1. Introduction
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which devastated the south-western province of Sichuan on 12 May, has left more than 32,400 dead, 220,100 injured and 4.8 million people homeless.(Newsletter from Red Cross Societies). This is the beginning of how the dumpling event is organized. After this kind of disasters have happened in China, a lot of countries and the societies involve in the charity to aid the poor china people. In this case, Singapore is one of the countries which involve in the charity activity for China.
2. Details about the Event
The event is so called Chinatown dumpling which is organised by the Chinatown business association and New Moon(abalone). CBA is set up passionately by a group of Chinatown stakeholders such as cross section of business leaders, hoteliers, retailers and etc. This is non-profit organization serving and promoting the business and community interest of stakeholders in Chinatown by celebrating the events, festivals and street activities.
New Moon(abalone) is the canned food product and distributed by the Goh Joo Hin Pte Ltd. Goh Joo Hin Pte Ltd is committed to being a good corporate citizen and contributing to a lot of community projects. These are the background information of the organiser.
2.1 Short description of the event
The main objective of this event is not only for the charity purpose but also for building the world's largest rice dumplings display. Wrap the New Moon Rice Dumpling and the most no of dumpling wrapped in 30 mins and set the new Singapore Book of Record. A team of volunteers will be teaching on how to wrap the dumpling and 50 cents will be donated for every rice dumpling wrapped to the Singapore Red Cross for China Earthquake relief effort.
This dumpling local event mainly targeted to the local community especially the family and the elder people because they are the one who knows how to wrap the dumpling and the rests such as students and the people who are interested in the dumpling.
The dumpling event was held on 6 & 7 June, 2008 from 12pm to 8pm. The venue is at Chinatown Food Street (Junction of Smith Street and Trengganu Street). The competition is in 4 sections such as family and the elder people section, students section, interested people section and the last the councillors (CBA’s director and New Moon manager and other) section. TP’s community service is one of the volunteers such as string cutters, security men, stage planner etc in this event. To be the part of the participants, people should register at dumpling@eventions.com.sg.
The willing partner of this event is Jurong Junior College (JJC) students who help the event in devising a plan to build the world’s largest dumpling display. Moreover Mili brand and the Racial and Religious Unity Steering Committee participated as sponsorship and took part in this event.
2.2 The marketing strategies
Firstly the organiser released the news of this event on the newspaper, websites, blogs and the stand board advertisement to draw the attention of the locals people. After that they sold the coupons at $5 to adopt a rice dumpling by giving goodie bags including canned mushrooms to the public. Actually the event focus on the niche market because this event is aimed to achieve the new Singapore Book of Record and they gained a lot of benefits from the targeted market.
From the New Moon and the Mili brand points of view, they are using the marketing tools of public relation indirectly because the New Moon sponsored the rice for using in wrapping dumpling and after the event, they gave the goodie bags of 1 kg rice and 1 bottle of soy sauce as a gift to the participant and the volunteer. They also gave to the foreigners who visit to this event. Also for the Mili brand, they gave out their canned mushrooms to the public while selling the coupons. These are the strategies that they are using as sampling their products indirectly.
3. My opinion on this event
Through a visit to this Chinatown dumpling festival, I experienced a lot of activities from there. That was my first time experience of wrapping the rice dumpling. I was not just visiting there but also a volunteer as the participant in this charity event.
From my observations during this event, I found that almost every people were actively involved in this event. The event helpers are mostly from the JJC students and partially our TP students. I also found that a lot of people are interested in joining this event because this was not only the charity event in support of China Earthquake Relief Effort through Singapore Red Cross and when the event succeed, this event can be considered in the new Singapore Book of Record. So that more and more people are willing to participate in this event.
Beside this, as Chinatown is meant for the tourist attractions and a lot of tourist come and visit Chinatown. Therefore, during this event, I realized that a lot of foreigners came down and observed and they really enjoyed this event. The tourist demand for this event should be high, because the wrapping dumplings revealed the tradition of China and so and so the foreigners greatly are interested in it.
The final result of the Chinatown Dumpling festival is 5642 dumplings wrapped in 30 mins and $6000 was raised from this event. After that the proceeds will be donated to China Earthquake relief effort via Singapore Red Cross. In personal, I feel that this was the most enjoyable activity I experience as I learnt how to wrap the dumpling and can touch the good atmosphere of this event.
4. Recommendation
The whole event is very impressive as this can be considered as one of the world’s famous. After all have been done, I heard that the dumplings were later distributed to charity homes in the Central Singapore District and given out to Central CDC residents. The event was very well received by the public and local media - it was reported in many newspapers and television news. However, when I was doing the research about this event, I found that news released on the website and the blogs are very limited. As the suggestion, nowadays, the internet and the blogs are used commonly among the teenagers and working people. To inform and provide knowledge to them, the detailed news of the occasion should be uploaded more on the websites and the blogs as possible.
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