Municipal Mullae Youth Center holds book concert to celebrate publication of essay collection by 16 youths

The Municipal Mullae Youth Center announced that it held a book concert at Dalchon Performance Hall on October 6 to celebrate the publication of "Stories We Grew Together," an essay collection written by youths themselves. This event was organized as a venue to share the achievements of "Reading Hearts, Connecting Hearts," a program selected for the social-emotional field of the "2026 Outstanding Youth Activity Program Support Project" by the Korea Youth Work Agency.

"Reading Hearts, Connecting Hearts" is a program where youths look into their own emotions and express them in writing based on the experience of caring for plants. Sixteen first-year students from Dangsan Middle School each received a plant, named it, and cared for it, organizing the thoughts and emotions that arose into writing, which resulted in the essay collection "Stories We Grew Together." The book contains both essays and short stories, and was produced as a standard printed book as well as braille books and audiobooks.

The youths completed their stories in various ways, such as reflecting on their own mental states while seeing the leaves of a plant turn yellow, or writing letters expressing apology after mistakenly naming a plant. It also included writings that imagined history from the perspective of a plant that has lived for a long time. In that the youths translated everyday emotions into sentences and expanded them into books and voices, this work is read as a process of self-understanding beyond simple creation. The book concert served as a stage to directly introduce those results and appears to have further broadened the youths' experience of expression.

During the event, the youths took to the stage to introduce themselves and share the concerns and episodes they experienced during the writing process. The Municipal Mullae Youth Center stated that the process of youths looking into their own hearts and expressing them in writing must not have been easy, and that it is meaningful that the stories they completed at their own pace became a single book and were shared with others. They added that they will continue social-emotional support activities so that youths can express their emotions healthily and grow by understanding each other's different hearts.

Read the original (Korean)