Nowadays, parents and children alike are facing more pressures at home, at work and particularly at school, with parent-child conversations often revolving solely around homework, examinations and study habits. To ease these pressures and improve the relationships between family members of different ages, Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong recently held our annual “Love Equation Running Family” event. The event saw parents lead their children on a community tour to pass down the history and culture of Hong Kong, and a visit to vulnerable groups in the community, helping the participants spread love and care to every corner of society.
The Love Equation Running Family is a large-scale annual event organised by our Family and Social Working Group. This year’s event drew 32 families, near a total of 200 participants which also included volunteers and visited families. The event was divided into three sessions – a community tour, a community visit and a traditional snack-making session. During the first session, a guided community tour gave the younger generation a chance to learn about the history of the Yau Tsim Mong district. This street tour covered the famous clock tower, Yung Shue Tau , and neighbourhood stores selling knives and scales etc. The tour allowed the participants to learn about Hong Kong’s history, while narrowing the gap between generations by giving the participating children an understanding of their family background and the experiences their parents and grandparents went through in years gone by.

Guided by volunteer docents, the families taking part in the event learned about the history and character of the area. At one point, the participants bought Chinese-style snacks at the locally famous Kee Tsui Cake Shop for the low-income families they were about to visit – there, they learned the names, ingredients and origins of each snack. The participating children not only became more knowledgeable about the traditional Chinese snacks sold by the shop, they also gained inspiration from the shop owner's perseverance and commitment to hand-making each of the snacks.
During the community visit session, the participating families visited families living in subdivided units, seniors living alone and seniors performing scavenger-type work. After learning basic caring skills, the participants bought gifts for the people they visited to express their care and love. Through the visits, both children and parents came to understand the nature of the lives of people from different backgrounds and showed them their gratitude and respect.
All the participants of the Love Equation Running Family event were grateful for the opportunity to join the community visits and interact with people living different lives. One family in particular was amazed by the outstanding academic performance of a child who lived in a subdivided unit with two hardworking parents and no private tutor. At the end of the day, everyone took part in making traditional snacks like spring field pizza, dragon beard candy, cotton candy, deuk deuk tong and flour figures – and everyone, adults and children alike, had a wonderful time.
Please
click here to see pictures from the Love Equation Running Family event.