The Seoul Volunteer Center announced that the Seoul Youth Planning Volunteer Group’s performance sharing event, where young people identify and solve social issues through volunteer activities, was successfully concluded on September 12.
The ‘Seoul Youth Planning Volunteer Group’ is a project-based volunteer activity where young people discover and plan solutions to social issues in Seoul. This year’s performance sharing event, ‘SeoulDonghaeng Planning FESTA,’ was held to share the results of the youth’s activities and celebrate their completion.
A total of 170 teams and 1,016 young people participated this year, along with 1,154 external volunteers. From May 9 to September 12, young people carried out various projects targeting 16,908 people, including children, young people preparing for independence, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities, focusing on responding to climate crises, resolving social conflicts, caring for disadvantaged groups, and addressing learning disparities.
The Seoul Volunteer Center supported the activities of young people by collaborating with 24 companies and institutions and 33 expert mentors. Partner companies, including SK Telecom, provided resources and infrastructure to expand youth projects through social contribution activities. Expert mentors played a role in assisting young people throughout the planning, execution, and evaluation processes.
The youths implemented creative projects to solve various social issues. The ‘Climate Hoot’ team collected 200 discarded banners to make eco-friendly sunshades installed at the Gangdong Youth Center. The ‘Connecting Hearts’ team educated adolescents on encouraging and supporting cultures and delivered cookies and letters to uniformed workers such as firefighters and police officers, promoting social communication.
Projects incorporating AI technology also stood out. The ‘AIDE’ team developed an AI interview simulation chatbot for long-term job-seeking youth, while the ‘Daseum House’ team introduced an AI model for diagnosing residential risks to prevent fall accidents among the elderly. The ‘Warm Sharing’ team developed an AI-based cooking platform to address the nutrition imbalance problem for individuals with developmental disabilities. The ‘Green Leaf Rangers’ team manufactured autonomous exploration robots to conduct experiments on automatic detection of invasive plant species in the Han River Park.
Youths revealed that through volunteering, they experienced both solving social issues and personal growth. Hong Young-bin from the ‘We=Me’ team mentioned, “Initially, I started for the sake of my resume, but during the process, I felt a sense of responsibility and realized volunteer work could be a growth experience for me.”
The Seoul Volunteer Center plans to support a second round of activities for 30 teams, whose performance has been significant and sustainable, until November 30.
Song Chang-hoon, Director of the Seoul Volunteer Center, stated, “The Seoul Youth Planning Volunteer Group is a successful example of young people demonstrating their capabilities as agents of social problem-solving. We will continue to support creative ideas from young people leading to volunteer activities.”