Olivet College of Art & Design alumni Clara Sun is taking her design skills overseas to help local churches setup websites using WordPress, a PHP and MySQL based platform. Rather than creating a website for churches one by one, Sun started a free workshop in downtown Seoul, Korea in order to train others on how to start and maintain church sites. She invited designers from local churches to learn intermediate web design skills so that they can setup revamped sites for their own congregation.
“The great thing about WordPress is that it’s intuitive and easy to setup,” says Sun.
“The platform allows for some detailed customizations that uses plug-in architecture and a template system. Each church can learn the same procedure, but can create a variety of different looks and functions based on the template system. For those who want to make updates to the site without knowing web design can easily do that through Word Press,” added Sun.
Sun plans to offer both a design and technical lesson each week, which includes a bit of coding and Photoshop. She focuses more on intermediate and advanced techniques, but hope that later on she can coordinate beginners courses. Her experience working at design firms and designing websites for various Christian organizations through Olivet University’s Ministry Practicum program gave her plenty of hands on experience with WordPress. Though she just graduated last year from Olivet University with a bachelors in Graphic Design, Sun began building up her experience from her freshman year.
"I am thankful that I was able to have a lot of hands on experience right when I entered my first year of college. I learned a lot in my internship program. I was paired with Christian industry professionals who taught me about design and the impact it has for Christian missions," said Sun.
Over twenty people signed up for Sun's workshop on opening day with more on the waiting list.
“It has been getting a lot of attention. There definitely is a need for these skills and I’m thrilled to see that so many people are passionate to startup or redo the websites for their churches. I feel blessed that I can contribute in a minor way,” said Sun.
Sun’s workshops are currently full, but she plans to seek more volunteers from fellow designers who can help expand the program. Sun requested donations from attendees in order to help pay for resources and renting space for the workshops.
Aside from running the workshop, Sun is starting up a design business, leads a college students design fellowship, and doing pro-bono work for several Christian groups.