Finding volunteer opportunities is so difficult. Last summer, I started looking for a place to do volunteer work. In Korea, there’s a government-run volunteer portal called 1365. But there were some problems.
The Challenges of 1365 (Government-run Volunteer Matching Program)
First, the search function is terrible. Just looking at the interface made me feel exhausted. On top of that, you have to click on each listing, go in, and read everything one by one. And even if you email the places that posted volunteer opportunities, most of them never reply… Why??
Second, there are hardly any opportunities for high school students or foreigners.
In Korea, students used to volunteer to earn school credit, but that system was abolished a few years ago. Perhaps because of that, there aren’t as many high school students volunteering anymore, so it’s really hard to regularly find opportunities for them.
Also, thanks to the Korean Wave, there are a lot of foreigners in Korea these days. Some of them probably want to volunteer too, right? But where can they find opportunities?
This is exactly where the first project of 1010 Labs started.
The project is called Volunteers Korea (Volko)! I’ve been planning this since last summer, but I’m still figuring out exactly what to do. What I do know for sure is that I want to create a system where people who want to volunteer can easily find opportunities.
This is my journal.