Puum (puum.me) by BtoB (btob.or.kr)

Younjie Kim is spearheading an initiative to end the baby box crisis, a box where "abandoned" babies get dropped off, first in her mother country, South Korea, and ultimately in 19 countries that run baby boxes.

She attempts to do this via Puum, a mobile platform that empowers at-risk parents to keep babies by connecting them with resources in a radically easy manner. Younjie leads a non-profit organization, BtoB, formerly the Baby Box Project.

Prior to BtoB, Younjie built a career in media and strategic communications consulting. She worked at the National Geographic Society, the Office of Public Affairs at the Korean Embassy in Washington, DC, WCVB TV5, and Fleishman-Hillard Korea, gaining first-hand experience in magazine, newspaper and TV – online and offline in private and public spheres of communication. 

Younjie earned Master of Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School and B.A. from the University of Virginia.

I am committed to solving the baby box crisis fundamentally by empowering parents in need to keep and raise babies – thereby eliminating the need to choose baby box in the first place. I plan to achieve this goal through Puum, a mobile platform that breaks down barriers for these parents to access to resources.

Between two pregnant runaway teens, the only factor that determines who keeps the baby and who doesn’t, is whether one has ever been ‘raised’ at home.

After baby box, babies are sent to facilities and grow up without ever experiencing home. Every year, 4,000+ children enter facilities and leave upon turning 18. When they become parents themselves, they are more likely to give up their children because ‘home’ is not in their DNA, repeating the vicious cycle. The first point to break this cycle must start with helping parents who want to keep their babies.

“How might we empower parents in dire circumstances to not give up but keep their babies?” is the challenge I am tackling. This problem originally stemmed from an attempt to solve the baby box crisis in Korea, a box where “abandoned” babies get dropped off. Since it was installed in 2009, 1,700+ babies came in as of February 2020. Globally, 19 countries operate baby boxes.    

By conducting data analysis of parents of 500+ babies that came into the baby box from 2009 to 2014, I discovered 3 key findings:

1.      Contrary to media claim that these babies are all “abandoned”, 30% of parents came back to take their babies home.

2.      Contrary to public perception that these parents are irresponsible, they faced larger structural problems from youth poverty, unstable housing, lack of family, health issues or physical disabilities to discrimination against unmarried, single parents.

3.      Contrary to public belief that these parents abandon babies on an impulse, they researched their options extensively and chose baby box as the last resort.

These facts indicate these parents’ will to keep their babies – an implication not portrayed by the media, but what I see as the key to cracking this problem.

Puum is a mobile platform that connects at-risk parents with resources they need to raise babies. 

From diapers and baby milk to government aids to jobs that don’t discriminate against unwed, single parents,

from emergency shelters to subsidized long-term housing, 

from hospitals where low-income mothers can get check-ups to legal support for unmarried single fathers with birth registration,

Puum delivers resources in the areas of economic, residential, medical, and legal – areas which data analysis revealed to be major barriers for parents in keeping babies.   

Two factors distinguish Puum from existing solutions: (1) expanded pool of resources and (2) radically improved UI.

First, Puum pulls resources not only provided by the government but by non-profit organizations, businesses, and social ventures. Larger pool of resources makes it possible for even those outside of the government safety network covered.   

Secondly, Puum delivers resources to users in a radically fast and easy manner through information prescription system; users type in their information (i.e. ages of parents and babies, income level, and location) and the system will pull only resources relevant to each parent. Because most parents are in emergency situations, using mobile phones to access information, usability is a must not a luxury.

Puum serves at-risk parents to keep and raise their babies and ultimately to grow a healthy family. Specific examples include:

An unmarried single mother applied for urgent assistance from the government; it took 2 months to receive 2 bottles of powder milk. Puum connected her to receive milk immediately.

It took 3 years for one unmarried single father to register his child’s birth, which meant the child wasn’t eligible to receive any care provided by the government. Puum provides legal guide so that birth registration can be done in 3 months.

For 5-month pregnant, underaged, homeless parents, Puum connected them with one of the very few organizations that provides housing even for underaged couples. 

For 250 single parent families, 60% of whom lost jobs due to COVID-19, Puum provided food aid by garnering $8,000 from a foundation. 

The population I serve are socio-economically disadvantaged youths, who became parents. I first gained an understanding of the population on a macro level by analyzing data of 1,000+ parents that dropped their babies off at the baby box. On a micro level, I've been interviewing parents for the past 5 years and gaining up-to-date needs of parents by analyzing user data on Puum.

