately, what does the Angels’ Choir want to achieve?
LEE We are gathered in this club to share our love and warmth and to help brighten people’s lives. This is our reason and purpose of gathering. We want to keep our club’s purpose. Nowadays, there are too many clubs which are just trying hard to get better specs, but we want to keep our purpose of gathering. Also, we want to show in our society that the visible spec is not all, and that invisible assets like love and warmth are more valuable for us. By extension, we will broaden our active area. We want to help a larger variety of people. Therefore, we want to make more people to smile in their tired, depressed environment by our helping and singing in chorus.
SPEC* A spec is a requirment which is clearly stated.
