Questions/Answers

Launched in 2012, Sejong City’s village communities were invigorated with a complex community of each village that was designed in accordance with the city configuration for 20,000 residence; and became the youngest city in the country with average age of 36.7(national average age of 41.5 as of 2017) as young population surged into the city while it rapidly grew into a planned city. In consideration of the city’s structure and demographic characteristics, Sejong City planned to establish a specialized center for women and children (Happy Mom’s Center) that is designed to manage many issues including low fertility rate problem, health care, job support, and autonomous citizen communities. Expanding opportunities of women’s social participation by encouraging their re-employment in link with issues like marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, education, and jobs, Sejong also tried to provide steady job posts for them through education and programs. By maximizing the benefits of community utilization and one-stop service, Sejong first tries to implement it as a pilot project and then introduce the policy to wide-area welfare centers, making its regional community integration support systems into a national project.

Sejong applied ‘gender-responsive public service’ with “Happy Mom’s Center”, whose major beneficiaries are women and children. From the stage of development, it takes into account Sejong’s demographic characteristic (Sejong’s ratio of children population: 24.8 percent, National average: 17.6 percent) and, furthermore, women's participation becomes the base of its decision-making process. It also fits into the category as it not only provides services on marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, but also vigorously supports women's social activities by giving opportunities of re-employment and start-ups through education to those who have broken careers due to marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare.

It is relevant to Goal 5 and 11 Happy Mom’s Center organized a consultative body with private groups for children and family. Public and private sectors cooperate to participate in making and mediating policies and provide various welfare services. Moreover, it is enhancing women's social competence by reducing childcare burden while providing opportunities for their re-employment; and also in achieving gender equality by operating various programs for fathers during weekends in order to encourage their participation in childcare. Further, it develops an embracing and sustainable living environment by forming and utilizing the local community in relation to childcare.

Happy Mom’s Center is a space used by many women and the pregnant in Sejong, and a variety of programs specialized for woman and children become a great contributing factor which makes the city a good place for women and children to live. Besides, Happy Mom’s Center plays a role as an intermediation station as it transfers private resources transferred to another private organization in need. Also, ‘One Visit, All Service System’ is established where all projects conducted by each organization are manualized in a brochure so that citizens who visit any one of those organizations can be introduced and receive services they need. The ‘One Visit, All Service System’ relieves the burden of citizens to visit each organization separately and identifies all services provided by those organizations for them. In this regards, the system prevents duplication of requests and help people who have fallen into the dead zone of services, expanding their target beneficiaries and increasing work efficiency. With a total fertility rate of 1.05 per person, Korea has marked the lowest among OECD members and is now standing on the edge of the demographic cliff. In this regard, Children and women-friendly policies are becoming more important than ever.

The various services offered by Happy Mom’s Center are delivered in one place and operated by the public-private consultative body. Happy Mom’s Center provides services for marriage, pregnancy, birth, child, education, and re-employment in one visit. The consultative body has one channel that shares citizens’ opinion and responses to them immediately. Happy Mom’s Center has been selected as the best practice in terms of cooperation between public and private sectors by the ministry of interior and safety and introduced to nationwide. Compared to the other local governments, Sejong connects all sectors and provides one-stop service.

Happy Mom’s Center breaks away from the typical office frame of public institutions. The education room equipped with an Ondol-heating system in consideration of pregnant women and the interior which resembles their home. Also, the cafe in the lobby serves as a place for a village-unit company of mothers and also for a barista club where women on a career break can prepare their re-employment. It is considered as a unique and original policy in Korea in that citizens spontaneously form a community through affiliation between a local government providing location and a private sector donating talents.

The government of the Republic of Korea has decided Sejong City’s Happy Mom’s Center is a future-oriented place that can be utilized by women and children for their convenience and plans to spread it nationwide. In addition to central ministries and 19 local governments are considering the introduction of the system through benchmarking, and its story is also covered by some magazine and journal, receiving constant attention. Moreover, since Sejong’s private-public consultative body recognized as the leading example of the citizens-oriented public services, it was put on a display at the Korea Local Autonomy Expo this year.

