Gwangju Dong-gu Wins Excellence Award at Manifesto Best Practice Competition

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Cho Hyung-joo] Dong-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City (Mayor Im Taek) announced on the 10th that it won the Excellence Award in the ‘Response to Population Structure Change’ category at the 2021 National Basic Local Government Heads Manifesto Best Practice Competition.

The 12th Manifesto Competition, hosted by the Korea Manifesto Practice Headquarters, invited submissions in a total of seven categories including ▲jobs ▲population structure ▲climate environment ▲regional culture, with 376 cases submitted from 226 basic local governments nationwide.

In this competition, which was conducted through the first round of document screening and the second round of online video screening, Dong-gu submitted the case of ‘Child-friendly Dong-gu that safely nurtures children’s talents and dreams together’ in the population structure category and won the Excellence Award.

Dong-gu, which is promoting various projects to build a child-friendly environment to create a city where children are happy, is actively carrying out projects across five major areas: living, safety, education, care, and play.

In the safety environment sector, projects include establishing guidelines for building a child-friendly city, ▲creating the nation’s first ‘child-friendly apartments’ tailored to children for a safe living environment ▲forming the ‘Our Neighborhood Child Protection Squad’ ▲operating the ‘Digital Laundry’ project that supports the deletion of digital information related to youth online violence.

In the education environment sector, to create an environment for discovering local talents, Dong-gu actively provides opportunities for children’s talent development through ▲the global talent nurturing program ‘Dong-gu Talented Children Dream Tree Support Project’ to discover and support talented children ▲‘Happy Classroom with Acoustic Guitar’ for universal welfare realization of special skills and aptitudes ▲and support for club activity expenses.

In the care environment sector, services supporting work-family balance are provided through ▲establishment of a comprehensive childcare support center ▲installation of 10 new national and public daycare centers ▲operation of toy libraries and indoor playgrounds.

In the play environment sector, Dong-gu operates Gwangju’s first youth sports virtual reality (VR) experience center, creating a healthy play space for children and adolescents.

Through this best practice competition, Dong-gu is evaluated to have well presented a vision of a safe and warm child-friendly city where children can freely pursue their dreams and grow properly through communication with society.

Mayor Im Taek of Dong-gu said, “I am very pleased to receive the Excellence Award in the child-friendly category at this Manifesto Best Practice Competition,” and added, “We will continue to build a social safety net where socially vulnerable groups including children can live safely and establish a Dong-gu type specialized model where children are happy.”

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