Date: 20/09/2015
More than 40 ethnic minority (EM) youngsters just spent a very meaningful summer competing to solve a range of community issues at: “Exploration for Hope”, Hong Kong’s best known EM social enterprise competition sponsored and supported by Hysan Development Company Limited (Hysan), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business School (HKUST) and Hong Kong Christian Service (HKCS).
The six teams in the final explored a number of different social issues and received training in social enterprise development as well as business knowledge. The competing EM students were guided along by HKUST undergraduate business school students acting as mentors. The results are six thorough business plans all set to be further developed into real-life social enterprises, with aims to untie social knots within EM or other communities.
The winning team came up with a company to help plan ethnic parties. “Many of us EMs miss the festive celebrations from home, and there are usually no resources to replicate these parties in Hong Kong. Many families don’t have the means to fly back home to enjoy these feasts,” said Plannr’s Ritika Satish Sukhani. What the team wants to do is to set up an entity to provide ethnic festival planning service for different cultures so that EMs can celebrate their festivals here in Hong Kong. It also serves to promote their cultures here for the younger generations who may not be familiar with these activities.
The first runner up team EdProvision wants to be a tutorial “middleman” agency to arrange older EM students to provide teaching services for younger students, while the team that came third, A4S, is keen to get EM ladies to run a fusion restaurant to boost their employment and confidence.
It’s Exploration for Hope’s 9th running, and the programme has morphed from a purely career development summer project into a sophisticated social enterprise competition. The sponsors and supporters wish to equip EM youths with more vision and skills through social enterprises training, thus encouraging them to explore not only their own future, but how they can help better the community.
The winning team received HK$30,000 prize money from Hysan, whereby the first and second runners-up took home HK$10,000 and HK$8,000 respectively.
Hysan Development, Hong Kong Christian Service and HKUST Business School jointly organise the Exploration for Hope summer programme for ethnic minority youths.
Plannr, the champion of this year's social enterprise competition, proposes to set up a social enterprise organising EM traditional festivals and events in Hong Kong.
