Partnership fund to benefit 20 000 grassroots students in new school year

30 August 2015

Parents often have high hopes of their children and it is only natural that most parents will strive to give their children the best education. I have previously shared in my blog here that life journey is like a long run and no child should be judged by what they achieve or not at a so-called “starting line”. On the contrary, I believe that every child is like a sapling which will blossom given suitable watering and cultivation. In the process, all of us can contribute towards the nurturing and development of our younger generation.

On one occasion when I was having a bowl of noodle at a small eatery after finishing work at night, I overheard a middle-aged waitress anxiously urging her son to finish his homework over the phone. From her conversation, I could tell she would still be at loss coaching her son even if she were home. This actually reflects the difficult situation now faced by many working parents at the grassroots.

In a bid to enhance the support for these “helpless” parents, the Hong Kong SAR Government has injected an additional $400 million into the Social Welfare Department’s Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged (PFD) this year, of which $200 million is dedicated for launching more after-school learning and support projects for primary and secondary students from grassroots families to facilitate their whole-person development.

As its name clearly conveys, the Fund was set up to help the “disadvantaged” through promoting tripartite “partnership” among the government, the business sector and welfare organisations. By doing so, we aim to incentivise the welfare sector to expand its network and encourage the business sector to fulfil its corporate social responsibility for building a cohesive, harmonious and caring society.

In fact, many benevolent individuals and corporations with a strong sense of social responsibility have been offering support to children from grassroots families through different models. These include learning support and counselling, extra-curricular activities, services to facilitate character building, career and life planning, training for parents and so on. Apart from employing experienced tutors and social workers, volunteers who have higher educational attainment or with a wealth of life experience are also engaged to help the target children.

Learning from their successful experience, the HKSAR Government hopes that by setting up this $200 million dedicated fund we may encourage more business organisations to join hands with non-governmental organisations and schools to provide more after-school learning opportunities and support to primary and secondary school students from grassroots families.

I want to point out that the objective of this dedicated fund is not merely to offer somewhere for the children to stay behind after school and keep them away from the street. We expect the proposed projects to propel the whole-person development of the students. The proposals under the project should include, but not limited to tutorial classes or programmes that help develop students' learning capability and study skills, strengthen their life-planning skills, help relieve parents' stress in parenting, improve their parenting skills, or assist them in staying in employment or in joining the workforce. Taking the working and anxious mother whom I met at the noodle shop as an example, she should be able to return home in future after work without worrying about her son’s homework. Instead, she would have a leisurely chat with her son over snacks before going to bed.

We have also increased the flexibility of the dedicated fund by relaxing the application criteria to cover both secondary and primary schools and raising the maximum level of approved funding from $2 million to $3 million. With matching grants for each dollar raised through donation from business sector, the amount of subsidy for each project can reach $6 million. This would enable welfare organisations/schools to launch bigger and more long-lasting projects.

I am glad to say that the dedicated fund scheme has received an overwhelming response. We have now 89 proposals in hand with the pledge of donation totalling over $50 million. The relevant proposals are now being vetted by the Secretariat of Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged. If all the proposals can secure a matching grant from the dedicate fund, the total subsidy on after-school learning and support programmes will reach $100 million.

Of the 89 proposals received, over 70 can commence their after-school learning and support programmes in the beginning of the 2015/16 school year, while the remaining proposals are also expected to commence within this school year. A total of some 20 000 primary and secondary school students are expected to benefit through this cross-sectoral collaboration among the education sector, the business community, the Government and the community at large.

Let us all join hands in nurturing our younger generation and grooming them into future talents.

Ends