Nikon has launched “Care To Give” charity campaign

It’s a charity campaign by Nikon Singapore for  the Singapore Children’s Society, which takes place from now till May 2009.

What’s Care To Give?

It’s an online campaign aimed at helping underprivileged children in Singapore, and a genuine attempt by Nikon to give back something more to society. The elected charity will be the Singapore Children’s Society. For every new person who signs-up for an account at www.myPicturetown.com through the “Care To Give” portal, Nikon will donate $1 to the Singapore Children’s Society.

Who is Singapore Children’s Society?

Singapore Children’s Society aims to bring relief and happiness to children in need.  They want to be a leading edge organisation in promoting the well-being of the child.

They help protect and nurture children and youth of all races and religions, especially those who are abused, neglected, and/or from dysfunctional families via the  following six service categories:

1) Care Giving:  They take care of children and youth on behalf of their parents/ guardians for a period of time

2) Preventive:  They help prevent children and youth from being harmed or becoming at risk of delinquency, abuse and/or neglect.

3) Developmental:  They help educate and develop children and youth to become healthy and well rounded.

4) Remedial:  They provide rehabilitative services and medical subsidies to children and youth, with guidance and counseling for their families.

5) Community:  They promote the welfare of children and youth through the fostering of happy family life.

6) Public Education:  They conduct research related to children, youth and family to raise public awareness.

Nikon founded my Picturetown 

By donating $1 for every sign-up in my Picturetown, Nikon not only hopes to increase their number of subscribers, but also to raises awareness of the Singapore Children’s  Society. 

It looks to me that my  Picturetown has just launched not long ago, and Nikon is working hard to get it into the Web 2.0 world.

When I subscribe and have a look at the interface, I was  wondering what this website differs from its competitors.  I started to upload a photo.

Here’s how  it looks like when I am uploading:

This is how the photo will be displayed.

Photos are shared via email in their interface.

Some of the other features such as adding to an album.   And they are also supporting third party sites and applications which connect to my Picturetown.

Conclusion

Personally, I find it meaningful that Nikon is using the money to donate to charity while attempting to increase their market share in the photo sharing industry.  It is definitely a win-win situation here, while the money will be used for charity and Nikon can increase their number of sign-ups in their photo sharing portal.

There are two things to note in this blog post.  One is the charity campaign which Nikon is working on to increase the awareness of the Singapore Children’s Society.  Another is to work on increasing their number of subscribers in my Picturetown.

1) Singapore Children’s Society reaches out to about 15,000 children, youths and families in need through their 9 service centres.  They proactively ensures that they are at the forefront to serve the needs of the children.  It is managed by an elected executive committee, who are volunteers and come from diverse backgrounds such as education, law, healthcare, business and more. It employs about 120 staff. They were awarded with two major Awards (Asia Pacic NGO Award and NVPC Best Non-Profit Organisation Award) in 2004.

2) my Picturetown has a similar characteristic as twitter here.  Twitter provides the very basic feature which is the engine that allows tweeters like us to broadcast our voices.  There are so many twitter applications out there which are supporting this, extending to many meaningful features out of it!  As for my Picturetown, it is currently providing a tool for us to upload and to share via email and static urls to share on social networks.  I don’t see any web badges for us bloggers to put up, or any RSS for interested people to subscribe, or even to use the feed to share via facebook, twitter or friendfeed automatically.

Let’s wait and see how my Picturetown is going to become in the next 2 years…

Have a look at their website at www.nikon-caretogive.com.