Nonprofit organization The Bridge helps North Korean entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground. If they win the funding at WeWork’s Creator—a global competition for mission-driven companies, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits—in Seoul on February 28, they’ll use that money to back even more North Korean refugees with entrepreneurial dreams.
North Korean defectors who escape to the South risk their lives for a better future. But while it may be better, it’s still undeniably hard—especially for those hoping to go into business for themselves. Even the most prepared newcomer lacks the information, funding, network, and sometimes simply the courage to succeed.
“Business support programs in South Korea are often unfit for defectors,” explains Hwang Jin-sol, founder of The Bridge, which has helped 30 North Korean entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground. The Seoul-based nonprofit provides a crowdfunding platform, mentoring, and opportunities to participate in networking events. “Our citizen fellow program lets South Koreans donate their expertise in areas such as accounting, publicity, and marketing,” he says.
Once they’ve achieved financial stability, recipients are encouraged to donate the principal they raised through crowdfunding to help support other entrepreneurs. “I thought it would be more effective to engage established North Korean entrepreneurs to help other North Korean defectors,” says Hwang. The organization also connects South Korean job seekers with companies founded by defectors via job fairs and online platforms.
While The Bridge helps refugees achieve their goals, fellow nonprofit finalist Future Class Network aims to help students find their voice.
The Korean educational system is notorious for its one-sided teaching method, with students expected to be quiet recipients of information. It’s an outdated approach and one that the Future Class Network wants to change by spreading innovative teaching methods to educators across the country.
Their learning method encourages in-class activities and student discussions rather than just information delivery. Students are introduced to the content before each class through videos and discuss the topic and engage in problem-solving activities in the classroom.
“We’ve seen incredible results,” says Jung Chan-pil, founder and secretary general (think CEO) of the Seoul-based organization. “Students who were lethargic have become lively and started concentrating in class. They became communicative and collaborative.”
In just six years, Future Class Network has trained 19,000 teachers through online and offline programs, and built a network for teachers to learn from one another.
Jung, a former documentary producer at a major broadcasting station, became interested in education after attending a conference. He researched and produced a piece about innovation in education, but it wasn’t enough—he wanted to do more to shift the educational paradigm.
“Our aim is to spread these solutions to all teachers and create a happy learning environment for students,” Jung says.
Seoul-based visual artist Oum Jeong-soon is also enacting change in education—by teaching visual art to visually impaired students.
Describing herself as someone who has long pondered “what it means to see,” Oum founded Another Way of Seeing 23 years ago, creating art programs for blind and visually impaired students.
“Our society communicates based on visible senses, but I wanted to explore the world beyond the visible with the visually impaired, who are isolated from society,” she explains.
Another Way of Seeing teaches art courses, hosts workshops and seminars, and delivers lectures on art and visual disability at their headquarters and in schools for the blind. As Oum teaches students to “see” in different ways, she says her eyes have been opened as well.
“The more I do art with the visually impaired, the more I discover different perspectives of viewing the world,” Oum says. “They use senses other than vision to understand and communicate with the world. For example, I gave a fork to one student and he started hitting it, touching it, poking it on his hand, and placing it on his tongue, and then drew a picture of four dots. It wasn’t the shape of the fork that we know. Instead, he drew the pain points he felt from the four sharp tips.”
The impact on students has been incredible, she says. “Through our programs, we have produced visually impaired college art majors and photographers,” Oum says. “If we win the prize, we would use it to support these college art majors to grow as professionals and to train new visually impaired artists.”
