Seongbuk-gu Successfully Concludes Fair Trade Youth Life Experiment Contest

Over 30 Young Innovators from 7 Teams at 10 Universities Participate

Three Teams Including ‘Oeseonggong,’ Combining Fair Trade and Multicultural Cultural Exchange, Win Awards

Expectations for Revitalizing Fair Trade and Solving Local Community Issues through Youths' Fresh Ideas

Seongbuk-gu (Mayor Lee Seung-ro) held the ‘2023 Seongbuk-gu Fair Trade Youth Living Lab’ competition on the 1st in collaboration with the Seongbuk-gu Fair Trade Center, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Korea (SDSN Korea), and Korea University Ojeong Resilience Institute (OJERI).

The 2023 Seongbuk-gu Fair Trade Youth Living Lab, held at the Seongbuk-gu Office Art Hall, is a three-month program where university students from 10 universities including Korea University, Sungshin Women’s University, and Kangwon National University diagnose issues and potentials related to sustainable production, consumption, and fair trade in the local community and derive solutions.

At the competition, over 30 young innovators from 7 teams representing 10 universities participated. After presentations by each team and fair evaluations by experts in each field, one grand prize team, one excellence award team, and one merit award team were selected.

The grand prize-winning team, ‘Oeseonggong,’ leveraged the multilingual abilities of its members to reflect the increasing multicultural population in the area. They adapted, translated, and published traditional folktales from the nine countries with the largest multicultural populations in Seongbuk-gu into formats that integrate fair trade and educational programs, proposing an idea that combines multicultural cultural exchange with fair trade education.

Following them, the ‘Eco Dream’ team, which proposed a project to develop educational tools for fair trade using board games, won the excellence award, and the ‘6X6’ team, which proposed software development to revitalize the Anam-dong local commercial district and fair trade, received the merit award.

The three award-winning teams will receive support to implement their proposed ideas in the local community. At the ‘Fair Trade Youth Living Lab Performance Report Meeting’ scheduled for September, there will be a forum to share and discuss the outcomes of each project.

During the event, a policy dialogue was held where the youth shared reflections on the potentials and issues in the local community they identified while developing their ideas over the past month. The youth unanimously expressed their hope that Seongbuk-gu, home to the largest number of comprehensive universities in Seoul, will establish a cooperative system where the public, private, and academic sectors work together to address community issues.

Kim Young-gyu, Director of the Seongbuk-gu Fair Trade Center, said, “I was impressed by the high-quality results submitted by each team,” adding, “We will apply the ideas proposed by the youth to revitalize fair trade and solve local issues in the community.”

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