Gyeongnam Nonghyup Volunteers for Urban-Rural Cooperation in Uiryeong Suam Village

Helping Hands with Sangji Architecture and Donong Sangsaeng National Movement Headquarters

About 150 employees of Gyeongnam Nonghyup, the National Movement Headquarters for Urban-Rural Coexistence, Sangji Engineering Architecture Office, and Nonghyup Uiryeong County Branch visited their sister village, Suam Village in Uiryeong County, Gyeongnam, to carry out urban-rural coexistence volunteer activities.

The event held on the 17th was jointly promoted by Nonghyup, companies, and the National Movement Headquarters for Urban-Rural Coexistence to revitalize rural villages through exchanges with sister villages and to create an opportunity for the urban-rural exchange movement to spread socially.

Sangji Architecture employees, who departed from Busan and various parts of the country, formed 12 teams to assist with labor shortages in elderly farms by harvesting onions and garlic, planting soybeans, and cleaning livestock barns.

Win-win Volunteer Activities between Urban and Rural Areas. [Image provided by Gyeongnam Nonghyup]

They contributed to creating a clean and beautiful village by repairing murals on the village hall walls and maintaining the streams. They directly purchased garlic, onions, plums, raspberries, traditional sauces, and other products produced by the villagers on-site, contributing to the promotion of domestic agricultural product consumption and increasing farm income.

The relationship between Sangji Architecture and Suam Village, which began in 2010 through Gyeongnam Nonghyup’s mediation in establishing a one-company-one-village sisterhood, has reached its 14th year this year. During this time, various exchanges such as helping with farm work during the farming season, direct transactions of agricultural products, rural experiences for employees’ families, and welfare support for villagers have been regularly conducted.

Sangji Architecture has played a leading role as a model for urban-rural exchange and was certified as a rural social contribution company by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the National Movement Headquarters for Rural Love (now the National Movement Headquarters for Urban-Rural Coexistence) in 2015. In 2016, it received an industrial medal from the government in the urban-rural exchange sector.

Huh Dong-yoon, CEO of Sangji Architecture, said, “The exchange with Suam Village, which began to preserve the various values of rural areas and to faithfully fulfill the responsibilities required of companies by society, has now continued for over ten years and has become a beautiful tradition of Sangji Architecture. We will create a more active exchange platform through proactive communication with the villagers.”

Kim Ju-yang, head of Gyeongnam Nonghyup, expressed gratitude, saying, “We thank Sangji Architecture for practicing love for our agriculture and rural areas despite difficult conditions. As the garlic and onion harvest season approaches, we ask one-company-one-village sisterhoods and honorary village chief companies to actively participate in urban-rural exchange activities such as helping with rural labor shortages and purchasing agricultural products.”

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