We are good neighbours: 30-year anniversary
March 28, 2021
Good Neighbors has helped over 8 million people across the globe. Our organization started with the mission to make the world a place without hunger, where people lived in harmony. 30 years later, we continue to be good neighbours who will reach out to anyone in need of help.
Today we celebrate and remember important milestones in our trajectory.
Our story began in Asia, on March 28, 1991.
Some of our first projects in South Korea were supporting long-term patients with Tuberculosis (TB), as well as assisting children with disabilities and in orphanages, and rural communities.
Only one year later, we started working on international development with a relief project in Bangladesh, and the rest is history.
After providing refugee support in Somalia in 1993, Good Neighbors was off to assist another country. Our NGO was the first Korean organization to dispatch a medical volunteer team to provide aid after the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
1. Rwanda medical aid support. 2. Sylvester (right), serving as an interpreter at a refugee camp in Rwanda, 1994
We met Sylvester Mulindabyuma at a large refugee camp in the northwest of Rwanda, on his way to form a medical aid team. “I truly keep Good Neighbors’ love in my heart. Thank you so much for helping us during really difficult times.”
Sylvester now works as an accountant at the Rwanda High Court
In 1996, only 5 years after being founded, Good Neighbors’ work was recognized by the United Nations (UN), obtaining General Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC).
Today, we have offices in seven countries and 52 branches in Korea. We implement a wide range of development projects in 40 countries, like building clean water wells in Africa through our Good Water project.
Our biggest goal now is to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”.