Minority Stories

A few years ago we received donations to set up a capacity building program - to train secondary school teachers to teach service-learning in their schools.  As part of the program, we helped to set up projects through which the teachers can practice supervising their students carrying out community service.  One of these projects involve interviewing ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, to help them turn their experiences into stories. To help them express themselves and to educate the Hong Kong society about the ethnic minorities’ experiences living among the dominant majority Chinese.  

Noor is an ethnically Pakistani girl, born and raised in Hong Kong. She knows it is important to master Chinese to function well in Hong Kong like the local Chinese people.  Yet she struggle tremendously in her efforts to learn Chinese.  Her family cannot offer her much help.  The environment that she is living is not conducive to learning Chinese.  She has enough challenges learning Cantonese, the local dialect, for daily living and studies.  In form 1, however, she was put in a class which studies the Chinese classics using the dialect Putonghua, dominant in Mainland China.  She had to use English phonetics to learn to pronounce the Chinese characters, then to translate the words into her fist language to understand the meaning.  It continues to be an uphill struggle for her to learn Chinese, making it hugely challenging to try to get into a local university. 

As an ethnic South Asian boy, Shah didn’t like to study.  He was a naughty student in the eyes of his teachers.  As he grew up, he was surrounded by many different people and issues, which caused him to think about what he really wanted to do.  Eventually he decided to be a teacher.  Now he teaches Chinese to fellow South Asian students.  His struggles and live experiences help him understand and relate to his students.  He is able to teach according to his students’ needs, which makes him a popular teacher.  He also loves food, which helps him relate to other people. 

Shehzad is ethnically Pakistani. Yet he has been able to master Chinese very early.  He is curious and pursues many interests.  He feels the education system in Hong Kong rely on rote learning too much.   He also feels that Hong Kong is too fast paced, and lacking in human relationships.  He does not feel prejudiced against.  Yet he feels the majority Chinese may not understand his community too well.  He is now teaching English, and hopes to help change these perceptions gradually through education.  

These stories are told creatively through words, photographs, and drawings.  They are attractive as well as informative.  These efforts can contribute to better understanding between ethnic groups in Hong Kong.  Yet such efforts in advocacy often find it difficult too reach the intended audience.  Popular channels of distribution are exhibitions on campuses and community centers, social media, etc.  Yet venues for exhibitions are not easy to find.  Social media are choke full of content.  How does one stand out and attract attention?  More creative efforts in distribution are needed.  Otherwise much effort in collecting these stories will just go to waste. 

Lessons from QS Reimagine Education Awards

Over the process of participation in this year’s QS Reimagine Education Awards, I learned a number of things.  The biggest of which, perhaps, is the power of a good story.  Particularly in a competition of this type, where many many entries (said to be in the thousands) compete for a comparatively small number (dozens?) of awards.  

Each entry probably submits hundreds to thousands of words. This is just in the submission document itself.  Add to that supporting documents, web sites, etc.  Multiply that by the number of entries. How many words are there to be processed? In these circumstances, having a solid project involving a large amount of effort which makes lasting impact may not be enough.  How much can the judges  even scan, read in detail, let alone verify, fact check?  

Hence the importance of being able to tell a good story, in a quick way.  A compelling story.  A story that matches the expectations of the specific category of award. High concepts. Sympathetic characters.  Touching moments.  In just a few hundred words.  Or less.  

Yet if this business is considered not as a competition, but a case of information extraction, it is actually quite a common problem.  How does one find useful information from an enormous amount of data?  One way is to look for pools of data that are relatively simple to understand, yet which tells a coherent, compelling story.  The method makes sense as a solution to information extraction.

Billingsgate Fish Market

On a cold morning, I went to the Billingsgate Fish Market.  It is, naturally, in the Canary Wharf, which, ironically, is now all posh high-rises housing multi-national corporations. 

Yet, I could smell the fish before I could see the actual market. 

I arrived towards the tail end of their business day., when the market closes around 8:30 am.   Trucks were moving the fish out.  Vendors were cleaning out their stores, and hosing down everything.  It was wet and slippery everywhere.  But there were still lots of fish lying around.  I wasn’t totally disappointed.  

They have the red snappers, sea breams, mackerels, hake, tilapia, …

Eviscerated sharks. 

Big fat carps. 

Big fat fish liver. 

Regular size and big Atlantic lobsters. They look like cousins of Boston/Canadian lobsters on the east coast of North America.  They share the same northern Atlantic ocean, of course.  

Crabs of all sorts. 

