Establishment of a multicultural family as a member of the local community.

In order for migrants, such as multicultural families, to get along with indigenous people in the local community, the Multicultural Family Support Center must also go with the village. On November 2nd, Vice Minister of Gender Equality and Family Kim Kyung-sun visited the Bucheon Multicultural Family Support Center (Centre Director Baek Un-young), which is fully practicing this.

In order to create more opportunities for married immigrants to interact with indigenous peoples, the center manager is working as a member of the Simgok-dong Residents’ Association and as a secretary of the welfare division.

These efforts have actually led to community activities of multicultural families, and the Vietnamese self-help group is participating in community service activities.

In addition, through the activities of the Simgok-dong Residents’ Association, the Simgok-dong village began to take an interest in the Multicultural Family Support Center, and as a result, the Village Coupang project was born.

Simgok-dong and Wonmi 2 Village Autonomous Association shared samgyetang, side dishes, Korean sweets, songpyeon, kimchi, etc. for multicultural families, and the Bucheon Multicultural Family Support Center is running a Village Coupang project to deliver these to multicultural families who are having a hard time living due to COVID-19. . A total of 11 events have been held so far.

These achievements drew the attention of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family as one step closer to the ultimate goal of community integration of multicultural families.

Vice Minister Kim Kyung-sun visited her center on the same day and first participated in the macrame craft activities of multicultural families.

Macrame is a craft to make interior accessories using the knot technique, and multicultural families are using it for sharing and volunteering.

After that, she moved to the multicultural family exchange and communication space ‘Dagaon’, located on the 4th floor of the center where Vice Minister Kim had a meeting with multicultural families.

Deputy Minister Kim expressed great interest in hearing reports about upcoming projects, center special projects, and 2021 center excellent competition projects.

On this day, in addition to the participation of the center and multicultural families in the local community, another program that received attention was the dream bag project.

Hearing that multicultural families are experiencing hardships due to COVID-19, the center held an emergency steering committee meeting in 2021 and, as a result, created a ‘dream bag project’ to deliver scholarships to children of multicultural families by relay.

The dream bag project, which started in April, has progressed up to the 7th. In response, children of multicultural families are sending their gratitude to the center in a letter. Scholarships are also scheduled to be delivered in November and December.

The center delivers handwritten letters written by marriage immigrants who received scholarships or their children to sponsors using SNS.

Deputy Minister Kim Kyung-sun said on the same day with marriage immigrant women, “It is very important to support them to establish themselves as members of the local community by communicating with local residents beyond exchanges between marriage immigrants, and the Bucheon Multicultural Family Support Center plays a leading role. “Even in the midst of the COVID-19 situation, we will do everything we can to support marriage immigrants and children of multicultural families so that they can adapt to the community and school in a stable way.”

By Song Haseong