INCUBATING COMMUNITY-BASED SOCIAL WELFARE PROGRAMS AND ORGANIZATIONS

BY HYE-RAN YOON, Board of Director, Cheonan YMCA
2005 Ramon Magsaysay Foundation Awardee for Emergent Leadership
Presented at the 2005 Magsaysay Awardees’ Lecture Series
Magsaysay Center, Manila, 02 September 2005

I. Background

Even though it has not been long since civil movement in Korea first began, it has been assessed that civil movement has gone through noticeable improvements. Not only did the number of civil movement organizations increase, but also the programs done by the organizations were very active. In several public opinion polls, civil movement organizations were selected as one of the major groups to move the Korean society, and it also seems to have a lot of influence in creating prevailing views on certain matters.

However, when viewed critically, disregarding the magnificent improvements in the past two decades or so, civil movement still has not been able to root down in Korea. There are several reasons to it. The first reason is that the history of civil movement is short. When bearing in mind that one of the main objectives of civil movement is the formation of democratic civil awareness, the maturity of civil movement requires a long period of process.

Another important reason is that there was not much grass-root democracy in the orientation and methods of civil movement. Until recently, Korean civil movement has been led mainly by Seoul-based "big" organizations. These types of national-level movements tend to be centered on specialists rather than on the citizens. In reality, so far the Korean civil movement has been dependent on movements that provide alternative policies by a few specialists and staffs, and therefore, "civil movement without citizens," which makes it difficult for citizens to participate, is continuing.

Therefore, "activating community-level civil society" is presented as a new way of Korean civil movement and also as a way to overcome the problems of the present Korean civil movement. The enforcement of local autonomy system of Korea in 1991 created a structure for new political opportunities, called "local politics," and the characteristics of the local politics, also known as "living politics" or "grass-root democracy," provides room for more direct participation of citizens.

The "Citizens Opening the World for Welfare," which was established in June of 1998, after a year of preparation from 1997, was opened after being encouraged by the fruitful result and, on the other hand, being awakened by the problems of Korean civil movement. Moreover, the work of "incubating organizations" done by the above organization, started with the idea that activating Korean civil movement must be done with the objectives of fostering new community-level grass-root groups, and of educating continuously the leaders with democratic civil awareness.

II. Current Status

The "Citizens Opening the World for Welfare" (or COWW) aims to make by citizens themselves an equal and righteous welfare community that all citizens of the local community can enjoy a decent humane life. It started with focusing all the efforts on recovering human rights and social integration of social minorities among all citizens of the community. Even though the economy and society grew rapidly in the past, the problems related to social minorities have always been around. Although there were many civil movement organizations, there were not many organizations that focused on recovering the rights of social minorities. However, in order to raise citizens' motivation for participation, it is not enough to emphasize individual experiences, irrelevant moral principles and a "must" of participation. In this view, the area of social welfare can be a contact point where citizens can easily encounter social issues. The COWW provides opportunities for citizens to meet social minorities through various welfare programs and related organizations and, based on it, has started an activity - making people realize an area of life that used to be considered private, as public.

Chart 1. Current Status of "Incubating Programs and Organizations."

Name of Organizations	How to start..	Main program at the time of incubating	Starting year - year of independence Present status
Chungnam Differently Abled Children's Parents Society	Encounter with mothers of children with 21 trisomy syndrome	Parental awareness, camps, exposure, discussion meetings, etc.	1999-2000 Extended to 4 branches
Organization building up Children's brighter Future	Issues of the Children from low-income family emergent due to economic crisis in 1998	After-school programs, group homes, public debate on children's issues	1998-2003 Nine (9) after-school programs, expanded to youth programs
Citizens Concerned about Community Mental Health	No welfare service socially integrating the mentally disabled, found	Parental awareness, support of small group meeting, field survey and public debate, networking of experts	2001 -2004 Establish "Center for Mental Health" in Cheonan city
Chungnam Differently Abled Women Solidarity	Women's human rights issue raised due to occurrence of in-facility violence	Shelter, small group meeting, awareness and lectures, field survey and public debate	1998 - 2004 Establish and operate "Center for Self- support of the Differently Abled Women"
Zelkova (Health and Welfare Center for the Elderly)	Increasing silver population, imbalance in community welfare for the elderly	Various lectures and awareness programs, daycare center, sharing of foods	2003-2005 Became independent in 2005
Cheonan Network for the Welfare City	Local election in 2002	Survey on the local welfare status and policy proposal, organizing public debate between major candidates, social welfare forum, exhibition on voluntary service	2002-2005 Changed to "Cheonan Council on Social Welfare" in 2005

III. Stages of Incubating Activities

1) Stage of Unearthing the Issues and Presenting Problems

After the economic crisis in 1998, there have been many opportunities to face the problems of undernourished children, human rights problems of the disabled and disabled children that social welfare service could not reach to. In fact, the lack of society's interests and supporting system on social minorities has not only been drawn attention from the society, but also has been covered underground. When the problems of these people came out to the society accidentally, my organization made it an important issue in my local community by posing the issue officially and objectively.

2) Stage of organizing initial groups with concerned individuals or organizations

The "Incubating work" focused on increasing the local community's problem-solving capacity by educating its members, rather than coming up with a short-term solution. Therefore, when a problem occurred, we quickly provided opportunities for interested individuals or groups to get together. For example, there were groups of "doctors, special education teachers, certified social welfare workers, individuals, or organizations who were interested in disabled children" and "housewives, college students, or religious groups who could work together for undernourished children." Through networking these groups, early members became to understand the situation objectively and share the status of the government's and non-government's supports. Based on the information, they strived to come up with a long-term solution.

