When you think of the singer Kim Jang-hun, what comes to your mind? Many people perhaps think of him as a ‘donation angel.’ We often hear news about a famous person donating money to a certain charity or cause. The news about an old woman who had donated her whole fortune, which she had accumulated by selling kimbab, for the benefit of poor students, earning for her the pet name ‘Kimbab Grandma,’ touched us. In this culture of giving, you may decide to donate when you can already afford to do so. But can you donate only material things?
New donation paradigms have appeared. ‘Talent donations,’ or donating one’s talents rather than material things for the benefit of a community, have spread. University students, who have no regular income yet, can contribute to the society in this way.
What Is Talent Donation?
Talent donation involves sharing with others an intangible value, such as knowledge or a technique. The giver/donor/sharer can be a person or a company. It is often hard to do volunteer work, but talent donation is fun, and talent donors can even develop and upgrade their own talents while sharing these. As such, talent donation has been considered an evolved donation model. This donation method may include a lawyer’s free legal advice, a guitarist’s free guitar lessons, and a doctor’s free medical treatment.
Illustrative Example
Singer Lee Hyo-lee sang a song about abandoned dogs. At the same time, she ran a blog about this as part of Naver’s talent donation campaign, and promoted the ‘Happy Bean’ donation campaign among the netizens. The accumulated donations were given to Ansung Care, a shelter for abandoned dogs. She strengthened the public awareness of abandoned dogs and promoted the adoption of stray dogs.
Writers also use their talents for the benefit of the community. Sin Kyung-suk has been donating 1% of her book royalties for nine years. Novelist Gong Jee-young, poets An Dohyun and Kim Yong-tak, and cartoonist Heo Youngman have also participated in this royalty donation project. Novelist Lee Oi-soo offered his services as a model for a farming and fishing village campaign ad. He also opened a literature class and is in the process of putting up ‘Sensevill,’ a culture and tourism village.
Essilor, a world-class lens company, is donating a pair of lens for children for every five pairs of myopilux lens that they are able to sell. Myopilux lenses are lenses for relieving progressive myopia in children. If a child aged six to eight becomes nearsighted, it is likely that he will have excessive myopia within three years. Essilor came up with this donation project for the benefit of children who need such lenses but who cannot afford to buy them. According to Essilor Korea, “Children learn mostly through their sense of sight. Eye problems thus make it inconvenient for them to study. This may cause poverty to be passed down to one’s children. This concern made us decide to embark on this donation project.” A number of domestic companies have also contributed their techniques. For example, CJ gave away some of its products, along with food, to poor people last Chuseok, and fire insurance companies have conducted safety checks in neglected facilities. What Can We Do? What can university students like you give to your community? Maybe the easiest donation that can be given by students is for them to teach poor children. This is also worthwhile, but there are many other kinds of talent donations. ST interviewed Yoon Sukhee (Chung-Ang University, Economics) from the university student talent donation organization ‘Beyond Your Mind.’
ST: What kinds of talent donations are being done in your organization?
Yoon: We consider a student’s major and interest when deciding what he or she will donate. Art students have taught kids through play, and have painted a mural. The Education students have guided children’s study. Others have taken kids on a museum tour and have led them to engage in sports activities. We also often visit branch schools in farming villages and hold activities there, including science camps and field days.
ST: What do you think are the merits of talent donations?
Yoon: Doing volunteer work seems very hard while talent donations may be fun and exciting because they involve the donor’s interests and allow the donor to participate more in the donation process as they make use of their talents and interests.
ST: Do you have any talent donation experience that touched you or made you feel great?
Yoon: When we started teaching children as a form of talent donation, the children’s behaviors were quite rough, and their minds were closed. Their minds were eventually opened, though, and they gradually became brighter. Their behaviors also changed for the better. All these made me very happy.
ST: How can students join your organization?
Yoon: We are always recruiting students. A student who wants to join us has to fill out the application form and undergo an interview. We hold activities twice a month, and we hold a meeting every Saturday. We don’t want students to apply for membership in our organization, however, only to satisfy their subject requirements, and we don’t want students to participate in our activities only for a short time. We want our member volunteers to ndertake the activity that they volunteered to participate in continuously. Bad behaviors on the part of some volunteers can hurt the children we’re serving and can create a bad image for all the university student volunteers.
ST: Finally, what would you like to tell the university students? Yoon: You may think that giving talent donations is difficult, but it is actually easy and even fun, and you don’t have to have a major talent or interest to do so. Talent
donation can also be done at any time, if you have the heart for it.
We might have been unwitting recipients ourselves of someone’s talent donation. Isn’t it good for someone who had been a beneficiary of someone else’s talent to in turn share his or her talent with other people? The talent doesn’t have to be great or exceptional. Giving a talent donation will also upgrade your talent. Think of anything that you are interested in or are good at, and use it for the good of your community. A virtuous cycle of giving and taking can start from you.
Choi Hae-won (Planning Manager)
choihw522@ssu.ac.kr
