SK Innovation Employees Over 2,500 Conduct Untact Social Contribution for Vulnerable Groups

Participation of All SK Innovation Affiliates' Members
Making Dolls Using Recycled Cotton from Waste Plastic and Delivering Handwritten Letters

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] SK Innovation group members, along with their families, engaged in non-face-to-face volunteer activities to offer comfort and emotional support to vulnerable groups facing psychological challenges due to 'COVID-19 blues.'

As social distancing prolongs and COVID-19 blues emerge as a social issue, particularly vulnerable groups such as elderly people living alone and children with developmental disabilities are experiencing increased psychological anxiety due to prolonged care gaps caused by closures of welfare centers and special schools.

In response, SK Innovation members participated in the 'COVID-19 Overcome Mind Care Cheer Up Untact (non-face-to-face) Volunteer' by making dolls with recorded encouragement messages and gifting them along with handwritten letters.

The dolls, made by the members and delivered to vulnerable groups, are upcycled products using recycled stuffing from waste plastic provided by 'Wooshisan,' an eco-friendly social enterprise supported by SK Innovation. The dolls can record 30-second voice messages, allowing members and their families to personally record heartfelt encouragement messages for the vulnerable.

About 2,500 members from SK Innovation headquarters (located in Jongno-gu), as well as regional offices in Ulsan, Daejeon, Seosan, and Jeungpyeong, participated in this company-wide activity over approximately two months from October to November. Considering social distancing and remote work, members participated individually.

The completed Mind Care Cheer Up dolls with voice recordings and handwritten letters, along with daily quarantine supplies such as masks, were distributed from December 17 through Jongno Senior Welfare Center and nine other locations, as well as Seoul Gwangjin School and 13 other sites, reaching about 2,500 vulnerable individuals. It is expected that 1,500 elderly people living alone and 1,000 people with developmental disabilities, who are in urgent need of psychological care, will receive great comfort.

Additionally, SK Innovation Ulsan Complex (Ulsan CLX) delivered 360 million KRW from the '1% Happiness Sharing Fund' along with handmade scarves and handwritten letters to children in the Ulsan area suffering from intractable diseases and pediatric cancer on the 15th. Ulsan CLX members and their families participated in the 'Warm Scarf Knitting' untact volunteer activity over about two weeks, making scarves and letters to protect the children's hearts and help them stay warm during the cold winter.

Since 2017, SK Innovation group has operated the '1% Happiness Sharing' fund, voluntarily created by members donating 1% of their base salary. From January to November this year, about 2.7 billion KRW was raised, and including the previous year's carryover, approximately 3 billion KRW was disbursed.

Im Soo-gil, Head of the Value Creation Center at SK Innovation (formerly Public Relations Office), stated, "SK Innovation's volunteer activities are a corporate culture with 100% participation rate every year, jointly carried out by labor and management. Considering the difficulty of face-to-face volunteering due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, we will actively promote non-face-to-face volunteer activities and practice ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) management."

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