| Did you know that an estimated 5 million children around the world die from extreme poverty every year? Almost 1.3 billion populations live off less than $1.25 per day. That is, one in eight people still suffers from chronic hunger. These numbers, however, are rarely highlighted, and often quickly disappeared into public oblivion. Food prices have risen over the past few months, fuelled by drought. World economic crisis causes an economic slowdown and hardship in many underdeveloped countries. But this is not a time to turn inward or reduce overseas aid for development. Most of all, continuing social engagement to tackle humanitarian crisis is desperately needed more than any time.
A recent survey found that people, who still remain uninformed and thus simply unaware of global poverty. Indeed, it is not surprising that many become indifferent to what goes on in the world. Our initiative is to change the status quo. Our approach is simple yet effective. People respond well to requests when they well-understand the problems. If you happened to have heard about Malawi, you are more likely to give a donation for AIDS orphans in Malawi. Open access makes knowledge available to all, without the barrier of affordability and without restrictions on using it.
For a long time, news media, in particular in Korea, have had a large influence on audience by choosing what stories to broadcast and by deciding how much prominence and space to give to each story. Because the inseparable dependence on commercial ads, news media have not given enough prominence to detailed stories about the poorest countries. Today, however, the way of information flow is quite different from the conventional way. Unlike the past, young social media users are setting political or social agenda in unprecedented ways. Social media are becoming increasingly accepted as crucial tools in sharing information, and we will utilize its leverage to raise social awareness on global poverty.
As of 2012, there are over 30 million smart phones in South Korea. Taking advantage of this fact, we are going to use social media channels to set a social agenda for poverty reduction, and gather public��s attention to it. For example, when our volunteers expound on the HIV/AIDS situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo on social media for several weeks. Then some groups or communities in Korea will begin discussing what they can do to tackle the problem. Social networks and social media effectively connect altruistic meme in everyone��s mind. Subsequently, the public will increasingly pay attention and thus become more likely to get involved in poverty reduction. For this reason, we target to help ordinary individuals understand global poverty better through social awareness campaigns, and trigger more participation.
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