Originally summarized on Twitter.
One In An ARMY are extremely proud to announce the results of our December campaign Empower With Jin, in partnership with jinepiphany, seokjinfile, and ksjdoll, benefiting Purple Community Fund in honour of Seokjin's birthday!
The Purple Community Fund aims to help poverty stricken families and communities transform their own lives with skills training, education, health and nutrition programmes. They want their beneficiaries to earn a sustainable living to support their families as they carry out their mission by enabling parents to perfect new skills through a variety of programmes for both men and women whilst supporting their children in education.
Life for P-C-F beneficiaries in the Philippines is difficult after the closure of the dump site which reduced employment opportunities. P-C-F livelihood workshops, after training, enable parents to earn a reliable wage making a beautiful range of recycled products. The main livelihood programme is in Tondo. There are currently 57 artisans in the P-C-F programme and their children are enrolled in the Community Education Mentoring Programme.
We chose P-C-F for Jin for a couple of reasons. Kim Seokjin comes from a family of successful entrepreneurs. He aspired to become a businessman himself before joining Big Hit Entertainment and he made his dream a reality by opening Ossu Seiromushi – a restaurant specializing in steamed Japanese dishes –with his brother, Kim Seokjung. Given Jin's passion for business, we felt that an organization that empowered entrepreneurs was the way to go for his birthday campaign!
We were also interested in supporting an organization that helps women in particular, since we learned that statistically, women invest 90% of their income back into their families, thereby improving the conditions of entire community when they become successful financially. Jin wasn't born with the legendary performance abilities he posses now; he invested countless hours of training to improve his singing and dancing abilities. Just like Jin, we wanted to work with an organization that starts from scratch and helps build communities up through adult education and skills training.
P-C-F also supports students who are studying a trade or who are pursuing a university degree. We know education is important to Jin, as he graduated from university and immediately enrolled in graduate school at Hanyang Cyber University. P-C-F helps students pay for tuition, but they also pay for lunch costs, uniforms, and other ancillary costs that would prevent students from accepting their university offers. This reminded us of how Jin used his allowance to buy food for the members back in their trainee days. By investing in their short-term needs, Jin was able to keep BTS going through their difficult trainee/early debut period – and look at them now!
But onto the results!
342 ARMY from 30 countries participated in this campaign! This is the highest number who have donated to a campaign so far, and we're so pleased that ARMY efforts keep growing so that we can continue to make a real impact!
Together, ARMY raised enough funds to provide for machines, tools, trainers, and even food supplies to the people in the Livelihood Programme so that their families will be provided for while they are learning their new skills!
Meanwhile, in partnership with our wonderful Army Help Centre, ARMY were also celebrating Jin all month long through our bonus mission: My Jinspiration. Jin has always encouraged self love & empowerment. We look up to him, and many of us are inspired by his actions & courage to speak up. We wanted to provide a space for ARMY to speak up and tell their stories so each week we set a topic and tweeted a list of self-reflective questions meant to inspire conversation. We encouraged ARMY to speak themselves and share their stories, opinions, and experiences. We also encouraged ARMY to write a letter to themselves related to the topic as a conclusion of what they reflected on during the week. They could keep the letter private, post it on social media, or submit it to be posted anonymously by Army Help Centre. You can read some of the responses in #MyJinspiration!
As an added surprise, we brought back one of our early bonus missions, the Eat Jin Challenge, and we ECSTATIC to see that ARMY have provided nearly 10,000 meals to hungry children on the Share The Meal app since Jin's birthday!
As always, Purple Community Fund was kind enough to provide us with a letter noting ARMY's good work and have mailed it to Big Hit Entertainment's new address.
ARMY helped people to help themselves & their families out of poverty with a sustainable living. That means ENTIRE COMMUNITIES will benefit, thanks to BTS & ARMY. Very well done, ARMY!
