Camera giant Nikon wraps up its “Care To Give” campaign, which lasted from 23 March to 30 June 2009, with a surprising S$10,000 gift to the Singapore Children’s Society.

Living up to the their slogan, “At The Heart Of The Image,” Nikon attempts to give something back to the society with the Care To Give Campaign. Through that, Nikon’s heartfelt efforts in supporting the Singapore Children’s Society is reflected.

Care To Give had Nikon collaborating with the Singapore Children’s Society to raise awareness for both the society and Nikon’s relatively new online photo sharing service, my Picturetown. The online donation drive saw Nikon pledging to donate S$1 to the Singapore Children’s Society for every new member who signed up at the Nikon my Picturetown online photo storage service. This was an extremely successful initiative as not only did it attract new subscribers to my Picturetown, it was also an incredibly enriching experience for Nikon Singapore. This marks their debut local charity drive.

“On behalf of the children and management of Singapore Children’s Society, we are very grateful to Nikon Singapore for this donation. This donation will certainly go a long way in helping our needy children during this bleak economic time. Being a novel and new fund raising approach, we are certainly delighted to learn of its’ success. We’ve certainly benefited a lot from this case study and we may adopt some of these lessons in our fund raising methods also. Thank you Nikon Singapore!” Mr. Chia Boon Khiang, Director, Fund Raising, Singapore Children’s Society

From L - R: Mr. Chia Boon Khiang, Director of Fundraising, Singapore Children’s Society with 
Mr. Numako Masayuki, Regional Marketing Manager, Nikon Singapore.

The Care To Give website can still be viewed by the public at www.nikon-caretogive.com despite the donation drive being over. Members of the public can continue to style their own personalized video messages. These messages are created using clips of enchanting children saying different words. Ultimately, they will piece together to form a message that one can forward to their friends and family, sharing the joy of caring and giving with a simple gesture, at the same time promoting awareness of the Singapore Children’s Society.

Several supporters including celebrity photographer, Dominic Khoo; Model and celebrity blogger, Dawn Yang; Professional Muay Thai figher, Zig Zach; Editor of Lianhe Wanbao, Chua Chim Kang; and Radio 100.3 DJ, Kenneth Kong aka Jiang Jianwen had lent their voice to the Care To Gift campaign in a bid to set an example for the society about charitable causes.

'I think that in the world of social websites and utilities, I can't think of any other companies that have made it this simple to donate to charity. Getting a huge amount of web space to store and display big photographs is another bonus!' said Dominic Khoo, Celebrity Photographer

Chua Chim Kang, Editor of Lianhe Wanbao and omy.sg also comments, 'The team at omy.sg would like to congratulate Nikon on the successful innovative use of online for charity fund raising and we feel proud to have been given the opportunity to contribute in this meaningful campaign.'

Care To Give on Facebook
Join the Care To Give Facebook group and help us spread the word for this charitable cause. 
Find us at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=122420610117

my Picturetown

my Picturetown is Nikon’s smart photo storage and sharing site that allows anyone to upload, store, share and even archive their precious photo memories “anytime, anywhere”, by organically linking digital cameras, the Internet and computers.

From easy organisation to Wi-Fi upload, my Picturetown offers users the ease and convenience of searching pictures effectively, sharing pictures through email notifications, and posting URLs of photos to blogs and social networking services (SNS). Photos can be sent to my Picturetown with Wi-Fi enabled COOLPIX cameras and with just a touch of a button, users can share photos with friends and family almost instantly.

This free photo hosting service is available in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. Nikon was the first company in the world to incorporate Wi-Fi functions in digital cameras and now they are bringing that expertise and experience to online photo storage and sharing.

Besides photo sharing functionality, my Picturetown also provides photo and video storage through direct wireless transfer from a Wi-Fi COOLPIX camera. Users can do all this without having to start up their computer or remove and insert SD memory cards, therefore minimizing the risk of losing existing photos and also frees up storage space on memory cards. With 2GB of space allocated to each user at absolutely no charge, the portal offers users enough storage space for RAW pictures and even videos.

Photos can also be geo-tagged, rated and comments added. Other features include the ability to create slideshows from photo albums using a variety of display modes and background sounds.

my Picturetown allows storage of large volumes of pictures with two types of memberships – a Free account providing 2 GB of storage capacity (free of charge) and a Gold account providing 20 GB for a low monthly fee.

my Picturetown www.mypicturetown.com 

Singapore Children’s Society

Founded in 1952, Singapore Children’s Society helps protect and nurture children and youth of all races and religions, especially those who are abused, neglected, and/or from dysfunctional families. We provide help through our 6 service categories of Caregiving, Preventive, Remedial, Public Education, Developmental and Community. Each year, we reach out to about 15,000 children, youths and families in need through our 9 service centres.

From serving the needs of abused children, children from broken homes, to research in societal effect on children response and behavior, Children’s Society proactively ensures that it is at the forefront in serving the needs of children. Today, the society also publishes research monographs that are sought after by government
ministries, research institutions, both locally and overseas.

Singapore Children Society is managed by an elected executive committee. All committee members are volunteers of Children’s Society, and come from diverse backgrounds such as education, law, healthcare, business and more. The charity employs approximately 120 staff in the execution and provision of its services. In recognition of the society’s good governance, transparency and sustainability, we were awarded with two major Awards (Asia Pacific NGO Award and NVPC Best Non-Profit Organisation Award) in 2004.

Singapore Children’s Society has an annual expenditure of approximately $10 million. The organisation also manages a separate Children’s Medical Fund (transferred from the National Kidney Foundation) solely for the purpose of providing medical assistance for children under the age of 20, who are suffering from chronic and/or life threatening illness.

Singapore Children's Society http://www.childrensociety.org.sg/