Purpose of Establishment
Marianne and Margaret
Association was born like this.
Sorokdo Island, which was called the divine punishment island in the early 1960s!
Two volunteer nurses came here from Innsbruck, Austria. At the time, even doctors and nurses were afraid to approach Hansen patients, and they shocked people by treating them with their bare hands, just like their mothers.
By appealing to the people of Austrians in various ways, they built a psychiatric ward, a tuberculosis ward, a blind ward, a bathhouse, and an infant home on Sorokdo Island for more than 40 years, and provided various medicines for many patients. When Hansen patients were discharged from the hospital and moved to the settlement, he helped her financially to stand on her own feet. That's how he lived his entire life. And when he was over 70, he left a letter under the name that he didn't want to burden him. Empty-handed!
Their 43-year lives as nurses were literally life of volunteers without material reward. People thought that they would be able to relax in a convent when they went to Austria because they were called nuns. However, it is not true. They are not nuns in the form we know. Because they are not nuns, there is no convent to spend their old age.
The place where they went back to their hometown and stayed was a relative's house. In 2016, the 11th year since the two left, it was the 100th anniversary of the opening of Sorokdo National Hospital. In that century, an unexpected special event occurred in Sorokdo Island.
A nursing assistant who worked with Marianne and Margaret for seven years at the Sorokdo National Hospital went abroad looking for the poor to live a life of commitment like them. She chose the life of the second Marianne and Margaret.
Sorokdo people were aware of the love they received from Marianne and Margaret, and the support association was formed. And the support association became 'Marianne and Margaret'. The purpose of the association is to let the world know the lives of Marianne and Margaret and to help people live like her. So the first project that was planned was to make the documentary film 'Marianne and Margaret'. There are many people in the world who are still alienated by poverty, disease, and social inequality, just like Sorokdo patients in the past.
Marianne and Margaret Association will transcend religion and ideology and be their hope, just like their lives.
We remember their love.
We are the messenger of the love that Marianne and Margaret showed.
