Slow start, big heart: Boy, 9, writes children's book on slow loris to raise funds for ACRES
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Loading... - Akira Tanaka
- 23 Sep 2022
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For most primary school children in Singapore, a typical weekend or holiday would be filled with enrichment lessons, tuition sessions, or clocking in some game time.
Not for 9-year-old Lim Yu Cheng though. If he’s not at school, chances are he would be volunteering or raising funds for charity with his mother, Tan Sze Wei, 42.
Shy and reserved at first glance, Yu Cheng actually is an imaginative boy with a heart to help those in need.
Every year, on his birthday in January, Yu Cheng’s parents would ask him what he wanted and he would always answer: “I have so many toys already”.
So Sze Wei would encourage him to look for ways to help the less fortunate.
Sze Wei’s husband is quite happy to let the pair take the lead on volunteer work, but shows his unwavering support by spreading the word on their fundraising initiatives amongst his friends.
Fundraising with a picture book
In 2021, mother and son came across a video of a 2016 rescue of a slow loris by a team from ACRES, a non-profit dedicated to protecting wild animals in Singapore.
The team named the little primate “ET” and after caring for it, successfully released it back into the wild.
The story inspired Yu Cheng to find out more about slow lorises and how the nocturnal primate behaves. He learned that like its name, slow lorises move slowly like snails, so he decided to write a story about a beautiful friendship between ET the slow loris and snail he named Samuel. Read More…
