The Social Service Projects Scheme encourages students to self-design and partake in sustainable development projects in Hong Kong, the Mainland, and overseas countries to enhance people’s well-being and personal growth. While funding has been set aside to support the student projects, this Centre offers regular training and provides individual coaching for the teams in need, through which students are equipped with relevant knowledge, skills and competence in actualising their ideas.
In this academic year, the scheme opens two rounds for application. Prior to the closing date of the first round’s submission, this Centre organised two training activities, namely “Workshop on Practice cum Demonstration of Learning Outcome” and the sharing session on “Harmony in Diversity - Insights Obtained from Promoting Cultural Inclusion”, on the 20th and 28th of October last year respectively. In the first activity, participants learnt the essential skills of writing a project proposal and heard about the experience of “Skin of Love”, an outstanding team funded by this scheme, about implementing social services for the ethnic minority children and about promoting cultural inclusion. As for the second activity, Mr. Innocent Mutanga, Founder of Africa Center Hong Kong, and Mr. Pete Cheng, Communication Officer of Hong Kong Unison, were the speakers. Participants were inspired by the former with his personal experience of being an asylum seeker in Hong Kong and how he had become an analyst at an investment bank and further established a non-profit organisation to serve the African community. The latter shed light on the situation of the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong and the available services for them, so as to facilitate the participants’ reflection on the way to determine what services could meet the needs of this community.
After vetting by the panel comprising five professors and the Director of this Centre, two local projects were selected to receive subsidies over HK$30,000 in the first round's exercise of this academic year. They are (1) “Rare Human Library - Life Story Programme” aiming to write biographies for the rare disease patients to reshape their unique life experiences, and (2) “Rare Disease Exhibition and Talk” attempting to instil secondary school students with knowledge about rare diseases and related issues.
The second round of application of the Social Service Projects Scheme is now open. Details are set out below:
For more information about the Social Service Projects Scheme, please visit here. If there is any enquiry, you may contact Miss Chan of this Centre at 3943 9860 (Tel) or rachelchan@cuhk.edu.hk (Email).