Dover Park Hospice fund raising project proves a hit for wrong reasons
By Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 17 November 2009 1909 hrs

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SINGAPORE: Charity fundraisers are common in Singapore. But an initiative to raise money to help care for the dying has highlighted a less charitable side of the nation.

The sunflower is a symbol of palliative care and Dover Park Hospice began selling them at Raffles Place on Monday to raise funds.

Those who donate S$5 can either plant a flower nearby or take it away.

But on Tuesday morning, volunteers arrived to find empty grass patches as all the 1,000 sunflowers planted the day before had been taken away.

Stefanie Yuen-Thio, chairperson, Dover Park Hospice, Fund Raising Committee, said: "Singaporeans may not have known what this was about, they may have thought it was the gerberas from the kindness movement."

There were no signs to indicate the sunflowers are part of a fundraiser, creating a moral dilemma for some.

Said one woman in the street: "If everybody is taking it, people will think that it's free."

But discreet tags on the flowers pricked the conscience of some who had taken them.

Ms Yuen-Thio added: "When some people who had taken it and read the little tag on the card, they found that the flowers were part of a fundraising effort. They felt really bad. A lovely lady who had taken it by mistake came back and she apologised, and she made a S$40 donation."

To prevent the sunflowers from being taken again, they will be put up in the morning and removed in the evening, everyday, until the Dover Park Hospice walk on Sunday. - CNA/vm