[Fall 2017] CHILD EDUCATION - 1st Mini Project

[SICA Fall 2017] CHILD EDUCATION -1st Mini Project

Last semester, SICA made 4 teams to start planning a business model or a campaign as the 1st Mini- Project. Our theme for 1st Mini–Project was Child Education. Each team struggled to make creative solutions to deal with what they thought as a problem.

The winner of the 1st Mini-Project were Campaign Team #1 성장가방 and Campaign Team #2 Think Out Loud, and those two teams got the chance to realize their models with Umbrella Program in SICA. Starting from the winners, we would like to introduce the ideas came out for social innovation and how the experience influenced to each team members.

---

Campaign Team #1 - JooMin Lee, Seohyun Yi

1. Please describe your team briefly.

Our team is 성장가방, consisting of two members, - JooMin Lee, Seohyun Yi.

2. Which problems did you tackle?

Our team tackled the sex education problem in Korea. Sex education in Korea has been highly criticized for its impracticality especially because of a vacancy in the education system. The bigger problem is that this problem has been silenced for quite a time due to its sensitive content. However, with the growing sexual problems in society such as sexual abuse, assault, and increased access of children on sexual content via internet, there needs to be proper sex education for the children.

3. What were your solutions for the problems, in detail? Tell me about your project!

We have looked on multiple dimensions of this problem and concluded that the number one step for solving this issue is to provide accurate information to children. To do this, we decided to provide a different route for obtaining sex education, which is to provide a high-quality learning environment of sex education at home for parents and children. To serve this purpose, we came up with the sex education kit, the 성(性)장가방. 성장가방 is a sex education kit that parents can use to educate their children at home. It is composed of a How to Use book, textbook, education tips, quizzes and supplementary learning tools. It offers accurate information for the children and a guide for the parents to give them an enhanced learning experience. Through the kit, we aim to promote an understanding of the need of sex education, what it comprises, what it is intended to do and what the possible outcomes are.

4. How was the experience of your own project?

Seohyun Yi: Overall, it was interesting to delve into the issue that is currently being silenced in Korea. It was definitely a challenge yet another enlightening experience that I was able to share and explore in SICA.

---

Campaign Team #2 - HyoJin Oh, Doyeon Ku, Woong Chan Seo

1. Please describe your team briefly.

Our team project name is “Think Out Loud”, a campaign that aims to trigger students to think their own opinion and say it out loud. Team leader is HyoJin Oh and teammates are Doyeon Ku and Woong Chan Seo. “Think Out Loud” is an education campaign that motivates Korean elementary, middle, and high school students to think of their own opinions and make creative questions rather than just listening and memorizing school teachers’ lecture.

2. Which problems did you tackle?

The theme of our project was ‘Child Education’. The problem of Korean students is that they do not think, speak out loud, have their own opinion, and share with others. Since Korean students are studying for multiple choice or short-answer exams in school, they try to memorize the only one answer the teachers taught. Their curiosities are lost and do not develop their own thoughts while studying. So we tackled the problem of ‘Korean students do not think’ and made Think Out Loud Campaign to trigger student’s own opinion by answering creative and open answer question.

3. What were your solutions for the problems, in detail? Tell me about your project!

As mentioned above, “Think Out Loud” is an education campaign that motivates Korean students to think of their own opinions and share with others rather than just listening and memorizing school teachers’ lecture. Our campaign goes own with creative question posters that are given to each class in the school and students write down their own thoughts and ideas to the question on the post-it. After writing the answer down, students attach the post-it to the poster. Students can share their opinions with their classmates and through Think Out Loud Facebook page platform, students who participate in the campaign can share the answers and ideas with other classes and furthermore, other schools.

4. How was the experience of your own project?

Woong Chan Seo: I, along with my teammates, had a difficult time differentiating Education and Studying at the first time, since we have always been under pressure of studying. Thus, we wanted to provide an opportunity for young students to think out of the box, express their opinions. We put a lot of efforts and time into our project, and I am happy to win the honor of the first-place.

Doyeon Ku: Since it was the first time I tried to make a 'campaign', I could learn how to design a fun and participative movement to change people. We tested our model with middle school students, and the whole experience with them and their teachers taught me the most important first step in communication - being brave and starting to talk with them.

