Executive Director's Report (2019-2020)
Dear all HAC supporters,
It is our mission to inspire children through innovative storytelling programs so that it will help them encapsulate their vision and mission of life. Ironically, what happened in Hong Kong last year was more surreal than fictions! Having said that “Let bygones be bygones”, we are grateful to have many angels around. They gave us courage to pacify the children and families who had been wrecked.
Cultivate Positive Mindset by Storytelling
Looking back at the social unrest over the last year, this indeed shows how important it is to cultivate the empathy of children, and bring down the conflicts by mutual understanding and love. Albeit of all the circumstances such as school suspension and pandemic, we managed to serve 85,830 beneficiaries in 6,209 service sessions. Whilst in the sixth year of our operation of the “Read to Change” project had far-reached the coverage to 26 primary schools and nearly 1,000 primary students in total. The results findings are prominent and had been presented in an international conference held in Berlin, Germany during the summer of 2019. It was encouraging to witness that storytelling is a sound method to build up children’s empathy and skills of conflict resolution!
In 2019-2020, HAC had 62 media coverage’s including the columns in Hong Kong Economics Time and E-Campus. For propagating our education through storytelling boundlessly, a HAC channel was set up on YouTube. Over 50 storytelling videos are shared for watching now!
Flying against the Wind
For many Hong Kong people, we had experienced a very hard time! We were so blessed to have 26 corporate partners standing by us all this time for our children’s welfare. They are: Societe Generale that sent 8 underprivileged children abroad for the World Rugby Cup held in Japan and sponsored the “Lohas Clan” Inter-generational Inclusion project, Deacons that organized “ABC of Laws”, in its 7th year, for teaching children legal knowledge by stories; and A.S. Watsons, Hip Hing Construction, Vibro (HK), Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance, Wah Fung Computer, Computershare, Orientop, UDomain, Web Host Ltd, Anway, Sky Connection, Hasbro, Eaglet Property Management, Oxford University Press, etc.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we distributed thousands of hygiene packs for underprivileged families and outlying island dwellers to ease their arisen economic burdens. With the support of Emergency Fund of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the “Stay Strong, the Captain Health!” project was launched in March. With the aims of alleviating the children emotional disturbances and facilitating them to learn from home, such programs included: online storytelling sessions, hygiene education kits and handcraft material packs were sent to 4,500 young children.
Implementing Social Welfare Department’s Best Practice Manual
We stringently implemented the captioned (Level One) to have regular reviews of the usage and reasonable level of Lump Sum Grant Reserve at the board meetings and adjusted the magnitude of our staff salaries with reference to the Civil Servant Pay Adjustment of 2019. As at 31 March 2020, the Provident Fund Reserve for non-snapshot staff of the Social Welfare Department’s Lump Sum Grant subvented services unit was $252,842. It was included in the Lump Sum Grant Reserve which had a balance of $986,893. It is projected that the Provident Fund Reserve will be $240,000 at the end of the 2020-2021 financial year. The Reserve is to be used for provident fund contribution for non-snapshot staff. To better utilize the Reserve, HAC planned to enhance the employment terms of staff and so on.
In this long battle to fight against the plague, we hope you can stay positive with us. Whether it is sunshine or rain in the coming days, together, we’ll bring a hopeful rainbow to our young generation!
HAC
Executive Director
May Wong
