As the fifth wave of the pandemic spread rapidly in Hong Kong at the beginning of spring this year, many ethnic minority families were faced with uncertainty due to language barriers and lack of essential supplies.
Wong Mei-fung, Connie (Connie), Regional Director (Islands) of The Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council, who is Supervisor of the TOUCH Support Service Centre for Ethnic Minorities (TOUCH) in Tung Chung, recalls how busy everyone was during that time: “We received many requests for help from ethnic minorities every day, and we took bags of supplies to them and explained the latest government policy on pandemic prevention.”
Connie explains that Tung Chung, where TOUCH has been working for 12 years, is populated by ethnic minority families, with a large number of Pakistani, Nepalese and Filipino families, most of whom work in the construction and service industries, and many at Hong Kong International Airport. Although quite a few of these families have been in Hong Kong for three or four generations, the language barrier and racial prejudice still make it difficult for them to fit in.
“TOUCH provides for adults as well as children. We want to engage with these ethnic minorities through their interests, so that they can meet people with common interests and do something together, and eventually serve others in their community and help promote social inclusion,” says Connie.
Since last autumn, Hactl — which is also based on Lantau Island — has been working with TOUCH to help create an inclusive community in Tung Chung through enjoyable activities for its members. The first step was introducing games.
“We want to engage with these ethnic minorities through their interests, so that they can meet people with common interests and do something together, and eventually serve others in their community and help promote social inclusion”
From pallet to chessboard
According to the 2016 Population By-census of Hong Kong, the South Asian population in North Lantau, where Tung Chung is located, accounts for 5.3% of the population — more than three times higher than the overall South Asian population proportion of 1.2% throughout Hong Kong.
Connie says that this demographic characteristic is closely related to the development of the airport. “When the new airport was being built in Tung Chung, many of the construction workers were South Asians, involved in building the roads and the airport, and they settled in Tung Chung. Also, there are more large flats in public housing estates here than in other districts, which are more suitable for South Asians who usually have larger families.”
“Some ethnic minority mothers have to stay at home for a long time to take care of many children, so they don’t have much opportunity to learn and speak Chinese. Children also have difficulty in speaking and writing Chinese, which affects their learning progress in local schools,” Connie explains. In response to these needs, TOUCH offers tutorial classes for ethnic minority students in primary and secondary schools, as well as intensive classes for their weaker subjects of Mathematics and Chinese Language. Different interest classes are also provided so that they can learn in a stress-free environment.
After meeting TOUCH, Hactl found out that its new centre was about to be opened and needed furniture for various activities. Hactl immediately contacted Cou Tou Studio (Cou Tou), a social enterprise dedicated to upcycling wood. They made two sets of wooden tables and chairs for TOUCH, using wooden pallets that had been discarded at Hactl’s SuperTerminal 1.
With such comfortable furniture, this opened up the possibility for fun games to be played by the centre’s visiting children. So, together with TOUCH, Hactl developed the idea of extending the use of the redundant wooden pallets to make two sets of “aeroplane chess” for the ethnic minority youths and children.
“Aeroplane chess is a common game among local Chinese kids; we play this game with ethnic minority kids and they find it fascinating,” explains Connie. The centre also launched a chessboard design competition, which was won by an eight-year-old ethnic minority child, followed by a design workshop in which ethnic minority children were invited to colour one of the chessboards.
“A wooden table can make a big difference”, adds Connie. “Everyone is gathered around to eat a meal, chat and play chess, and get to know each other better by playing games and sharing their joys and tears.”
Sharing their joy and tears
Hactl is committed to promoting sustainable development and has worked with Cou Tou several times in recent years, providing large numbers of wood pallets discarded at the terminal for upcycling by their carpenters.
The wooden chessboards made for TOUCH are unique. Each chess piece is made to resemble one of the unit load devices commonly used in the air cargo industry; Hactl also provided workshops for its management to craft chess pieces. Hactl hopes that the youngsters at TOUCH will learn about the air cargo industry through playing aeroplane chess, and maybe in the future they will even become employees of the industry in Hong Kong.
The wooden table and chairs donated to TOUCH are made of old wooden pallets of varying shades of colour, pieced together to create a rich and interesting pattern — symbolising that children of different backgrounds and cultures can interact and integrate through play.
“A wooden table can make a big difference”, adds Connie. “Everyone is gathered around to eat a meal, chat and play chess, and get to know each other better by playing games and sharing their joys and tears.”
Moving forward, Hactl and TOUCH plan to explore further opportunities for collaboration, to help create a supportive, inclusive and equitable community in Tung Chung.