Gyeonggi Province Launches 'Residential Space Improvement' to Support Work-Life Balance...Lowering Support Threshold

[Suwon Ilbo=Park No-hun Reporter] Gyeonggi Province announced on the 9th that it will implement the '2021 Residential Space Improvement (Organization & Storage) Service' to support work-life balance.

Gyeonggi Province's 'Residential Space Improvement (Organization & Storage) Service' is a business that provides professional services to sort through and remove unnecessary items or spaces from daily life and properly organize them in appropriate places.

This year's service targets 560 households in eight municipalities—Suwon, Seongnam, Ansan, Namyangju, Hwaseong, Uijeongbu, Gimpo, and Gwacheon—selected through preliminary demand surveys. Priority will be given to multi-child families with children in elementary school or younger, dual-income households, and single-parent families.

Notably, this year the eligibility criteria have been expanded from the existing 'working mothers with minor children and household income at or below 100% of the median income' to 'working families with minor children and household income at or below 120% of the median income,' allowing more working families to benefit from the program.

Once selected as a beneficiary, residential organization and storage specialists will visit the household to provide a three-stage service: 'preliminary diagnosis,' 'residential space improvement (organization & storage service),' and 'post-service management.'

A distinctive feature is ensuring 'customized organization and storage services' tailored to each household's residential environment through consulting between applicant families and specialists.

Working families interested in the service can find information on the homepages of the eight municipal Women's Re-employment Centers, which are the implementing agencies. Application acceptance will begin in April and services will be provided starting in May, according to each organization's implementation schedule.

Meanwhile, on the 9th, the Province conducted a field inspection at the Gyeonggi Metropolitan Women's Re-employment Center to hear feedback on center challenges and shared implementation plans for services such as residential space improvement (organization & storage) and other projects for women with career interruptions and working women.

Jung Gu-won, Director of the Work-Family Support Division, stated, "This project has the advantage of providing residential organization and storage services to working families while creating new job opportunities for middle-aged women," and added, "Based on inter-agency collaboration in women's employment projects, we will continuously develop diverse job creation initiatives to support residents' work-life balance and provide various employment opportunities for women in their 30s to 50s with career interruptions."