Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong

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.

Our annual Wu Kwai Sha Youth Village Open Day will take place on 7 February 2019, the third day of the Chinese New Year. Apart from getting free access to all camp facilities – more details will follow in due course – members are also welcome to apply to run a flea market booth which will serve snacks, sell handicrafts or offer games for the public to play on the open day. The application is free. We ask that interested parties please contact us as soon as possible at 2642 9420. Applications will no longer be accepted after 5 January 2019.

How would you like to receive a subsidy of HK$100,000 to go on an overseas journey of exploration and put into practice the philosophy of global citizenship? That is exactly what the winner of the ultimate award of our “Be a Global Citizen” campaign will receive! All participants in the campaign must develop a proposal in the area of poverty, peace, diversification or environmental sustainability, and submit their proposal by 31 January 2019.

For details, please go tohttp://cymca.hk/GCFinal or
click here to learn more about our renown Be a Global Citizen campaign.

At this year’s Hong Kong Secondary School Mini-Movie Competition, the 16-year-old Ho Kin Shan won three gold awards in the individual group with his film “View Founder”. His film was previously nominated for the Second Golden Jubilee Award at the Chinese Youth Micro Film Festival; while his father, the movie’s protagonist, was crowned Best Actor at the event. Ho Kin Shan and his father attended the award ceremony held in Shenzhen.

The 2019 Hong Kong Secondary School Mini-Movie Competition is now open for registration. All secondary school students are welcome to participate. In addition to prizes worth more than HK$70,000, the winning entries will also be invited to participate in an international microfilm competition. For details on the competition,please click here to view the event’s Facebook page.

To educate new arrivals about Hong Kong and bring seniors back to “the good old days”, Hang Seng Bank, one of our Y-Care CSR partners, sent a team of corporate volunteers to visit Cheung Chau with a group of seniors, new arrivals and low-income families to experience the unique culture of this beautiful island. The participants tried authentic Hong Kong food and worked together to make Ping On buns – the famous icon of the Cheung Chau bun scrambling contest. Through this hands-on activity, they learned about the history of the contest and explored the peaceful island together.