Shrimps of all sizes.  Some do look quite fresh, even though they were not swimming anymore.  

At a corner of the market, there is a cafe.  The foods and drinks available look like other cafes found around London.  Unlike eateries in fish markets in Asia, it does not serve seafood. But the walls are covered with photographs of people and scenes from the market, mostly in black and white.  It is also here that I heard that the market is being moved to a new site.  Perhaps the land is being too expensive, too attractive to corporations, to leave them for the fish.  That is sad, because it is a part of the history and culture, that is being lost.  The same thing happened to the fish market in Tokyo, and other places.  

Outside, seagulls cried and circled the market.  Seemingly trying to catch the flying fish which is the wind vane.  

Visiting wet markets, particularly fish markets, is one of my favourite activities. In Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Rangoon, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Manila, Taipei, Rochester, Toronto, Turin, Greece, Dakar, Tunis, and across the world.  It gives me a glimpse of how people live, what they eat, and how.  

It was seemingly a cold and miserable morning,  But it was so much fun.

Sustainability Education Action Award

It has really been an extremely hectic but also fulfilling 3 weeks, for me, as well as the office.  Towards the end of November, I went with a small team to Huye, in southern Rwanda, to check out a potential site for the solar panel project in summer 2025.  

Immediately, I flew back to Hong Kong.  In the first week in December, we hosted 2 conferences, an English-speaking international one and a Chinese-speaking national one, both on Service-Learning. 

Even before the conference was truly finished, I flew here, to London. To attend a QS conference and award ceremony.  Because we entered our Rwanda-Tanzania Habitat Green projects in a QS award competition.  HG is our flagship project to work towards sustainable development for these two sub-Sahara African countries.  The category that fits our project the most seems to be Sustainability Education - Action. We had been warned that, in this category, we are running against some large-scale, well-funded, and professionally-tun projects. But we could not find a more suitable category.  So we had to give it a try.  

On Monday, we made a 5-minute pitch on Habitat Green.  Today, Tuesday, it was announced that Habitat Green was given the Silver Award in our category.  We are, of course, quite happy about it.  On the one hand, it is an affirmation of the tremendous hardwork that the while team put in.  So all of us can be very proud of the achievement. 

On the other hand, Mr. T. S. Wong had been supporting HG generously for years.  We feel we owe it to him to try to secure some external recognition for his generosity. This time we feel we have achieved it.  

Hectic but ultimately fulfilling. 3 weeks.  

IARSLCE + China

Organising the (1) English-speaking IARSLCE APCoP X ICSL International Conference on Service-Learning together with (2) the Chinese Speaking SL conference together was a huge logistical challenge.  The ISCL has been an on-going undertaking of PolyU, with participation mainly from Asia, to promote scholarly work and research in SL.  

On the other hand, the IARSLCE has been an international organisation with little participation from Asia Pacific.  There are very practical reason for it. Most of the IARSLCE conferences are in the USA, which is a high distance from all the countries in Asia.  It is very expensive for Asian delegates, in terms of time, effort, and financial expenses.  There is a desire from IARSLCE to incorporate more input from Asia.  There is also desire from Asia to be more connected to the world wide community.  Hence the purposes of IARSLCE and ICSL.  That gradually led to the formation of Asia-Pacific Community of Practice (APCoP) and the organization of the joint conference. 

In the mean tine, the SL community in Mainland China is growing, leading to the organization of the Chinese-speaking national conference.  PolyU is the common thread among these three trends.  We sense a desire of the Chinese-speaking community on SL to connect with the global community as well as a curiosity of the global community in the Chinese-speaking community.  Hence the co-location of the two conferences in Hong Kong.  In fact, at Hotel ICON on PolyU campus. 

The result is encouraging.  There were a couple of join sessions between the two conferences, with simultaneous translation.  And people cross over from one to the other.  Many delegates make very positive feedback. Contacts and collaborations are being discussed.  The world is full of divisive tendencies.  We are glad we can make a small contribution towards bringing people together.  

APCoPxICSL

Our IARSLCE APCoP X ICSL International Conference on Service-Learning has just concluded. This was a special occasion, a special place, and a special crowd. This is the first time IARSLCE has a regional conference in the Asia-Pacific Region.  This is also the first time the ICSL series of conferences join with IARSLCE, linking our region strongly with the global community in a meaningful, productive manner.  

The ICSL started in 2014, partly to encourage PolyU staff to engage in scholarly research in SL, to inform our own teaching of SL.  It has since grown into a truly international conference, focusing on the East Asia region.  