Sejong is an expanding planned-city, with a multi-community center (average construction cost of 45 million dollars) in each dong(a village unit of 20,000-3,000 people), and a wide-area welfare center(average construction cost of 49 million dollars) in each living zone(an average of 6 to 8 villages per a zone, unit of 6-8million people) For Happy Mom’s Center, the third floor of the wide-area welfare center in Saerom-dong (1,312.47 m2) was remodeled and within the total of 11,000 dollars budget, 6100 dollars was spent on the remodeling and 4900 dollars on equipment purchases. Currently, 17 government officials are operating various programs.

Sejong was designated as a women-friendly city by Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2016 and was also recognized as a child-friendly city by UNICEF in 2017. In addition, it has maintained the top spot in the national fertility rate (1.67 per a person) for the third consecutive year (national average of 1.05 and Seoul of 0.83) by providing inviting childbirth support policies from marriage to childcare. It won the Grand Prize as an excellent local government resolving low fertility issue and 107 local government officials from 19 local governments visited Sejong to benchmark its success since it was selected as the leading local governments and became a mentor for other municipalities. 94.8 percent of its visitors were satisfied with it and the number of program users showed an increase of 2,412 compared to the previous year. For the continuity of the project, Sejong plans to construct five more Happy Mom’s Center in each living zone to meet the growth of the future population, and also to operate a local-based exclusive service team. In addition, Sejong intends to provide a comprehensive platform for welfare by linking more diverse services together such as culture, administration, safety, and sports.

Yes

Korean Government conducts the "Best Local Government Public Contest for Overcoming Low Fertility" every year to reward local governments that try to tackle low fertility problem in order to look for a solution for Korea’s serious low fertility rate. The local government selected as the case of excellence receives special subsidy tax, and Happy Mom’s Center awarded in 2017 and received special subsidy tax. Various experts conducted the first and second document screening and the local government which passed both made a presentation on its business model at the third screening.

The evaluation criteria include 100 points, with 50 points in the effectiveness of the project, 25 points in originality of the project, and 25 points in an improvement of recognition. An extra 20 points will be included so that a total score will be 120 points and experts in each area will be in charge of the evaluation. The effectiveness of the project will be scored for the degree of practical support including supports for childbirth and childcare, the necessity and urgency of the policy, whether the policy is specific and relevant to reality, and the activation of local governments.

Happy Mom’s Center was chosen as the best model that other local governments want to imitate. It was also selected as the leading local government of the Republic of Korea, serving as a mentor for other attempts. It is meaningful because it is not just a project to overcome low fertility rate limited to pregnancy and childbirth issue, but a project to find a case of excellence which is tailored to the demographic structure and help the model policy to be spread across the country, making it available to all local governments.

It is organized and operated by a consultative body formed between public and private sectors, including private organizations for women, children, and family in the region. The heads of the private organizations and the officials in charge, which include Director of Health Care Center of Sejong City, Director of Family Relationship and Sexual Violation Clinic, Head of the Support Center for Healthy Family and Multicultural Family, Head of the Center for the Comprehensive Childcare Support, Head of the YMCA Consult Center for sexual Rights, Head of Smart Shelter Center, Head of the Center for Women Re-employment, Head of the Public Children Center, Head of the Center for Youth Counseling and Welfare, Officials in charge of City Office’s DreamStart, Officials in charge of children and juvenile sector, Directors of Health Administration and Health Promotion Director from Health Care Center, help to organize the consultative body to link mutual business, services and programs. Also, a private toy laundry company is carrying out a project to donate baby goods in the form of "Anabada (Save, Share, Exchange, and Reuse)" with an online community of mothers living in Sejong. Happy Mom’s Center is working as an intermediary that provides donations to low-income families.

Sejong is a city where seeks citizens’ voluntary participation. Through childcare goods distribution project and a town hall meeting which gathers opinion from citizens, we establishes and operates a private-public consultative body led by citizens’ participation, realizing autonomous public services. In this era of autonomy, it is now Sejong’s role to help its residents diagnose and discover problems for themselves, and use local resources in order to find solutions and practice them. Sejong has been developing application on the smartphone so that citizens can be provided lots of services more conveniently.