Dr. Damian Yap

IN faraway Romania, Dr Damian Yap found love, inspiration and the story of a baby with no eyelids.
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That year - 2001 - Dr Yap, a Singaporean, had been a volunteer in Romania, raising funds for street children.
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Dr Yap, who studied at Oxford University, has not lived in Singapore since 1993.

He has visited many lands since 1997 on charity work - and everywhere he goes, he takes along a piece of Singapore.

A stack of postcards.

He uses them to share Singapore with the rest of the world.

In 1997, while a graduate student at London's Imperial College, he had gone to Estonia with a UK-based charity to teach English to youths.

'The experience was unforgettable.Despite the language barrier, the youths were so warm to us.I got to stay with a local family, who treated me like their own son,' he recalls.
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The next year, Dr Yap was in Romania for almost three months, again working with local charities to help the Roma community - a marginalised group plagued by poverty, unemployment and lack of education.
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Dr Yap was moved to tears by the rows of cots holding deformed children.

'The children were crying, and I had to stop and hold them, and comfort them.Holding them close to me, I knew I had to do something for these kids,' he said.

When Dr Yap returned to Singapore, he sent word to friends and contacts in Britain.

A total of US$10,000 ($16,600) was collected to build a home for Romanian orphans.

And he started up Heart for Youth.

Since then, Dr Yap has organised humanitarian trips to Romanian villages every year, and conducted summer camps for children there.

He plans another this August.

'I remember that in 2003, as part of an English lesson, I told the children about how a small country like Singapore can make its mark on the world map,' he said.

'I challenged them to do something for their village.The kids decided to start picking up litter in the village centre.'

Last year, Dr Yap found 43 rubbish bins in the village - from just five the year before.