The Entrepreneurship Education Center (Director Professor Hwang Woon-jung) held a "Local Creative Ideas Camp for Regional Economic Revitalization" in Buan on the 24th and 25th for 30 university students from the Jeonbuk area interested in entrepreneurship.

The camp, organized by Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) together with a consortium of six universities in the Jeonbuk region and the Jeonju Venture Business Promotion Zone Development Council (hereinafter JVADA), was designed to spread entrepreneurial culture across Jeonbuk universities, energize students on and off campus who have been affected by the transition to living with COVID-19, and provide opportunities for exploring and exchanging entrepreneurial capabilities among startup-related organizations, startup CEOs, and local youths.

Participants toured the Buan area (Saemangeum Promotion Center, Buan Nu-e Town, and the Mulberry Agricultural Cooperative Processing Center), and spent time generating diverse ideas using Buan's local resources through lectures on idea generation, idea discovery sessions, and information-gathering activities.

In particular, six experts — including representatives from startup-related organizations and CEOs of alumni startup companies — served as mentors for the six teams, guiding them from planning how to utilize Buan's regional resources through to producing final deliverables. Following evaluation of outstanding ideas, awards and prize money were presented to all six participating teams: one Grand Prize team, two Top Excellence Award teams, and three Excellence Award teams.

Student participant Kim Hyun-chae said, "This was the most active, participatory startup camp I have attended; it was new and enjoyable. It was fun and a rewarding experience to discover good ideas through brainstorming among students from the Jeonbuk area."

Professor Hwang Woon-jung, director of the Entrepreneurship Education Center, said, "Going forward, we will continue to work closely with universities across the Jeonbuk region to foster an entrepreneurial mindset among young people considering their career paths, and to provide ongoing opportunities to explore entrepreneurial capabilities so that Jeonbuk's youth can actively pursue startup ventures."