KOICA Produces 'Global Citizenship Education' Content with Returned Volunteers and Migrant Women

Production and Video Adaptation of Local Language Fairy Tales... - Korean, Subtitled, and Sign Language Versions Produced

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency) announced on the 14th that it has launched the ‘The Blue Bird That Flew to You’ project, a social value contribution effort to overcome COVID-19, involving returned volunteer members and multicultural migrant women, producing and releasing 15 mother tongue fairy tale books and 15 global citizenship education contents.

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and to enhance the continuity of activities of returned KOICA volunteers, KOICA established ten major tasks for its Global Talent Development Project. Among them, the ‘The Blue Bird That Flew to You’ project is a social value contribution program aimed at solving domestic and international social issues, symbolizing hope like the blue bird, with KOICA intending to deliver hope.

This project was carried out over approximately four months with the participation of 14 migrant women, 43 returned volunteer members, sign language interpreters, the multicultural specialized company Asian Hub, and global citizenship education instructors who are former overseas volunteers.

Among them, ‘Mother Tongue Fairy Tales’ were produced in Korean, English, and local languages, featuring traditional fairy tales from a total of 11 language groups including Mongolian, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Myanmar, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Cambodian, Filipino, French, Ethiopian, and Persian. Migrant women and overseas volunteers jointly participated in all processes such as selecting fairy tale topics, drafting manuscripts, translating into English and local languages, creating illustrations, and recording fairy tale audio.

Additionally, KOICA selected 15 themes including infectious diseases, education, environment, human rights, gender equality, and vulnerable groups, reflecting the increased importance of global solidarity amid the spread of infectious diseases, and produced global citizenship education online content tailored to the perspectives of domestic children and adolescents. In this process, the participating volunteers and migrant women contributed from manuscript writing to providing materials and producing lecture content based on their actual experiences.

Chairperson Lee Mi-kyung stated, “This project is meaningful as it provided an opportunity to show how multicultural migrant women can play a significant role as direct participants rather than beneficiaries in development cooperation fields. We hope the produced content will be actively utilized not only domestically and internationally but also for children with disabilities in Korea who face learning difficulties.”

All content is open for use by anyone under Public Nuri Type 4 and is currently available on the KOICA ODA Library website and the World Friends Korea SNS channels for immediate use.

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