| AIESEC Exchange – South Korea | ”5293km Away City of Dream”

An experience from South Korea by  Febiani Kemala Dewi, student of Undergraduate Business Program Prasetiya Mulya batch 2013 on AIESEC Exchange Project

Before I share my experience to you, first thing I’m sure to say is, being a part of GCDP program is one of the best decision I won’t ever regret in my life. My name is Febby and I did an exchange program at Korea. To be honest, Korea has been one of my favorite destination and it was a dreamlike moment to have a project there.

After doing several interviews, I end up accepted in “Project Winner”, which is held by AIESEC SNU (Seoul National University). The project aims to understand the concept of Venture Business and Social Enterprise in Korea and also experience them. Besides, I also met super nice OC members and another EPs who came from Malaysia, China, and Vietnam.

I admit I had an awesome weeks throughout the project. We went to four Social Enterprises such as ICOOP, JUMP, GiveOne, and Eco Mearry Party. Among them, the most inspiring ones were JUMP and GiveOne. JUMP has a unique way to overcome educational gap that occur between higher and lower income family in Korea. They give benefits for both volunteers and poor students. Students got academical lessons from volunteers, and volunteers (which are college students from various major) got professional mentoring from experts according to their field.

It’s brilliant how JUMP doesn’t need to promise them with money as a salary, they give them mentoring & career development instead. Me and other EPs also had a great time meeting with JUMP volunteers by sharing each other’s educational volunteering experiences.

Next, the interesting thing about GiveOne is their CEO, Kwon Joon Oh life’s story. He was phenomenal in Korea and appeared in so many TV shows because he’s the first college student who dare to backpacking & travel along England to South Korea only with his motorcycle for a year! And he’s indeed an amazing man.

He told us before he wanted to start his business, he had this dream to explore around the world to broaden his perspective about life. Of course he didn’t have enough money, so he worked in 4 part-time jobs everyday for a year. After he collected some, he planned a one year trip to visit every country that outspread from England to South Korea. To survive living for one year, he did countless part-time jobs in every country he visited and lived with any strangers he met. And awesomely, he went through it all by himself! His story really amazed me for real. At the end he taught us to dare to dream BIG and persevere enough to make it come true.

The whole week was filled with fun and laughter. We tried so many Korean traditional foods which tasted like heaven. We visited too many beautiful places (the most memorable one was Bukchon Village). We shared tears, joy, and togetherness.

But when I looked back, I was surprise because what I miss the most from the entire project is somehow a matter of simple things like us sleeping together in one tight room every night, us watching movie and joking around at the guesthouse every night, us wandering the cold night of Hongdae Street searching for street foods, us screaming to crazy rides at Lotteworld, us having silly small talks at the subway, and so on.

Those moments make me realize that what makes this project so precious to me is because the people in it. Every single of them made it awesome. And I will forever thank them for that.

And thanks to AIESEC for giving me this unforgettable opportunity!