The Singaporean Embassy and Singapore Club Seoul donated 3 million won ($2,790) to a local orphanage during a year-end reception, Dec. 13.
Singaporean Ambassador to Korea Peter Tan and wife Siew Eng visited the orphanage in a day of games, activities and gift-giving.
Now in its fourth year, the Singapore Embassy’s annual charity event at the Hye Sim Won Orphanage in the Huam-dong neighborhood of Seoul has become an annual attraction for Singaporean diplomats and the city-state’s growing expatriate community here.
Singaporean diplomats said that even though it poured rain the night before, the skies were clear and blue on the day of the event as though a harbinger to a hopeful new year for Seoul’s many underprivileged children some of whom, like many of those at the orphanage, have no parents.
The orphanage was established in 1929 and is currently home to 58 children, some of whom have lost their parents or are from low-income and underprivileged families.
The orphanage receives 90 percent of its funding from the city government, but 10 percent is raised from the public in events like this one.
For more information about the Sym Hye Won orphanage, check out its Korean language website at www.haesim.org/re/.
By Philip Iglauer (
ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)
