Experience matters
Chief Secretary strums up CUHK’s support for “Strive and Rise” teen initiative
Some 50 years ago, teenager Chan Kwok-ki acquired a HK$60 acoustic guitar and took lessons at school. Little did he know that he was strumming his way to a first encounter with the real world of business.
“At that time there was no karaoke. If you wanted to sing, you had to accompany yourself,” recalls Hong Kong’s No.2 government official, who is championing a mentorship scheme for underprivileged teenagers. He liked transcribing pop songs for guitar singalongs. He also formed a band and gave lessons to younger people at a local community centre. “Then, one day, I thought, ‘why don’t I turn my scores into a songbook and see if it sells?’”
Before long, Chan and his three bandmates found themselves talking business with a newspaper distributor. “I remember the four of us, in Forms Three or Four in secondary school, walking into this office to meet the distributor. He had doubts about whether our songbooks would sell at all but was willing to give it a try and offered us a 3:7 revenue split.”
The guitar scores, costing HK$0.9 each to print and priced at HK$4, were soon on newsstands across Hong Kong. To the teenagers’ amazement, sales were so good that they each pocketed a few thousand dollars, a handsome sum in the mid-70s. Later, they were advised to take adverts in their songbooks to earn more. This was his introduction to doing business in the real world, Chan says.
The Chief Secretary for Administration’s belief that such life experiences are vital to the growth and development of teenagers underpins the Strive and Rise Programme he launched last August. The scheme aims to benefit 2,800 underprivileged pupils from junior forms of secondary schools across the city – especially those living in cramped subdivided flats. The idea is, through partnerships with businesses and civil society organisations, for these teens to have experiences that can help them broaden their horizons and build a positive attitude.
“The experiences I had in my teenage years and the skills I acquired then are useful even to this day,” Chan told CUHK in Focus after officiating at a ceremony to initiate CUHK’s partnership with Strive and Rise. “I hope the scheme can, as Vice-Chancellor (Rocky) Tuan says, give young people more exposure so that one day, they can go far.”
Chan and his four siblings were born into a working-class family. When he was four, the household moved from a partitioned room in Sheung Wan into a public housing unit in Choi Hung Estate. After secondary school, Chan studied sociology at then Shue Yan College (elevated to a university later) while working part-time at a Jockey Club telephone-betting centre to help support the family. He was soon promoted to supervisor for his good performance.
“My work as supervisor was to manage the staff and handle complaints. For that, I had to record and investigate complaints and make suggestions to the Jockey Club on how to improve their service,” he says. “These skills were similar to those I later needed as a government servant. So, I do think early real-world exposure is very important for young people.”
Chan joined the government as an assistant immigration officer in 1982. He became Director of Immigration in 2011, Director of the Chief Executive’s Office in 2017, and Chief Secretary for Administration last year.
Each teenager in the Strive and Rise Programme is assigned a mentor, receives financial support from the Government and joins activities designed to enhance their personal development.
CUHK, the first partnering higher-education institution to receive programme participants, hosted the first event on January 14. It was attended by 100 people including mentees and mentors and members of the University’s Faculty of Education. CUHK will now arrange a series of activities to provide opportunities for mentees to meet representatives of all of its eight faculties and nine colleges.
The mentorship scheme has received an overwhelming response from many quarters of the society, including from Associate Dean of the CUHK’s Faculty of Engineering Professor Wong Kam-fai. “Mentors have told me that some of the youngsters are seriously lacking in exposure to the outside world,” he notes. “Some have seldom left their neighbourhoods or visited a mall nearby. Some have never eaten with a knife and fork.” Chan says, however, he has told kind-hearted mentors from all fields there was no need for extravagance like fine dining at top-rate hotels. He believes mentees will get to do what ordinary teenagers do.
He also hopes that CUHK’s strong level of support will extend to the second cohort of mentees. “Visits to CUHK will hopefully enlighten mentees as to what academic options they have as they grow up,” he says. “I have full trust that CUHK staff know how to interact with teenagers effectively and professionally. In fact, just visiting this beautiful campus could already be an eye-opening experience for young people in the Strive and Rise Programme.”
By Joyce Ng and Gary Cheung
Photos by LCT
