'Social Venture Startup' Helping Disabled Children Grow

There are social venture startups that help children with disabilities grow in various ways, from cutting-edge technology to culture and arts. A social venture is a company or organization established by a social entrepreneur who seeks to provide innovative and systematic solutions to achieve social goals.

Social venture companies that use cutting-edge technology and culture and arts to help children with disabilities achieve their dreams are playing a major role in helping our society move toward a more inclusive and warm future. In particular, they are demonstrating their positive functions as social venture companies by opening up new possibilities for children with disabilities and delivering messages of hope.

◆ Learning support for hearing impaired children, ‘Soboru’

Last year, Sangsangin Group carried out a project to improve the learning environment for hearing-impaired children by transmitting class audio in real time as text through 'Soboro (channel to see sound).'

The hearing-impaired students who participated in the project at the time received real-time AI-based text interpretation services even when they could not see the teacher’s mouth during class. The project provided text interpretation services to hearing-impaired students and consistently pursued activities with the following goals: ▲ improving the accuracy and usability of text interpretation services ▲ confirming positive changes through measuring learning effects ▲ expanding the support area for assistive devices.

Through this, the accuracy of the text interpretation service was increased to 95.1% through engine replacement and technological advancement, exceeding the target of 95%, and convenient services such as speaker identification function and YouTube study notes were also introduced. Through this, the 'class reception rate' and 'class understanding' of hearing-impaired students were also improved.

◆ Rehabilitation treatment as a game, ‘JamJam Therapeutics’

JamJam Therapeutics (CEO Kim Jung-eun) is bringing about innovation in the special education and rehabilitation fields for children with disabilities. In particular, the AR rehabilitation game 'JamJam400' released this year is drawing attention from the industry as it opens a new horizon in rehabilitation treatment for children with disabilities.

This innovative solution, which recognizes hand movements and enables rehabilitation exercises using only a tablet PC camera without any special equipment, has transformed boring rehabilitation treatment into a fun game. The method in which children directly control the game by moving their hands is showing great effectiveness in eliciting voluntary participation from disabled children who dislike rehabilitation and have difficulty with it.

The effectiveness of 'JamJam400' has already been proven in the medical community. In a clinical study conducted by Catholic University, the results of a verification on 20 children with cerebral palsy showed the same effectiveness as expensive hardware gloves, and its safety was also verified when it was used more than 7,000 times at Seoul Asan Medical Center and National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital. In recognition of this innovative solution development and achievement, JamJam Therapeutics received the Grand Prize of the Minister of SMEs and Startups Award at the 25th Women's Startup Competition in July.

◆ 'WowKiki' Helps Language Development with AI

Waukiki (CEO Kang Ye-seul), a digital healthcare startup specializing in speech therapy, is creating a new future for children with developmental delays with cutting-edge AI technology. It is building an innovative speech therapy solution through its own AI multimodal technology, opinions from field teachers, and collaboration with medical staff.

'AI Haidongdong', which analyzes children's mouth shapes and vocalization in real time and provides feedback, is a three-way linkage system connecting parents, teachers, and children. Waukiki plans to pre-launch a parent app that utilizes AI technology to diagnose language development at home, and a teacher app that improves work efficiency through individualized management and report writing in January 2025. In addition, Haidongdong for children, which is based on content, plans to launch a beta version in the first half of 2025 in cooperation with the Ewha Mokdong Hospital and conduct an effectiveness test for real users.

Waukiki is also expanding its business to offline areas. The self-developed parish, 'Tantan Brain Magnet Parish (Korean Edition)', is scheduled to be introduced through Wadiz Crowdfunding in December, and the textbook 'Running Turtle 2 (Fine Muscle Development Edition)' is scheduled to be officially released early next week. In the future, the parish is planning to expand to various areas such as English, numbers, and art.

Particularly noteworthy is the close collaboration with the medical community to enhance professionalism. Together with Professor Seo Ji-hyun of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Ewha Womans University, we are developing a program that can effectively utilize the waiting period for speech therapy (up to one year), and we are also developing ‘snack-type content’ that can be used during hospital waiting times. Through this, Waukiki is suggesting a new paradigm that simultaneously increases the accessibility and effectiveness of speech therapy.

◆ Dreams drawn through dance, 'Eva Dance Challenge'

Eva Dance Challenge (CEO Jaehoon Yoon), a start-up social enterprise under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, is breaking down the barriers between people with and without disabilities through the art of dance. Their challenge, which began with the vision of “creating a culture that everyone can enjoy together through the genre of dance,” became more concrete with a fateful encounter with a disabled dance team at the 2022 Street Dance Competition.

Eva Crew, formed with the team name (Everybody Dance Crew) that means 'Everyone can dance, so we can dance too', is leading the way in improving awareness of disabilities by presenting dynamic performances through collaboration between Will You Entertainment, the parent company of Eva Dance Challenge, and the b-boy team Gunis Crew. In fact, Eva Dance Challenge toured 30 elementary, middle, and high schools in the Incheon area throughout 2024 and received good responses from the students.

Currently, Eva Dance Challenge, which has been selected for support from the Seoul Cultural Foundation and Incheon Cultural Foundation, is using this as a stepping stone to develop a systematic developmentally disabled dancer training program targeting welfare facilities for the disabled and companies.

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