<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.