3) Stage of Planning and Implementing the Program

Sometimes programs look as if they are providing social services to the people, but the important objectives of planning a program is to build a structure of citizens' participation through this. Another important objective is to find and educate a responsible and devoted leader through it. For example, many people such as social education teachers, volunteer workers from companies or churches, and college students participated in an "after-school program" for children from families with low income. Moreover, an administrative committee has been formed by those who were more interested, and they were motivated to take more interests and responsibility by participating in decision-making structures.

4) Stage of Preparing the Organization's Independence

Participating in the decision-making body of the activities is an important thing that gives you more responsibility and sense of belongingness. Therefore, the small, but independent start of a new organization is a good way to increase people's commitment towards voluntary activities. Usually, two to five years are needed for incubation, but in this period, active participants learn necessary processes with a view to making their organization independent in the few years to come.

In this stage, it is important to share visions with those who participate in decision-making body such as board of directors, and to enhance the capability (or capacity) of posing problems and presenting solutions on a certain issue through public systems. It is also important to increase the ability of staffs to create relevant programs that is in accordance with the objectives of the organization.

Another important thing is the ability to secure finance. Finance is an indispensable part for an organization to do various activities that coincides with its identity. Participants should, therefore, grasp whether or not finance could be secured stably, and whether the source of financial resources is dependent on a few donors, so as to shrink the organization's activities and programs. It is also important that, during the incubating period, the participants should be able to come up with a solution together.

5) Stage of Organization's Independence

At this stage, one will make the birth of the organization publicly known by having an official founding ceremony or similar events. This organization will have its own decision-making structure and office, totally independent from its mother organization. The organization that became independent, based on its own capacity and objectives, implements its own activities and programs. There are cases in which as a result of the birth of an organization, new local branches continue to be organized. "Chungnam Differently Abled Children's Parents Society", as an example, started as a Cheonan branch. In less than three years, it was expanded to three other branches at Asan, Hongseong, and Seosan. Also, "Organization building up Children's brighter Future", which had started with four after-school programs, has expanded dramatically resulting in nine after-school programs, two group homes, and a youth program center as of August 2005.

6) Stage of Networking between agencies and organizations

For all the dynamic activities from the civil society level, the initial responsibility of providing policies for and supporting social minorities is with local governments. However, in Korean society, policies and support for social minorities were still at a low stage, and in fact, social welfare has always been a marginal issue even within the civil society organizations. It is, therefore, significant for civil society to build up a networking power in order to draw governments' concern and necessary policy decisions. The "Cheonan Network for the Welfare City" was established in awareness of such problems. During the local election period in 2002, the network, based on its experiences from before, made and distributed a book "Policy Proposals on Social Welfare" and organized a Public Debate among the candidates for Cheonan major. More than 1,000 people participated in the debate. The debate strongly reminded the policy decision-makers who used to be indifferent to this issue, of the great political influence social welfare network can create, and made social welfare issue, which used to be a marginal issue, a central issue in Cheonan city. After that, the network was able to materialize the social welfare agendas through holding "social welfare forum," many of them were accepted as actual local government policies.

IV. Conclusion

At present, the Korean civil movement is active and the activities of the CSOs (civil society organizations) are apparent. Still in reality, however, the number of people actually taking part in the movement is very limited. The reality of "civil movement without citizens" leaves us the urgent task of citizens' participation.

In this context, I believe that the "incubating work" I engaged in, provided a good example of citizens' participation at local levels. The "incubating work" started with the belief that the driving force in changing our society comes from citizens. The belief that the true subject of the change of civil society is citizens, just as "I" am the subject of my life! With this belief, I tried to provide various opportunities and programs in which citizens could participate substantially. It seems that even the CSOs which work in the name of citizens' participation, lack the belief that the power of changes in society comes from citizens. It is not easy, of course. But difficulty is different from impossibility. Looking back on the history of civil movements in the west where the change and maturation of civil society took place gradually, the difficulties we face currently come from the fact that we try to tackle the issues and solve the problems simultaneously while those issues and problems have been accumulated over the long period of time. Recovering the belief on citizens in civil movement, is pivotal challenge to the CSOs in Korea. The answer, I believe, lies in grass-root movements.

Another reason why the activities of the CSOs are somewhat stagnant recently is because the vision and thrust of individual CSOs do not spread into civil society due to inner-oriented activities of the individual CSOs. Creating and expanding new organizations through "incubating work" are not possible without self-denying sacrifice of a mother organization. Those are a result of the altruistic resolution and commitment of the mother organization for the common good and extension of civil society sphere, overcoming self-centered perspectives seeking the success and expansion of individual organizations. It is not that easy for an organization to make a collective decision taking the "incubating work" as one of its priority tasks.

The most important outcome of the "incubating work" was to develop leaders who share common vision and commitment for the local community they belong to. Through various processes and opportunities, the workers (or activists) were identified and developed in leadership, who had not been seen before. We experience that, even small in number, their devoted activities and passion change the minds of the majority, and in the long run, become the power in transforming the local community. Even so, the problems we face at the moment, stem from the lack of leadership. For all the many activities which have been successfully implemented in Cheonan, and the focus given to leadership development, many of the activists become "burn-out," resulting in other related problems. The problems, as I see, are such as overloaded work, strong demand from the community, and lack of finance. This tends to pressurize an organization to operate not people-centered, but work-centered.

However, even with the limitation, I think the "incubating work" done by our organization although a little slow, but concrete and possible alternative in making Korean civil movement more substantial. Even though the activities of our organization covered only small region, "Cheonan city," is yet to be complete and still in process, if this movement becomes a successful model and spread to the rest of the nation, then it would definitely be a meaningful precedent to the future of Korean civil movement. Thank you !