The IARSLCE, of course, is the only international organization whose primary purpose is to cultivate, encourage, and present research across all engagement forms and educational levels, since 2001.  In 2021, a discussion among members from the Asia-Pacific region led to the setting up of a community of practice.  PolyU volunteered to be the provincial secretariat. A series of webinars were arranged.  There is an overlap of members between the APCoP and ICSL, and a strong overlap of purpose.  Hence the cooperation between the two to organize this conference. 

176 people have registered for the conference. Among them, 87 are presenters, making 52 presentations of all kinds.  They come from 52 institutions in 12 countries. 

In this map members of Asia-Pacific are clustered in the middle of the world map.  This illustrates graphically why we need our own conference.  As much as we all want to participate in the IARSLCE conferences, which are usually held in USA.  It is just too far, too expensive to travel in large numbers.  

Hong Kong is the place where the SL community in Greater China meets with the global community face-to-face.  PolyU is very proud to act as the bridge.  In parallel to this international conference, there is a national China conference, that speaks Chinese as the medium.  

This crowd exemplifies the diversity of the Region: different languages, ethnic identities, cultural heritage, economic systems, political systems, even inequalities and injustices of each of our own.   Just to highlight some of this diversity,  In the Philippines, their vibrant SL is strongly motivated and influenced by the Catholic faith. They also have their own national language alongside English. In India, they have so many difference languages, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and many other languages, long history, and a very distinctive culture, which give their SL a distinctive flavour.  

Similar things are happening in other Asia-Pacific  countries and regions. Let me illustrate that diversity and some practical implications with an observation from one of our projects.  At one point, a class on SL at PolyU set up a global classroom with a class on global leadership from an university from the USA.  It was conducted using video conferencing software.  When a professor asked a question, an American student jumped in to answer.  Before he finished, another American students cut in, objecting to the first American student.  In the mean time, the HK students asked each other, “What should we say?”  After some discussions among themselves, a HK student answered, for the group.  It may be a stereotype, but it was obvious the the American students operate more individually.  While the HK students stress on the collective.  

Later, both sets of students travelled to, and met each other for a joint project in Rwanda, halfway across the world.  Some of the American students were black, and they were somewhat similar in appearance to the local people.  On the other hand, the local children call the HK students “Muzungu”! which, I was told, means white or pale people, or wanderers.  I know I am not black.  But I never imagined someone might consider me white. What other people perceive of me can be so different from my own self image.  

At one point the HK students were not happy with something that the American students did.  At first the HK students did not say anything.  When the issue persisted, they felt they cannot tolerate it, and went to their professors to complain.  We advised them to talk to the American students directly.  When the American students were told about it, they were surprised because the HK students never told them about it.  If the HK students brought this up earlier, the issue would have been resolved much earlier.  Different cultures have very different ways to interact with each other, and to handle differences and disagreement.  In many ways having differences and disagreement have to be expected, not necessarily avoided.  These can be what are sometimes referred to as “teachable moments”, where we explore, discuss and learn.

That, and other experiences in international SL, have led us to be interested in the concept of cultural identity and cultural distance, and its implications on ISL.  What matters is not so much physical distance, in terms of language, appearance, culture, economics, religion, diet, dress, and more.  Students tend to learn more when they serve in a community which is culturally distant from their own.  For example, Australia is closer, geographically, to Indonesia and other South East Asian countries, than USA, Canada, and UK.  But culturally, it is probably much closer to USA, Canada and UK.  There is reason to believe that Australian students may learn more in South East Asia than in Canda.  

Similarly, HK is close to Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar, than to Singapore or USA.  Yet culturally, particularly for young people, HK may be closer to Singapore or USA than to Indo-China.  Hence HK students may learn more in Indo-China than in Singapore.  And one does not have to go to another country to come upon such issues.  Many Asian countries are strongly multi-ethnic, such as Malaysia, Singapore, India, Myanmar, …

Cross-cultural SL provides the environment in which we learn about these issues and how to deal with them in a the real world.  Not just in the abstract in the classroom. 

 

But how pervasive are these phenomenon related to cultural identity and distance ?  Much research is needed.  On this aspect of SL and beyond.  Which we are fully capable of pursuing here in the region, if we work together.  We are hoping that APCoP can be the platform to enable such scholarly cooperation.  

We are united in a common vision: service-learning.  We believe education to be the key to building a better, more harmonious world. And service-learning as a key pedagogy to nurture the next generation global responsible citizens.  Let us work together.