The "Tech for Impact Campus" program run by the Kakao Impact Foundation has completed its first-semester course this year.
The Impact Foundation announced Wednesday that it had successfully concluded the first-semester course of the Tech for Impact Campus. The Tech for Impact Campus is a project-based class in which students visit sites in person to define social problems and develop technology to solve them together with social innovation organizations. Recognized as a regular university course earning major credits, it began at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2023, and 482 students from nine universities have participated to date.
In the first semester this year, 182 students from a total of six universities — Dankook University, Sogang University, Ewha Womans University, Yonsei University, Hanyang University, and Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology — participated and completed 42 "helping technology" projects. The students collaborated with social innovation organizations in each field on four themes: regional extinction, mental health, the climate crisis, and social inclusion. The social innovation organizations consisted of social venture founders, environmental activists, and other advocates. Forty-five current Kakao developers and planners also participated as mentors.
The Kakao Impact Foundation selected as outstanding projects "Naranhi," an AI school notification app for immigrant parents; "Netlog," a data-based management system for recycling cycles of discarded fishing nets; and "Ogu Ogu," a consumption and emotion recording app for women in their 20s and 30s.
The Kakao Impact Foundation plans to run the Tech for Impact Campus at 13 universities in the second semester, including five universities selected for the Ministry of Education's basic artificial intelligence (AI) education curriculum project. This will bring the total number of participating universities this year to 19.
"In the AI era, talent is not simply someone who creates technology, but someone who can meet users in the field, discover problems our society needs to solve, and resolve them through technology," said Ryu Seok-yeong, chairman of the Kakao Impact Foundation. "The Tech for Impact Campus would have been a precious learning opportunity for students to directly experience the process of problems being solved in the field." Shin Hyun-sang, a professor at Hanyang University, said, "The Tech for Impact Campus draws high interest among students, so we select enrollees through prior applications," adding, "The Tech for Impact Campus is a field-centered education model that fits the AI era."
