Hanam-si Wins Minister of the Interior and Safety Award for Two Consecutive Years

Selected in the '2024 Public Service Design Excellence Projects' Review
Awarded for the project 'Gam-il Health Life Support Center Created by Us and Shared with Family and Neighbors'

Hanam City, Gyeonggi Province (Mayor Lee Hyun-jae) announced on the 28th that it received the Minister of the Interior and Safety Award at the 2024 Public Service Design Group Excellence Project Evaluation hosted by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

Hanam City has been awarded the Minister of the Interior and Safety Award in the 2024 Public Service Design Group Excellence Project Evaluation hosted by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Photo by Hanam City

With this, Hanam City achieved the remarkable feat of winning the award for two consecutive years, following last year's Minister of the Interior and Safety Award for the project "Gamil Health Life Support Center Created by Us and Shared with Family and Neighbors" in the 2023 Public Service Design Group Excellence Project Evaluation.

The Public Service Design project is a citizen-participatory policy model where the public, administration, and service designers collaborate to develop public services. This year, Hanam participated with the project "Hanam-type Old Downtown Win-Win Project! Dementia Patient Guardians - Hand in Hand Around the Neighborhood," which was directly led by residents.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety selected a total of 23 excellent projects nationwide, including Hanam City, through document screening, online public evaluation, and face-to-face presentation evaluation (11 from government ministries and 12 from local governments).

Hanam City's project, "Hanam-type Old Downtown Win-Win Project! Dementia Patient Guardians - Hand in Hand Around the Neighborhood," selected as an excellent case, received high praise for applying a "citizen-participatory policy modeling" approach. Residents directly participated in creating the Shinjang 1-dong Dementia Safety Village, establishing an operating committee, securing dedicated spaces, designing programs and services, and devising community linkage plans.

To create an old downtown-type dementia safety village, Hanam City formed a consultative body with old downtown residents and communicated for six months to identify problems stemming from limited neighbor interactions and insufficient living convenience infrastructure, then developed customized programs to address these issues.

Specifically, they set a locally tailored dementia management roadmap, including community activity support such as healing programs and self-help groups for families of dementia patients, and building a community safety net closely linked among local merchants, residents, and local government, and are currently implementing the project.

Mayor Lee Hyun-jae of Hanam City stated, “Since the Shinjang 1-dong Dementia Safety Village involved users from the creation stage, we expect a very high level of satisfaction among the main users, dementia patients and their families.” He emphasized, “Going forward, when promoting policies to bridge the gap between the old downtown and new towns, we will gather residents’ opinions and implement proactive administration that satisfies citizens.”