Puum relates to all three dimensions above. First, Puum serves socioeconomically disadvantaged parents and babies who are affected by poverty, unstable housing, lack of family, social stigma against unmarried, single parents and/or physical disabilities. These are population historically sent away for international adoption and now to baby boxes. Secondly, by engaging 300+ members of the community in every phase of design thinking process, I witnessed repeatedly how participants’ understanding of the issue deepened, often leading them to act further by volunteering or broadening scope of work, which further had a empowering impact on the parents. 

In 2013 I first read about baby box in the news, and immediately signed up as a volunteer to take care of babies onsite. A controversial issue, media coverage on baby box abounded. But year after year, the coverage was always the same, starting with ‘abandoned’ babies, irresponsible parents, and ending with a debate on whether the baby box should exist or not. In the meanwhile, the number of babies at the baby box was increasing by 200+ babies annually.

It was a deep-seated problem that nobody was tackling the way I had envisioned.  

In 2015, I started the Baby Box Project, an initiative to tackle the baby box crisis with 3 principles: (1) Derive a solution not by religion or ideologies but backed by concrete data; (2) Engage community in every phase of problem solving, and (3) Tackle the problem fundamentally.

From 2015 to 2017, the Baby Box Project engaged 200+ members of the community in every phase of the problem solving from data analysis to ideation and prototype, and derived a solution – Puum – a system that had not existed but would make the most impact and a solution that can best build upon my professional expertise.  

I've been given many things in this life – opportunities, intellect and talent – I want to be of use, from head to toe, maximizing everything I have. As hard as it is to solve this issue because of its complexity and comprehensiveness, it is that much more worth tackling because solving it will have a far greater impact on the society.

As the Boston Globe wrote in 2015, the population that was sent for international adoption represented people the Korean society placed social stigma upon: first, mixed-race babies born between GI soldiers and Korean women during the Korean War, poor babies, and later out-of-wedlock babies were sent away. Now that the adoption law was revised to place stricter rules when sending babies for adoption, baby box has replaced adoption to a certain extent. Baby box reflects real adaptive challenges the society has long avoided to face, and solving the issue will move the fundamental underpinnings of our society.   

Also, this issue moves me deep down - because the best thing I’ve received in this life is unconditional love from my parents. And it was something given to me naturally. I want to make the same thing possible for others.

Typically, players in this field worked in the same field or were directly affected by the very problem they work on. The fact that I come from an entirely different professional background and that I am not directly related to the population I serve rather puts me in a unique position to:

First, introduce new practices, elevating the professional standard and operational efficiency of the industry.

Second, persuade existing players in the field to approach the problem in the way that has never been tried before.

Third, bring in new resources and people, making it possible to form new partnerships.

One example that illustrates all these cases is when I introduced an online application system for KUMFA (Korean Unwed Mothers Families' Association) that replaced all paper applications, improving KUMFA’s operational efficiency by 300% and making it possible to build a real-time database and conduct data analysis.

Then I proposed to form a task force of non-profit organizations that offer same programs – for instance micro-lending or aid for single families affected by COVID-19 – to combine databases, then for BtoB to specialize on conducting data analysis and deriving insights while organizations implement the actual program, and to share insights back to the industry so that all other organizations can build upon one another’s trial and error as well as lessons learned.

No one individual or organization can single-handedly solve society’s most complex, deep-rooted problems. But new coalitions might. And I am in the best position to bring that change.

Puum is a platform solution that needs to pull vast amount of information scattered all over the nation. Despite high demand for a solution like Puum, the sheer amount of work needed to develop it steered any past attempts away.

To create a platform solution with very little resources, I engaged members of the community by organizing Berathon, which stands for the Baby Box Research Marathon. From 2018 to 2020, we organized 10 sessions of Berathon, where 80+ people participated and built a database consisting information of 12,928 government aids, 6,528 programs run by non-profit organizations, and 135 emergency shelters.

Not only we launched Puum, but the process changed the participants:

“It was empowering to be surrounded by people from different walks of life, working towards the same goal. I think that's how we got so much done in a short time.”

“I got to experience the reality many single parents face and realized why we need Puum.”

“I am grateful to be given an opportunity to participate in an issue I had only thought about and actually do something about it.”

In May 2020, Puum launched, with all the participants’ names listed under “People Who Built Puum Together” section.

The non-profit sector supporting families at risk had been fiercely divided by each organization’s position on abortion and adoption or competition for the same source of funding. Silos were rampant and backbiting was common. In 2019, I discovered that the largest organization serving unwed single mothers, KUMFA (Korean Unwed Mothers Families' Association) and the organization I lead, BtoB shared the same vision of bring different organizations together for cooperation.

In the process of building a coalition, KUMFA, as the longest-standing organization in the field, had the authority to call all organizations for attention, and I exercised informal leadership, advising KUMFA along the coalition-building process.

