Children deep in concentration designing postcards to send to their ASEAN friends at the launch event held at the Singapore Art Museum on 28 March 2007.

Singapore Art Museum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are jointly organising "Postcards Across ASEAN", a commemorative activity to celebrate ASEAN's 40th Anniversary this year.  Minister for Education and Second Minister for Finance Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam officiated the launch on 28 March 2007, 3 pm, at the Glass Hall of Singapore Art Museum (click here to read his opening remarks). Launch events were also held in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines.

"Postcards Across ASEAN", which targets primary school students of ages 6-12, aims to promote awareness of ASEAN and build a sense of community among the youth in the region through the universal language of art.  The postcard invites each student to design something to share his or her country's unique heritage in any medium, as well as to introduce him- or herself.  These postcards, which have their postage pre-paid, can be mailed back to Singapore or collected via the Singapore Embassies in the respective countries.  Collated back at Singapore Art Museum, the outstanding entries would be selected and the rest of the postcards re-distributed such that each student would get a 'reply' postcard from a student in another ASEAN country. 

This interactive project is planned to have an outreach of 100,000 students, with 10,000 postcards being distributed to each ASEAN country.  Attractive cash prizes stand to be won by the best-designed postcards.  The outstanding entries will be exhibited at the 13th ASEAN Summit hosted by Singapore at the end of the year.

"Postcards Across ASEAN" is part of a series of commemorative activities organised by Singapore to mark the 40th birthday of ASEAN and Singapore’s chairmanship of ASEAN this year.  The series of commemorative events was kicked-off by the ASEAN Rocks! Music Festival held at Hard Rock Cafe in January 2007.  An ASEAN float celebrating the unity of ASEAN was the finale item at Chingay 2007.