Korean businesses have partnered with Global Peace Foundation to implement social and economic development projects around the world.(top) Korean Security Depository employees before volunteering at the company sponsored Alllights Village in the Philippines. (middle) Korean and Latin American businessmen meet during the international conference on governance, ethics and development in Paraguay. (bottom) Kangwon Land Co. Executive Vice President Mr. Kimseo Seoung Won greets residents of the first High 1 Hope Village.

Over the past year, Global Peace Foundation (GPF) has formed numerous partnerships with Korean corporations to spearhead social responsibility projects. In neighboring South East Asian countries and Africa they have established Alllights Villages and the Love in Lights Foundation. This month, Kangwon Land Co. Ltd, and Global Peace Association-Nepal launched the High 1 Hope Village initiative. In June a delegation of Korean businessmen attended an international conference in Paraguay to explore prospects of investing in Latin American development.

In his article, “Business and third sector have much to learn from each other”, Mark Makepeace, CEO of FTSE writes, “An Alliance based on a core set of shared objectives can have a very tangible impact on the business itself.”

The same concept is operational in the United Nations Global Compact, a strategic policy initiative that fosters business partnerships with the United Nations. It states, “Business practices rooted in universal values can bring social and economic gains.”

If core principles are the glue that holds multiple sectors together, what core principles are bonding Korean corporations and GPF?

In an interview with Daily DongA, Global Peace Foundation Chairman, Dr. Hyun Jin Moon observed that social responsibility is an intrinsic part of Korea’s heritage. “The Korean founding mythology of Dangun and the philosophy of Hongik-ingan assert that Koreans are endowed by Heaven with responsibility to live for humanity.” He has encouraged Korea to step forward to mentor developing nations.

The 2008 global financial crisis left the world wanting new more sustainable and ethical models of development. Korea’s story has something to offer.

More than 60 years ago, the Korean War left the peninsula devastated. Social and spiritual reforms like the New Village Movement united the South Korean people.  Divisions of an aging feudal system came down and the Korean people worked together to build their nation. This transformation coupled with foreign investment and aid boosted Korea’s GDP per capital from $91 in 1961 to $1,746 in 1971. Today, Korea ranks 15th in the world’s economies and stands head to head with western nations as a member of the G-20.

In the same interview, Dr. Moon states that Korea stands in a rare position of opportunity to set a precedent of moral leadership in the world. If it revives these founding principles, starting with reaching out to its global community.

And the economic and social gains that Ban Ki-moon speaks of? Mr. Markpeace lists higher employee moral, better potential hires, and higher brand appeal. Dr. Moon has predicted that Korea can become a top 5 if not 3 economy in the world if it earns its a moral authority.

GPF Korea and its Korean business partners could be starting a new economic and social development trend based on the universal principles that are embedded in Korea’s founding philosophy that acknowledge fundamental human rights and dignity and the sanctity of the natural world.

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Gundong Lee (right) with a local volunteer (left) from Sharili drive mobile libraries to circulate Dream Catcher Library books to remote areas.

Summer is well underway and the Global Peace Foundation, Global Peace Youth Corps and affiliate organizations like Service for Peace are sending young volunteers overseas.

Service brings out the best in young people:

• their ability to see beyond long-standing divisions,
• their innovation, 
• their hope
• and most of all, their power to dream.

In 2010, Dr. Moon challenged Korean youth, “What will your generation do with your capacity to dream? Will you dream a small dream or will you dream the greatest dream of all?” Serving abroad is the perfect way to expand one’s capacity to dream.

Meet, Gundong Lee, featured on Chosun.com in 2011. At the time, he was 28. He initially came to Nepal as an international volunteer with Service for Peace Korea. He told Chosun, “The Nepalese staff thought I was too meddling, especially because they thought I would not stay here forever.” Contrary to the Nepalese staff’s assumption, he stayed and become project director of the Children’s Center and Dream Catcher Library in Sarlahi, a district about 12 hours from Kathmandu.

In 2012, Nepal ranked 157 out of 186 nations in the UN Human Development Index. According to Hon. Ram Hari Joshy, former Secretary of Education and Secretary of Tourism of Nepal, the key to development is “Education…Unless people change, this world will not get any better.”

The Service for Peace projects in Sharili focus on education. Behind book covers, and within the warm shelter of the Children’s Center, dreams are taking flight.

The Dream Catcher Library houses 6,000 books and a computer lab that offers computer classes. After school, children and college students gather at the library to study and read. Local volunteers support a mobile library system that circulates the books by bicycle and car to families in remote areas. A women’s literacy program also operates from the Dream Catcher Library. To date, hundreds of women have learned to read and write through the program.

The Children’s Center offers a haven for orphans of the 14 year Nepali civil-war. The brunt of violence passed through the Sharili region leaving many children parentless and homeless. Chosun.com wrote, “The children of the center call Gundong Lee “Appa” or dad in Korean.”  He come as a foreign volunteer, but remained to heal and raise his adopted Nepalese children. Today, international volunteers frequently join local program coordinators for months at a time to care for the orphans. They forever remain a part of the Children Center’s growing extended family.

Experiences like Gundong Lee’s, forge deep bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood with communities abroad. Young volunteers are placed on the job and immediately expected to find common goals while working and learning with people who speak different languages and come from different cultures, religions and lives. What manifests is the dream that pulses through every human vein.

The world’s current and future leaders dreams are expanded to “the greatest dream of all”.

This video by Service for Peace Korea highlights the dreams of people who use the Dream Catcher Library and Children’s Center. Your Dreams, my dreams, our dreams.

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GPA and partners released fish into the Bagmati River at the start of World Environmental Week in Nepal

At the start of World Environmental Week in Nepal, fish were released into the Guheshwori section of Bagmati River. Weeks prior, volunteers came to clean the riverbanks.  Kishor Kumar Rajbhandari commented on Facebook, “…time has come to resurrect life in the water of this section.”

The earth indiscriminately supports life, particularly of all 7 billion people that inhabit it.

Yet, every year massive amounts of food are wasted. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that every year 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted, the same amount produced in the whole of sub-Sahara Africa. Meanwhile, 1 in every 7 people in the world still go to bed hungry, and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger. This year’s World Environment Day focuses on anti-food waste and food loss with the theme “Think, Eat Save”.

Humanity is connected as one family. Innovative solutions need to be generated to better care for and share the resources of the planet that support the growth and development of our human family.

From June 1-June 6 GPA Nepal and partners hosted a week of programs to explore ways to conserve and care for rivers, trees, plants and earth. Citizens, old and young had an opportunity to engage in everyday changes like composting and reducing food waste, and concerted civic efforts like cleaning the banks of the Bagmati River and tree planting.

The original report of GPA Nepal’s World Environment Week appears on  Global Peace Foundation

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