Specifically, I proposed 3 strategies – first, emphasize the higher vision of supporting parents at risk who want to raise their babies to do so, a common vision no organization disagree with regardless of its position on adoption or abortion. Two, establish ground rules so that all participating organizations focus on the actual work instead of getting off track to political or ideological differences. Three, start with building small successful cases of collaboration and expand the network.  

For the first time in history, 16 organizations met in November 15, 2019, and laid the groundwork for collaboration.

First, Puum can amplify the scope of impact by translating what has been traditionally done offline to online. 

Puum expedites the speed up to 1,200%, at which parents find information, apply, and receive resources. It makes vast amount of information available on one platform, sorts it per each user’s needs, and in addition to existing resources, Puum offers field experts know-how online. Anyone can access this information anywhere.

Secondly, Puum can bring systematic change because by the nature of platform solution, it will accumulate data on both the supply and demand sides of resources, making it possible to assess a bigger picture of what is needed and what is actually offered. Accurate statistics are scarce in this area. User data will accumulate on Puum, however. Matching it with what the Korean society offers as a whole will allow to identify areas where resources are needed but not offered, making it possible to propose policy changes in the long term.

Third, Puum tackles the problem fundamentally at the upstream of the river – If the entire process of babies being born to getting dropped off at the baby box and sent to facilities is described as a ‘river’, an effective intervention at the upstream of the river might change direction of the river. Most existing solutions tackle the downstream of the river (i.e. donating diapers and milk for children at facilities). Although these are also essential work, an intervention must be designed at the upstream to change the tide entirely.

(Because Puum is a platform solution and connects resources in more than one area, I will answer this question in the following way instead of using a conventional theory of change.)

The baby box problem will be solved only after a series of sub-problems are solved. In addition to connecting existing resources and delivering them online via Puum, BtoB will also develop solutions and new resources to solve this set of sub-problems, eliminating one barrier by one. Specifically, they include:

•  How might we help socio-economically disadvantaged, pregnant women, who give births at home to receive medical check-ups in advance and give births in a health environment?
•  How might we connect parents in their teens who live out on streets to move into sustainable homes?
• How might we create an environment where parents in need can work sustainably?
• How might we assist unmarried, single fathers to be able to register babies’ birth without falling into an administrative blind spot?
• How might we help parents to get off government aid and help them lead a financially independent life?
• How might we empower parents at risk to be emotionally independent and healthy? The negative public perception and social discrimination against these parents is a problem but so is the way these parents think of themselves. Many also suffer from mental lethargy or depression, which prevents them from going to work and gain financial independence. How might we help these parents form healthy perception of themselves?
• How might we change the public’s perception on unwed, single parents and create a society that respects all forms of families?

Puum received 2,000+ users in the first 3 weeks of launch in May 2020. User interviews and impact analysis are underway to accurately assess how many of those were actually served or found resources they needed.

In one year, Puum strives to serve 7,500+ parents, 5% of 150,000 economically disadvantaged parents.

In five years, Puum will serve 4,000+ families at risk so that more babies can grow up in homes instead of baby box and facilities in addition to 37,500 parents, 25% of 150,000 economically disadvantaged parents.   

My goal by 2025 is to empower parents in need to keep and raise their babies so that 50% of 200+ babies that come into baby box every year and 50% of 4,000+ children who enter facilities can grow up at home.

Although most at-risk parents face a combination of difficulties, poverty is a condition that underlies all other. By this standard, it is estimated that there are approximately 150,000 economically disadvantaged parents in their 20s and 30s. Within the next year, my goal is to serve 5% of this target population via Puum and lift barriers these 7,500 parents face to raising babies by further improving the usability of Puum.  

Specifically, I plan to:

•   Develop an app incorporating user feedbacks gathered from testing the mobile web version of Puum.
•   Strengthen contents on Puum, particularly adding more resources  offered by businesses.  
•   Re-write contents of all resources to be user-friendly and easy to understand both visually and language-wise.
•   Create a unified application form used by the non-profit sector.

In addition to connecting existing resources via Puum, I am working on developing new resources for mothers who end up giving births at home alone in collaboration with KUMFA. This will be the first in series of new solutions BtoB will create to eliminate many barriers parents face to keeping their babies.  

Financially, most grants offered by foundations in Korea place strict restrictions on paying for personnel, making it difficult to form a sustainably working team. The grants that do not have such restrictions are usually too small in size to even form a team of 2 with minimum wage.

Donation-wise, I received a feedback that because Puum is a platform solution connecting resources, it would be more difficult to garner donations from the public compared to direct aids given to beneficiaries (i.e. fundraising to feed those in need or to support a family with medical cost to receive a surgery).

