“Ten Million Citizen Memory Friends” Project

In 2015, the Seoul Metropolitan Center for Dementia (SMCD) has started an awareness improvement project for dementia called “Ten Million Citizen Memory Friends”, in order to make Seoul become a dementia-friendly city so that people with dementia and their families can live safely. The “Ten Million Citizen Memory Friends” project was set to provide basic education about dementia to all citizens (about Ten millions) of Seoul and have them be “Memory Friends” who would respond with a warm welcome when meeting people with dementia and their caregivers. To achieve the goal, the Seoul Metropolitan Center for Dementia (SMCD) and local dementia centers would first train “Memory Friends Leaders” as voluntary instructors and the “Memory Friends Leaders” would then educate citizens around them to become “Memory Friends”.