Haenam-gun, Youth Offline Platforms Emerging One After Another

Haenam County held the 2nd Youth Policy Council meeting on the 23rd. (Photo by Haenam County)

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Hyun] Haenam-gun, Jeollanam-do announced on the 28th that following its selection last year for the Haenam Youth Offline Platform ‘Youth Cafe’ project, aimed at fostering community revitalization and led by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, it has been consecutively selected this year for the ‘Youth Food Culture Creative Development Project’ under the Jeollanam-do Population New Hope Finding Project contest.

Youth Cafe is a project to build a youth complex space called ‘Youth Cafe’ with a total budget of 1.215 billion KRW, including 265 million KRW in national funds. The site purchase near the Cheonbyeon area in Haeri, Haenam-eup has been completed, and construction is scheduled to begin in September, aiming for opening within the year.

The Youth Cafe, with a total area of 310㎡ and two floors above ground, will have seminar, performance, and cafe facilities on the first floor, and classrooms and shared offices on the second floor, operating as a multipurpose youth complex space.

The county gathered opinions from youth organizations and additionally invested county funds to expand the scale about twice as large as originally planned. They plan to explore operational methods to ensure it functions most efficiently as a communication and exchange space for youth.

In this regard, in June, Haenam-gun youth policy council members and others visited youth centers operated by other local governments to understand efficient space layout and management operations.

The Youth Food Culture Creative Campus project provides shared kitchen and shared office spaces to support the youth startup ecosystem, and develops trendy food content to support youth entrepreneurship and job creation.

The project plans to remodel the currently unused (old) Jongno M School building in Haeri, Haenam-eup. From September, it will recruit prospective entrepreneurs, and from October, it will develop food content through basic startup education, advanced startup education, customized consulting, and performance sharing sessions.

With the Youth Cafe, a multipurpose complex space for information exchange, resource linkage, and human resource education for local youth, and the Creative Campus supporting startups and employment, the youth platform projects are accelerating, expected to serve as a stepping stone for improving youth settlement conditions and job creation in Haenam-gun.

County Governor Myung Hyun-gwan stated, “In the reality of rural areas where the youth population is rapidly decreasing, we have high expectations as youth offline platforms that will serve as hubs for youth communication and employment/entrepreneurship are being established one after another. We will operate them meticulously to support the skill development and growth of our local youth.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.