66th UN DPI/ NGO Conference

From May 30th to June 1st, VANK was given the opportunity to participate in the UN DPI/NGO Conference. Being that this was the first UN conference to be held in Korea, it was a big event for Korean NGOs to be involved in. The main theme for this UN Conference was Education for Global Citizenship and the concept is based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that were recently adopted by the UN at the UN summit in September 2015. The main goals that the SDGs want to accomplish is ending poverty, fight  inequalities, and tackling climate change. The SDGs are the successors to the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) that the UN developed back in 2000, and the SDGs include a total of 169 targets that are related to the 17 goals.

At the booth VANK focused on presenting the following to participants of the conference:

  • Intoduction of VANK (The great movement of a small organization)
    • How VANK was created
    • Members of VANK
    • What VANK does
  • VANK’s 2 Main Education Programs
    • Cyber Diplomacy Program
      • 14-step education process
    • Worldchanger Program (Focus on SDGs)
      • 12-step education process
  • Cases of VANK Members having an impact on the World
    • Sang-min Kwak
    • Yea-jin Lee
    • Gae-ra Yang
    • Agnieszka Michaelzyk
  • Promotional material that VANK offers to educate the youth and members
    • World Heritage Map
    • Vision of Asia Peace Map
    • Humans Rights World Map
    • Maps for Worldchangers
    • SDGs World Map
    • SDGs Postcards
  • Event: Provide feedback about VANK/VANK’s booth or a simple task and/or strategy to accomplish one or more of the SDGs

People who participated in the event were given promotional materials as a courtesy for participating in the event. In addition to the aforementioned promotional material, VANK also provided participants with “Mugunghwa” Korean Maps, Jikji Postcards, and Korean Food Postcards.

Overall, the reaction of people to VANK’s booth was successful. More than 100 people participated in the event and people from different countries (not just Korea) were able to learn about VANK’s motive, the SDGs and how individual people can make a great impact to the world.