[Sponsored Report] How teens become global citizens by developing an app

Yoojung Kim, 17, is the leader of the PIN2AID club, consisting of five members from Saint Paul Preparatory Seoul.

PIN2AID is a student committee that aids global communities to share useful information for sustainable development and provides global citizens. Yoojung Kim, 17, founded this club with five members from Saint Paul Preparatory Seoul. They created a website and a mobile application that supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Based on the map, people can easily find any organizations that need help. The school club with this idea participated in several club fairs, including the Youth Club Fair (YCF), held by the Incheon Global Campus which is a foundation Incheon City funded, and ‘WARMINGKOREA’, a NGO with youth network that participates in solving social problems in various ways, such as exhibitions or fundraisers.

"Based on the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are promoting various NGOs and creating a website. In fact, the SDGs are not widely known to the public. So, I'm here today to promote the goals through exhibition games, to inform people of the UN’s development goals, and to visit our website when it opens." said Yoojung, at the Youth Club Fair in Korea, January 2019.

In the fair, they shared their future plans of developing a website showing many non-government organizations that work for the goals of the UN on a map. Since people are not familiar with the UN’s goals, it is expected to provide people with practical insight into world development and innovation.

Their successful journey was once again recognized by receiving an award from the YCF, evaluated by many judges and the student press.Working with Web Storm, a website developer, PIN2AID had the opportunity to turn their ideas of a website into reality.

On the website, non- government organizations are shown with a ‘PIN’ on a map, which people can click on. When the pin is clicked, the website provides contact information for people to give ‘AID’ to the organizations.

This program helps people to get an opportunity to manually aid the organizations that they have an interest in. People can make stronger connections between the organizations with their direct aid and familiarize the idea of world development and it also0 provides publicity to less -known organizations.

Based on their creativity and insight, the team PIN2AID also won the grand prize from the Youth Engineering Idea Competition held by KEDCO(Korea Economic Development Cooperative), which is sponsored by a Korea congressman Hoon Lee of Trade, Industry, Energy, SMES and Startup Committee of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. The prize money (1,000,000 KRW) is also donated for the fundraising.

This year, Pin2aid and Yoojung will extend their activities to participating in community services.

[Editor's Note] It is to be noted that the following has been written by a providing company, and that Korea JoongAng Daily has not changed the contents in any manner.