+ BACKGROUND, CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIVES
Background, Challenges, and Objectives
As various innovation projects have been implemented in the Seongsu-dong area since 2012, Seongdong-gu needed to find social and creative ways to produce jobs and to restore the local communities' identities.
In order to do so, Seongdong-gu investigated the social economy ecosystem including the public interest groups, social enterprises, and cultural arts groups in Seongsu-dong in July 2014, and tried to find concrete cooperation plans through several meetings and consultations with them. As a result, Seongdong-gu signed an agreement with Lotte Duty-free Shop and Arts & Community Network (ARCON) in January 2015 to make a creative public space which would be used to support more vulnerable groups such as youth out of school, young women, artists, and entrepreneurs. That was the beginning of the “Understand Avenue” project.
Lotte Duty-free Shop donated KRW 10.2 billion as a social contribution fund, and Seongdong-gu and ARCON created an innovative and creative space to help the socially underprivileged people by installing 116 recycled containers at an idle site of about 4,126㎡, right at the entrance of the Seoul Forest in Seongsu-dong. The space was opened to the public in April 2016.
The name “Understand” comes from the support given to the underprivileged to “stand” on their own feet and the society by “lowering(under)” themselves for them.
Seongdong-gu made an achievement while taking Seongsu-dong as a local production base and making efforts to create tailored jobs for youth and the career interrupted women as well as producing sustainable jobs by supporting the social enterprises. From the beginning stage of creation, it attracted public attention as an innovative social contribution project made in cooperation with the private and public sectors, and civic groups.
+ ACTIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION
Actions and Implementation
The Understand Avenue is not only an innovative space to find talent and strengthen the capabilities of the socially underprivileged but it is also a open public space that social activists, artists and other citizens can use freely. The 7 values of the ‘Understand Avenue’ are as follows;
1) ‘Youth Stand’ which supports field education and employment for the professional growth and self-reliance of the youth
2) ‘Mom Stand’ which provides multicultural families and career interrupted women with the opportunities of on-site training and jobs
3) ‘Heart Stand’ which provides every day workers with a healing service to reduce their stress and to increase the life happiness index of their families through the ‘Arts-based Training’
4) ‘Art Stand’ which functions as a cultural space with a low threshold and helps creators find their muse
5) 'Social Stand’ is a multi-brand shop comprising of social enterprises and youth start-ups with the common goal of pursuing meaningful consumption through fair trade, eco-friendliness, and creativity
6) ‘Power Stand’ works as a hub space for the youth start-ups
7) ‘Open Stand’ which is the pilot space to support the social enterprises, youth start-ups and artists
Each stand is organically divided and cooperatively operated. The space has become a facility to nurture the talents and dreams of youth, women, artists, social enterprises and small businesses, and also to strengthen their abilities to share them with the society.
Shinhan Bank has been operating the Sinhan Dudeurim Space, a social contribution program, since December 2017, based on the ‘cooperation agreement to support job creation for youth’ with the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund. The main programs are Digital Life School to help start-ups, Dudeurim Matchmakers for employment training, Incubation Center to support childcare after starting businesses, Success Dudeurim Academy to support self-employed SOHO, Dudeurim Financial Consulting, and Data Innovation Center to support big data of Shinhan Bank and Amazon Web Service (AWS). Through these programs, the bank provides youth with various tailored trainings, incubating, and job position matching.
Indeed, they provide a free training program to youth start-ups to help young people develop essential business skills for a competitive market. Such necessary business skills including industry analysis, business model, legal and financial matters, branding and marketing, and over 80 times of mentoring. As the benefits of free training and the provision of a multipurpose space became well-known, once the program was completed, the school was deemed a success.
The Dudeurim Space not only supports the launching of promising businesses and youth employment but also provides the self-employed SOHO with necessary professional skills. For the self-employed SOHO, the program gives courses on customer management, finance, business operation, promotion, marketing, and so on to help them develop networks, strengthen self-supporting ability, and ultimately attain success.
In addition, the Understand Avenue provides citizens with cultural content in diverse genres including plays, concerts and exhibitions through the Art Stand, the ‘cultural space with a low threshold’. This year, it selected a total of 9 teams through the public contest to assign spaces for youth creators, and exhibited the work of 19 artists with developmental disabilities. It also provided space for the performances of fusion traditional Korean music, traditional Korean opera, and the plays of new directors and actors/actresses such as those of Theater Green Pig.
The Workshop located in the Social Stand is a 'meaningful consumption' space you can come across while walking along the trails. The valuable products are introduced in that location. It is operated as a space to promote ethical consumption by introducing the products and activities of social enterprises, youth venture companies, and artists.
Furthermore, the Workshop introduces products from various kinds of brands in which are reflected shared public values. The products in the fair trade section such as ‘Smateria’, a brand of bags, aim to provide a better work environment and fair rewards for the Cambodian women selling in the Workshop. Also, the products of the youth companies and the young designers, who need to produce small amount of products just in several kinds, are selling on consignment basis under a multi-brand shop.
Finally, the Understand Avenue holds music performances and other social events like outdoor festivals. The local residents participated in the flea market known as Flea Market Majuchijang (Young Creators Market) and a market for the urban farmers.
+ OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS
Outcomes and Impacts
The Understand Avenue made out of 116 colorful containers became a ‘hot place in Seongsu-dong’ with 1.5 million visitors a year since its opening in April 2016.
The Understand Avenue plays a vital role as a space of hope by giving the right tools to young artists, unemployed youth, young women, and local residents for professional fulfillment. What is more, it has evolved into a model of sustainable cooperative economy.
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+ REPLICABILITY AND SCALABILITY
Replicability and Scalability
The Understand Avenue was invited to the ‘Responsible Business Forum; Building a new economic model for the 21st Century’ held on May 13~14, 2016 at Oxford University, in the UK. During the Forum, the Understand Avenue was introduced as the most anticipated project in 2016 in front of global enterprises such as Unilever and Danone. It was favorably received as a ‘global model that can spread to other countries and regions’ thanks to the idea that solved the issue of self-reliance of the vulnerable classes through cooperation with the public sector, private companies and NGOs.
In a situation where the world economy is in a low growth stage, it will be a small but important step in advancing a sustainable sharing economy model around the world such as the one found in the Understand Avenue.
