SEOUL (UCAN): Blooming Kids, a South Korean children’s charity launched a month-long exhibition and sale of spiritual articles to raise funds to support education and other needs of poor children in Mongolia and Laos.
The event, Every Child is a Flower, which began on December 1, is slated to run until 7 Janaury 2024, in Seoul, according to Good News, the news portal of the Archdiocese of Seoul.
The programme, themed Empty Hands, features the works of nine Korean artists and sculptors with artwork including bells, crucifixes, wooden rosaries, photographs, and other items that visitors can view and purchase.
The charity began in 2015 as a “public benefit corporation to continue sharing,” according to its chairperson, Jemma Hong-soo.
Hong explained that the donations would give the children “dreams and hope and a little better environment and life opportunities.”
She went on to add, “We may not be able to completely change their lives, but at least they will feel empathy, communication, and love that they have shared with someone in their lives during their growing-up years.”
Blooming Kids began in 2015 as an arts sharing activity and then started donating proceeds from the sales towards underprivileged children in South Korea and beyond, Good News reported.
Since 2022, the organisation has focused on improving the educational environment for ethnic minority children in Laos by refurbishing schools in remote villages.
In Laos, the mean years of school is 5.3 years and the low spending on education is reflected in low education quality and learning, according to a 2022 report from World Vision.
According to UNESCO, the average student in Laos spends over 10.8 years in school, learning the equivalent of only 6.4 years during that period. It added that nearly 40 per cent of children under the age of five have no access to early learning opportunities.
In Mongolia, a child who starts school at age four is expected to complete 13.2 years of school by age 18 and is expected to learn the equivalent of 9.2 years, according to a World Bank report released earlier this year.
The primary school completion rate was at 97 per cent in 2021 compared to 93 per cent in 2016.
Mongolia’s national poverty headcount rate in 2020 was 27.8 per cent, a marginal decrease from 27.2 per cent in 2018, according to the World Bank.
