Former Hollister resident Jina Kwon is set to climb Mt.
Kilimanjaro to raise money for her favorite charity.
Former Hollister resident Jina Kwon is set to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise money for her favorite charity.
Starting Aug. 31 and continuing through Sept. 6, Kwon will make the 19,340-foot ascent of Africa’s tallest mountain.
Kwon grew up in Hollister, where her mother, Sun Song, still owns a general goods store named Star Outlet. After graduating from San Benito High, she went to college in New York and then moved to London to work.
“My family still lives in Hollister, and I have always thought of it as my hometown,” Kwon says.
She will be a long way from Hollister as she attempts climbing Kilimanjaro, the second-tallest mountain in the world. The undertaking is so difficult that only about 40 percent of those attempting the feat succeed.
Kwon has been training extensively for the last six months with weights, hiking, and gym workouts during which she wears her bulky mountaineering boots.
“I’ve never climbed a mountain before,” says Kwon, “so I am trying to be sure I am conditioned.”
Kwon’s cause is a charity named Campaign for Female Education USA, an organization that educates girls in Africa as a long-term means of reducing poverty in rural areas as well as reducing HIV/AIDS infection rates.
CAMFED’s Web site explains their vision:
“Educating girls and women is widely recognized as the single most powerful weapon in the fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Since 1993, the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) has been supporting girls through school in some of the poorest rural areas of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania.”
Since 1993 CAMFED has assisted in the education of 243,000 African girls.
Kwon says that watching her mother alone as a single mom gave her a keen interest in women’s rights and the particular struggles they face.
She will have a struggle of her own to get to the top of what she says will be an extensive and difficult hike.
“The climb is 4-and-a-half days going in. Then they wake you up at midnight for an eight-hour final ascent,” she says.
“There is a lot of ice and snow, and it gets too slippery once the sun is up. So you go through this mind-numbingly difficult climb in the dark with altitude sickness getting worse all the time.”
To see Jina Kwon’s Friendster profile, go to http://profiles.friendster.com/913352 .
