The Seongnam Youth Foundation's Seohyun Youth Center successfully concluded the '2026 Youth Participation Budget Program' on August 8, which involved local youth and young adults.
According to the foundation on August 11, a total of 11 teams participated in the program, proposing various project ideas needed in the community. After presentations and a public voting process involving local youth and residents, five winning teams were selected.
The grand prize went to the Metaguardians team for their 'Zero School Violence Project: VR Court.' This experiential project, which combines virtual reality experiences with mock trials, received high praise for allowing participants to directly experience and develop responses to school violence situations.
The Excellence Award was given to the Sion team for their 'Gaon-gil' project, while the U-PEERS team's empathy experience center 'Four Perspectives' received the Outstanding Award.
The Popularity Award was shared by the Youth Planning Volunteer Group's Shade Light team for their AI school violence prevention experience kiosk 'SAFE SIGNAL' and the Money Up team's financial education program 'MONEY is Money!'
Notably, this year, additional points were awarded for proposals focused on school violence prevention, encouraging youth to come up with innovative solutions to this pressing issue.
The program also allowed for autonomous topics, drawing out diverse interests and fresh policy ideas from participants.
This initiative is seen as significant because it enables youth and young adults to actively think about and propose policies that address community needs, rather than merely participating in programs.
Furthermore, the public voting process incorporated the opinions of local youth and residents, establishing a participatory structure that connects idea proposal, presentation, evaluation, community resonance, and project realization.
The community is increasingly supportive of youth and young adults identifying and proposing solutions to issues closely related to their lives, raising expectations for the continued expansion of the participation budget program.
Most importantly, topics such as school violence prevention, empathy and communication, and financial education have been presented as project ideas that youth can genuinely relate to, enhancing the potential for the participation budget program to evolve into a practical avenue for addressing local issues.
The Seohyun Youth Center plans to pilot the outstanding proposals selected through this participation budget program and will evaluate the results and feedback to determine if they can be developed into new programs in the future.
Meanwhile, Park Jeong-bae, director of the Seohyun Youth Center, expressed gratitude to the youth for their innovative ideas, stating, "We will actively support the proposed ideas to ensure they lead to positive changes in the community."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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