---

BM Team #1 – Sung Hyun Sohn, Youngsun Om, WooJin You, Jawon Keum

1. Please describe your team briefly.

Our team ‘Inspire Funds’ came up with a business model to tackle problems of youth education in Korea. The name ‘Inspire Funds’ reflects our goal for the project which is to fund students who inspire others with their creative works and stories. Despite the fact that it was only a month-long mini project, the four team members worked eagerly to provide a creative alternative for Korean education.

2. Which problem did you tackle?

We tackled the problem of Korean education that it is highly focused on academic performance and college admission. We thought that current Korean education system is unsustainable because it discourages students from pursuing their real interest and often leads to depression, sense of loss, defiance etc. of the teenage students.

3. What were your solutions for the problems, in detail? Tell me about your project!

We came up with the idea of an online platform where students can create, share, and collaborate with others and receive financial support through crowdfunding. We target youth creators who want to express their creativity and receive financial support to keep their creative production. Regardless of what field students are interested in (it can be music, art, sports, beauty, cooking, and many more!), they can receive education from professionals, upload their own creative content, and receive funding for further production.

---

BM Team #2, Hand Warmer - Joshua Kang, Seongmin Choi, Margeunsaem Lee and Yeseo Pyon

1. Please describe your team briefly.

Hello, we are Hand warmer, business model team 2. We are a team of four: Joshua Kang, Seongmin Choi, Michelle Lee and Yeseo Pyon. Seongmin is the one who came up with our team name. As the name suggests, our team tried to warm others heart.

2. Which problem did you tackle?

Hand warmer tried to tackle depression and high suicide rate among South Korean middle and high school students. Suicide has become the leading cause of death among Korean adolescents. Academic pressure, problems with personal relationship and depression are the major causes of suicide.

3. What were your solutions for the problems, in detail? Tell me about your project!

After having done a research, we found out that simply talking about problems help relieve stress and depression. Thus, we decided to create an application called Our Temperature (우리의 온도) to provide an anonymous online community where they can get something off their chest. The app has two distinguishing features. First, the number of comments and likes/emojis of post are calculated and expressed as temperature. Second, each week or month, some popular posts are selected and would receive counseling by an expert.

4. How was the experience of your own project?

Yeseo Pyon: This project meant a lot to me, since it was the first one I did after joining SICA. I felt bad after finding out the number of victims of suicide outweighs the one of car accident. Even though our business model cannot fundamentally solve the problem, I thought that it would serve as a communication platform where Korean youth can open up the things they had been keeping to themselves for such a long time.

Seongmin Choi: SICA has comfortable atmosphere and is filled with great members, each with their own talents. I was able to learn many things from them, especially how to communicate with team members in order to reach consensus and how to promote imagines and thoughts into concrete plans and structures. Inside little competition in SICA, I was provided with great motivation and passion to achievement and at last, I was able to capture first place for the second half session contest. I got to know what is social innovation, and thanks to SICA, now I’m a potential social innovator willing to change the society.

Yoonho Kang: “Our Temperature” was a piece that had a drawing of youth in our society. Although we knew the factual side of the atmosphere the teens in Korea were living though, it felt like distant fires. But as we passionately engaged in the problem and tried to bring up solutions, we could truly be empathetic towards those teens in crisis. In conclusion, there is much to learn from doing projects but each new project brings a new perspective and becomes a new piece of the puzzle. This in turn, will make us ready to understand the problems from a rudimentary level and propose new innovative solutions.

Margeunsaem Lee:

The subject itself was rather a very familiar topic: child education. I was a living example of a typical Korean high school student who considered myself a victim of the overly heated and competitive academic atmosphere. However, there were several systematic curriculums already set-established and could not be tackled at the student level.

Instead of thinking about the core-contents of the education problems in Korea, our team shifted our perspective to concentrate on the problems resulted from the education stress. Our team’s product, “Our Temperature” aims to resolve the stress problems of education by creating a communication platform amongst the students to share the similar concerns and the conflicts that they go through or face. By sharing the concerns via the anonymous account, not only are they able to more openly discuss, but also sympathize with other students.

Despite the fact our product was not chosen to be the one of the finalists, I believe what I gained from designing and presenting was more fruitful. We contacted currently student-serving psychologists: Wee-class and also reflected upon the existent models that shared similar ideology. Furthermore, cooperating with Wee-Class reflected upon my past high school experience with the volunteer activity at DeoDuk High School.

---