On December 9, 2011, KARA had its end year party at which supporters looked back over the year. The party was also for raising funds for KARA's Animal Education Center.

KARA Director Soonrye Yim on the stage at the beginning of the evening.

A vegetarian/vegan dinner was prepared for supporters

One of Korea's famous authors kindly donated her recent novel, Women in Question, with her signature on each book.

Broadcaster Hyekyung An, pictured below with her adopted friend, Lucky, was MC for the night.

She brought smiles and laughs throughout the night.

Solo singer guitarist, Kangsoo Park, also sang a composition called "For yellow dogs"

In between the entertainment, supporters were thanked and the year's successes were praised.

This year saw the launch of KARA's Medical Team. Special thanks were given to its leader Dr. Park and to Mr. Han from Merial Korea for its sponsoring of medicines for dogs and cats.

The was also an auctioning of celebrities' belongings and other items to raise money.

At one point in the evening the special guest Somang appeared, the dog rescue from a stoning by KARA.

She has received a huge amount of support from many people and is showing a quick recovery despite being near death.

Her full story was shown on video during the party and it was indeed heartwarming to see how she has progressed after all she has gone through last several months.

Here is Somang's first encounter with Soonshim, who is the dog adopted by famous Korean singer Hyori Lee.

After the party, all visitors were given KARA doggy bag, full of our sponsors' items including dog/cat food, a calendar, and cosmetic facial pads donated by a non-animal testing Korean company.

Thank you to all who attended KARA's 2011 end of year party and for your support for KARA and for animals throughout this past year.

On November 18-20, 2011, KARA attended Korea Pet Expo, held at the Yangjae AT Centre in Seoul.

The expo sees many pet companies gathered together to show their products and animal related businesses to visitors.

Many people visited the expo with their own dogs and cats.

KARA was allocated stalls to represent our work. Our focus was especially on adoptions, and we got a lot of KARA supporters and others members of the public coming up to offer their support and encouragement.

Noori, the dog pictured here, was rescued from Cheongae Mountain. She is in the care of a good family and visited KARA's stall. She's obviously now a really a happy dog.

The KARA workers and volunteers didn't just sit around but went around and handed out pamphlets.

Before the expo, a list of animals waiting for homes was prepared, featuring their pictures and other information. At such an expo, KARA hoped to find prospective adopters.

Many people showed their interest in helping find an abandoned animal a home or else in being a temporary foster carer.

KARA has a strict procedure for re-homing an animal. Anyone who contacts us for animal adoption has to fill in the adoption form and KARA staff actually visit his/her home to conduct an interview in order to gauge suitability. We try to get it right the first time.

Actress Jo Yoonhui also visited us with her adopted dog, Sarang. We'd like to thank her for sparing time during her busy filming schedule to help out with KARA's adoption campaign.

In the first week of November KARA sent a small team to Thailand to assist animal victims of recent flooding. This represented our first international animal aid effort!

And there were a lot of animals in need of help!

Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT), which KARA went to work with, rescued about 200 dogs and cats from the floods.

KARA's role was to help in caring for them with medical aid and facility maintenance.

KARA also assisted with the dog identification process for re-homing in the future.

Here are the KARA team members in their distinctive shirts featuring a Korean flag emblem on the sleave.

WFFT was confident that they will be able to find the animals' owners. They will put the pictures of each animal around where they were initially rescued.

As well as providing volunteer aid, KARA delivered veterinary supplies and donations from our fundraising efforts.

But it doesn't stop there. KARA will continuing to raise funds for Thailand's animal flood victims and will send the money directly to WFFT.

Soprano Sumi Jo recently donated 150,000,000 Korean won to KARA. This is to go towards the construction of Korea’s first animal protection education center.

Sumi Jo's donation will serve as seed money to help KARA and the Beautiful Foundation raise a total of 1,000,000,000 won over the next two years.

Ms. Jo is deeply concerned about animal abuse in the Korean society, and what motivated her to make the donation was a desire to change people’s perceptions and attitudes toward animals.

On September 23, 2011, there was a press conference regarding the Hyundai Capital Invitational Sumi Jo concert. The conference was where Ms. Jo delivered the “Sumi Jo’s Beautiful Accompany Endowment” to KARA and the Beautiful Foundation.

Here are some comments Ms. Jo made at the time about why she donated the money:

I’ve been traveling around the world for last 30 years as the Publicity Ambassador.

I learned that the public awareness on the issues regarding animal and environmental protection in Korea is far behind, despite its rapidly growing economy.

Animals are sentient beings who should coexist with humans instead of being exploited. I believe our society needs a specialized education center for animal protection so that children can learn the importance and the values of lives.

I’ll continue to do my social work along with my musical activities.

Thanks, Sumi Jo! We're so glad there are enlightening and inspiring people like you helping us out.