<One day before our Autumn Field Day>
Tomorrow, after our weekly Saturday School sessions for Korean,
English, and Math and piano and art lessons, we will be going to Wol-gae middle
school playground for our autumn field day.
This is our first time to hold a field day. Happy Move came up with the
suggestion for the event and they have been doing all the preparation for this
day. Mothers and children have been informed two weeks ago and all our children
seem very excited for the event. We hope that the weather will be mild and
good, not too cold, fingers crossed.
Not very long ago, one of our Happy Move lead volunteers Jin-young
asked us about our opinion on giving our children a set of underclothes as
presents on our field day. It was a great idea, save that the cost would be a
burden. Next day, we received a call from our volunteer that, as we feared, the
cost of underclothes were too expensive for the Happy Move budget to afford,
even after they have checked all the large discount stores for the right price.
So, Happy Move volunteers wrote to some superstore chains on their websites. They
explained their good cause and asked if the discount stores would help them buy
these presents within their budget.
After some time, Home Plus and Lotte Mart contacted Happy Move and
they donated 50 sets of underclothes as well as 100 children’s books. And well,
looking back, this is not the first time that Happy Move has done such a
heart-warming act, an act which becomes a special gift to our children.
Since 2010, when Happy Move first started their volunteer work,
they have done some remarkable things over the course. 4 years ago, they came
up with a home-visiting Secret Santa project and have been carrying it out
every since. Last year, they were even able to raise the money through
crowd-funding.
It was Happy Move that first planned and managed a skating trip
for our children. There was a Happy Move volunteer who got lucky in an Our Home
(food service company) event he applied for and threw us a buffet party.
Another volunteer entered an event held by ‘Goopnae Chicken’ and
gave a chicken party for us. Happy Move has also facilitated a cake-making
program by contacting the bakery Paris Baguette.
Happy Move is once more hosting this field day for us. They have contacted some
schools in Wol-gae dong and obtained approval to use the schools’ playgrounds. 30
volunteers will be coming to host this event and care for our children’s safety.
Particularly this year, our society seems all frozen up and cold
with political scandals and turmoil. So even though we would like to have
opened our‘Violin Class’ this fall, which we carried
out during the first half of this year, we thought it would be difficult to
raise funds for it and therefore decided to open it next spring (and we’ve decided to permanently change our system to hold this program
every spring). The Webzine that we’re preparing is also
something that we have come up with in order to ease the financial burden that
would overwhelm us if we decided to publish paper magazines.
Despite all these difficult circumstances, the reason that our
Rainbow Dream can always remain cheerful and energetic is due to our volunteers’ passion and enthusiasm. Lastly,
we hope that our first autumn field day goes well especially since our
volunteers have put so much effort and hard work into arranging this event for
our children.
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