“Changing the public’s view on psoriasis patients”

Interviewing ‘Wishtree’ admin members—Park Hye-won, Jeon Se-bin, Kim Yeji and Hwang Chae-rin

Started as a university student group union for crowd funding in July 2018

Providing crowd funding to improve social awareness of psoriasis

(From upper left in clockwise) Manager Hwang Chae-rin, Reward Manager Kim Ye-ji, Public Relations Manager Jeon Se-bin, President Park Hye-won)

“Too many people had no or wrong idea about psoriasis.

 

We opened the crowd funding to raise awareness of psoriasis and to improve the public’s perception on the disease.” A university student-centered crowd funding union, ‘Wishtree’ opened a new funding project this month.

 

The project aims to help patients with psoriasis.

 

Although the non-infectious disease can get better with constant care, many psoriasis patients struggle with public’s inaccurate knowledge of the disease.

 

Their small wish is for the people to see psoriasis as normally as they see atopic dermatitis.

 

Daily Pharm interviewed Wishtree administration members—Park Hye-won (23, Sookmyung Women’s University), Kim Ye-ji (21, Sookmyung Women’s University), Jeon Se-bin (22, Dongguk University), and Hwang Chae-rin (22, Hongik University)—actively campaigning for a better social view on psoriasis.

 

Met through crowd funding related class, the union has been operating for two years Wishtree is a university student group union formed in 2018 to create and operate crowd funding projects.

 

Initially, the students taking crowd funding class came together to make a crowd funding project for a social cause.

 

The first year of Wishtree funded for firefighters, patients with retinal degeneration and raising awareness of the East Sea.

 

And the second year followed with funding for various social class including patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).

 

The crowd funding project for psoriasis patient consists of 15 students including four administration members (President Park Hye-won, Reward Manager Kim Ye-ji, Public Relations Manager Jeon Se-bin, and Story Manager Hwang Chae-rin).

 

The rest of the eleven members are participating under the following three teams; Reward Team in charge of selecting, making and pricing rewards; Story Team in charge of planning and setting up projects; and Public Relations Team in charge of promoting the funding project to reach the target amount.

 

Members of Wishtree

Regularly meeting every Saturday, the members learn about crowd funding in class and discuss about project topics first.

 

And when the next topic is decided, the members specify activities in back story planning, reward selection, and PR activity planning.

 

Further discussion flows as they each designate role in respective teams and share feedbacks on the team’s activities.

 

Jeon Se-bin, a Public Relations Manager, explained “Wishtree’s crowd funding projects are not for profit, but for public interest and social cause.

 

When recruiting for the group members, we value not only the students’ interest in crowd funding, but also their interest in social issues.” People misunderstanding the condition as an infectious disease, “Heart breaks as the patients feel isolated from the society " So what motivated them to select psoriasis as their funding topic out of all candidate diseases?

 

The students answered, “Compared to other diseases we’ve talked about, psoriasis needed the most attention from the public.

 

Even many of us did not know much about the condition, and some heard about the disease for the first time.” Psoriasis is a non-infectious chronic skin disease causing raised, red, scaly patches on skin and repeatedly worsens and recovers.

 

With continuous care, a patient with the disease can improve the condition, but many miss their treatment timing because most of the people are clueless that it requires constant treatment.

 

And majority of the patients are having difficulties in their social life due to people’s misunderstanding of the disease being infectious.

 

Typically, a crowd funding project selects more popular topics to raise the funding success rate, but Wishtree saw the grave issue in the public’s inaccurate view about the disease.

 

Apparently, the students interviewed psoriasis patients and truly felt the need to correct the common misunderstandings, when they heard a patient answering ‘We wish psoriasis would be taken as normally as atopic dermatitis.’ Manager Jeon said, “It broke our hearts when we studied about psoriasis from news articles and statistic data, and found how a lot of patients feel isolated from the society because of the people’s fear of the disease being infectious by judging if from visible condition.” She added, “We have decided to fund the patients as we discovered poor public awareness is hurting the psoriasis patients the most.”

Personally designed mug as a reward for funding

The crowd funding project has started calling for funders from Jan.

 

2 through a social venture, ‘Oh My Company.’ The funding participants would be rewarded with a personally designed mug, cup coaster, and sticker sets with hopeful messages.

 

The fund raised via the project would be entirely donated to Korea Psoriasis Association, and used for survey research and publishing news articles through ‘Oh My Company’.

 

President Park Hye-won of Wishtree showed her ambition for the project saying “We hope the funding raising project would help change the people’s inaccurate views about psoriasis patients,” and “in the long run, we also hope that Wishtree’s good influence would expand on in the future.”