To overcome a financial barrier, I am exploring international sources of funding and seeking ways to develop a business model within Puum.

Donation-wise, to communicate BtoB’s work more visibly and palpably to the public, I am planning to organize fundraising campaigns for solutions we develop for “specific” circumstances. For instance, one of the fundraising campaigns I am planning is to provide medical and legal assistance for mothers who give births at home alone.  

The number of women giving births at home without any assistance has increased significantly this year and they usually never receive medical check-ups during their pregnancies. Not only it is unsafe for mothers physically and mentally to experience labor alone, but also it complicates the birth registration process of babies born because there wasn’t any witness. In collaboration with KUMFA, BtoB is planning to create a comprehensive solution package that will provide pregnant mothers in socio-economically disadvantaged situations with information on hospitals that offer medical assistance and for those who already gave births at home with legal assistance to get babies registered as soon as possible.  

This approach solves many problems: first, it better communicates what Puum does to the public. Secondly, it creates a system that can be applied to those who face the same circumstance over and over. Third, many fundraising campaigns tend to resort on poverty porn, degrading the dignity of beneficiaries, but this way, the focus is on the structural difficulties many face rather than on one individual.  

Among many partnerships, for the “how might we create an environment where parents in need can work sustainably? initiative, I invited key players in various fields to form a partnership that will collaborate towards this vision: first, TWC, a company that handles online operation outsourced by client companies, is growing so  rapidly that it is having difficulty recruiting people at the same speed they need them. Because TWC offers a family friendly work environment, it offered to give Puum users priority job interviews.

Then, Percent, a social enterprise that specializes in providing job education for socio-economically disadvantaged populations in collaboration with Korea Productivity Center agreed to design and provide job trainings for unwed, single mothers.

KUMFA will monitor mothers’ employment and provide counseling. A year ago, a single mother BtoB connected to TWC quit the job in 2 days because of depression. We learned that parents in this circumstance might need emotional support and mentorship all along.

BtoB in this newly formed initiative plays the role of managing the big picture by assessing the resources we need and adding them to the picture. Currently, I am exploring a potential partner company that will provide childcare to parents while they work.

After we run the first round of this initiative, I persuaded TWC, which is part of Korea Startup Forum, a network of leading startups with 1,300 member companies, to invite other companies that will join the initiative, expanding a network of jobs where these parents can work without discrimination.

In the past 12 months, I raised $83,300 in grants from The Asan Foundation in Korea and $23,000 in private donations.

Of $315,000 budget projected for July 2020-June 2021, 

$130,000 will go into developing Puum in areas of outsourcing engineers, hiring a designer, paying for servers, conducting marketing and impact analysis. 

$170,000 will cover personnel costs for a team of 5. 

$15,000 will cover operating costs such as office rent and supplies.  

First, for funding. Puum launched in May 2020 and received 2,000+ users in the first 3 weeks. The past 5 years of work has now reached a tipping point, and to scale the impact to the next level, I need resources to build a team of 4+. I’ve won 4 grants in Korea but most had restrictions on paying for personnel. For the next year, I secured $83,300 among the total budget of $315,000 and securing the rest of the funding will help us successfully implement the newly launched solution.

Secondly, for technological breakthrough. We launched Puum in the form of a mobile web and in 2020-2021, we plan to develop an app after testing the MVP for 6+ months. An app will allow us to proactively reach out to users with relevant resources through push options and make location-based suggestions, further improving usability.

In the long term, however, I am curious to see how we can apply today’s cutting-edge technologies such as voice recognition, machine learning, and AI in solving this problem. Many Puum users are in emergency situations, running away from domestic violence, in urgent medical situations or have no one else to take care of the baby while working. If Puum can deliver individualized responses to these parents using voice queries and natural-language user interface like SIRI, it would be the most ideal solution to those in need.   

I cannot think of a better partner than MIT to discuss this possibility and make it into a reality.

I’d like to share the insights we gain from our attempts at solving the baby box problem with the international community. As of 2015, 19 countries operate baby boxes with countries like Germany operating 100+ baby boxes. However, the debate in the international scene still centers around whether the baby box should exist or not with the UN being the strongest opponent. Baby box, however, is not the real problem that need to be solved but rather a buoy that appear on the surface after many other real problems occurred. I hope to contribute to moving the international discussion forward with the help of The Elevate Prize.  

I also hope to receive advice and mentorship on designing business models within Puum and designing a path to financial sustainability. 

Because Puum is a platform solution that connects resources in various areas, measuring the impact will be multi-faceted. As a Boston-based non-profit organization, Friends of the Children partnered with Harvard Business School to measure its impact, I hope to collaborate with such institutions of caliber such as MIT or Harvard Kennedy School on impact measurement and analysis of Puum.