Dinner with Love 2018 – A Big Thank You to All!

Dinner with Love 2018 was a great success! It was truly a night of celebration, filled with heart thumping performances, heart leaping moments and heart warming life transformation stories!

On the 13th of October 2018, our donors, sponsors and beneficiaries gathered together to celebrate our expansion into the Jalan Besar community with our new centres and to raise funds for the cost of this expansion. We were very honoured to have Ms. Denise Phua, Mayor of Central Singapore District, to attend our inaugural charity dinner, Dinner with Love, as our Guest-of-Honour.

Earlier this year, we were given the privilege to serve the community of Jalan Besar through two new centres at 806 King George’s Avenue. With this new location, we will be opening our first Seniors Centre and second Youth Centre! We hoped to raise $200,000 through Dinner with Love for the renovations and to aid in the operation of the centres.

There was an exciting line up of performances to appreciate our donors and sponsors. Some of our beneficiaries from our children and youth programmes, namely the HD Dance Movement and U_SPACE drop-in, performed a dance and a guitar item respectively. For most of our beneficiaries, it was their first time performing on stage with such a large audience. Although they had only a few weeks to practice for each of their item, they gave their all and pulled off their performances magnificently!

After some heart thumping performances, it’s time to hear some heart warming stories! Several Primary 6 students from our Tuition with Love programme, shared how they changed after joining the programme and took the opportunity to thank their mentors for walking along side them in their primary school journey. Surinah, a former beneficiary, courageously shared her life story of overcoming the numerous adversities in her life with the help of youth workers, who had guided and mentored her through her darkest times. Coincidentally, it was also her 18th birthday! We prepared a little surprise birthday celebration to affirm her strength and perseverance through adversity. Her entire family came to show their support and appreciation for her as well!

We continued in this theme of affirmations with an award ceremony for 3 of our beneficiaries, commending them of their growth and love for the people around them. They are, Yoga from our Tuition with Love programme, Danial from our U_SPACE drop-in programme and Mdm Cheng from our REACH programme. They also thanked the various staff, volunteers and peers who had impacted their lives through the programmes!

Finally, it was time for some heart leaping moments! We had a live auction of an one-of-a-kind artwork by Ms. Phua’s son, Tay Jun Yi, who had kindly donated in support of our programmes. After an exciting time bidding, a winner has emerged! A big thank you to Dr. Lee Hung Ming for his generous donation!

Then we had a live band performance by 2 of our local artists, Hong Junyang and his wife, Candyce Toh, who sang “爱与希望” by JJ Lin and “Home” by Kit Chan. During the rendition of “Home”, our children and youth beneficiaries went back up to stage, led by another of our local artist, Rayson Tan, to sing along with Junyang and Candyce. With a familiar song and a heart warming sight, everybody started to sing along as well! Rayson then led our beneficiaries to present a momento, a terrarium, to all of our dinner guests in appreciation for their generous donations and presence at our Dinner with Love 2018.

Dinner with Love 2018 had come to an end and we could not have done it without all of our donors, sponsors and volunteers who contributed their money, resources and time to make our inaugural charity dinner a huge success! We are so happy to announce that we have broke our goal of $200,000! Together, we raised a total of $227,220!

A big shout out to:

Ms. Denise Phua Lay Peng, Mayor, Central Singapore District – for gracing our event,
Mr. Tan Chuan-Jin, Speaker of Parliament – for donating 6 of his photographic prints for sale,
Fittonia Mania LLP – for sponsoring all of the terrariums,
Dr. Lee Hung Ming – for your generous donations at our live auction
and to all of our Platinum and Gold Sponsors!