Develop the Strengths of the Youth & the Ethnic Minority

The objectives of the community visit is to deepen the understanding of business sector of current social services for non-engaged youth and ethnic minority that facilitate integration, life engagement, self-help and mutual help ability.

u0022Let’s Walku0022 helps non-engaged youth to re-integrate to the society

Currently, there are around 100,000 non-engaged youth (who are neither employed nor in school and had been disconnected with the society) in Hong Kong. Organized by Hong Kong Christian Service, u0022Let’s Walku0022, a project that is specially designed for all non-engaged youth aged 14 to 21, aims at helping them to turn from being non-engaged to having school life or work life.

After the introduction of the project by Ms Eugene Ma and Mr. Ekman Chak, social workers of HKCS, we sat in students’ tutorial period. Afterwards, all the participants had chance to chat with 4 students and listened to their feeling, difficulties encountered and their expectations of joining the project. Friends from the business sector also shared their own experience. We hope the youngsters would be enlightened through the u0022Let’s Walku0022 project and would be having better lives in the future.

Project SASA enhances direct interaction between the minority and local people to promote social inclusion

Ethnic minority, e.g. Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese and others non-Chinese ethnicity, makes up of approximately 5% of population in Hong Kong. Differences in culture, language and skin color are some barriers for them to integrate into the local society.

After visiting the u0022Let’s Walku0022 project, we continued our tour to Project SASA (South Asians Support Alliance). Project SASA provides services through collaborating the minority and establishing supportive network; facilitating the establishment of mutual support group so as to increase their self-help and mutual help abilities; and enhance mutual understanding between the minority and local people to promote social inclusion.

After a brief introduction by Ms Karrie Chan, person-in-charge of Project SASA, two of her Nepalese colleagues gave us an overview of how they search for mentors from different industries also the challenges which the next generation will be facing. To our surprise, a group of Nepalese children performed a dance to us and invited our participants to join as well, as an experience of social inclusion.

We encourage the business sector to involve in community participation

Through arranging these community visitations, we hope to show the community needs to the companies and how the companies could join hands with social service organizations in meeting those needs, thus to create a harmonious society with care and social inclusion.

Participants sat in students’ tutorial

Students shared their feelings and expectations with the participants

Nepalese children invited participants to dance

Children and participants experienced social inclusion through participation