By Karen Lim

SIGN up for a free online photo storage service and a dollar goes to charity. This is a new initiative organised by Japanese camera manufacturer Nikon and the Singapore Children's Society.

Called "Care To Give", the campaign is aimed at helping underprivileged children in Singapore and is also one of the first charity drives organised by the camera company.

In a bid to raise awareness of children from broken homes or who are abused and neglected, for every sign-up in Nikon's free storage service - mypicturetown- the company will fork out S$1 from its pocket and donate it to the Society, which has an outreach of about 15,000 children, youths and families in the country.

This charity campaign, which is ending on May 31, has to-date around 500 sign-ups since it was first launched in March.

According to Ms Samantha Chan, 27, Online Marketing Executive at Nikon Singapore, besides the $1 donation per sign-up, the company will also top up additional amounts in the form of donations.

"We hope to gather as many members as possible and raise as much as we can with this initiative," said Ms Chan.

mypicturetown, the free photo storage service provided by Nikon is a portal where images uploaded onto the site can be organised, edited and shared. Wi-Fi uploading is also possible and 2GB worth of data storage is provided to users at no cost at all.

"An online charity drive should be something that reaches out to everyone and with this free storage service, we want to reach out to the mass and not just Nikon camera users," told Ms Chan to AsiaOne.

Marketing and Business Planning Manager, Mr Numako Masayuki, 38, said: "We wanted to do something unique.

"We felt Nikon's slogan 'At the Heart of the Image' was a good reason to come back to 'the heart' and give back something to society."

Besides sharing this meaningful message via the Care To Give portal (http://www.nikon-caretogive.com), a vodcast in OMY.sg demonstrates how users can spread the joy of caring by creating their own personalised video message with various clips of children saying different words.

A few celebrities have also agreed to take part in this campaign, including model and celebrity blogger Dawn Yang, celebrity photographer Dominic Khoo, Muay Thai fighter Zig Zach and Radio 100.3 DJ, Kenneth Kong.

The Care To Give campaign has also extended its online presence with over 600 members in its Facebook group.