The seeds of Love
When it comes to core members of BGCA, Vivian cannot be missed. 25 year-old Vivian has been an active member of the Mei Foo Children & Youth Integrated Services Centre since she was young. In Form 4, she became a summer tutor at the Centre, teaching grassroots students English. Even when summer holiday was over, Vivian continued to spend time with two of the students every week, for a period of two years – when the seeds of Love were rooted deeply in her heart.
It all started with the Fund
When Vivian was in university, she and two friends applied for a fund of $5000 from the Centre to launch a project named “Happy Influence”, to care for grassroots cleaners. Through recruiting university students to become volunteers, Vivian hoped to promote the importance of social participation. Impressively, it only took the group two weeks to implement the plan.
The concept of the project was simple – “to turn the invisible into visible”. Vivian believed that cleaners play an important role in society but they are often ignored, and sometimes a simple “thank you” already meant a lot for them.
The project started with only three core members, but with the hard work Vivian and her friends had put in, they successfully recruited close to 100 volunteers from various universities, as well as sponsorships from numerous organisations. Ultimately they distributed more than 200 ‘goodie bags’ to cleaners working in Kowloon.
Established a social enterprise with the same objective
The years of experience in social service inspired Vivian to set up a social enterprise called Momenday after graduation. The social enterprise mainly provides corporate social engagement services, assists small social enterprises and NGOs in promoting their brands, hoping to connect them with big corporates to form an ecosystem of social goods in Hong Kong in the long run. And it also offers Sustainable Development Goals education for secondary school and university students.
“The name of the enterprise means ‘the moment of the day’. We hope to spread the message of love and stories that would touch our hearts. This is what we really want to do.”
Looking back, whether it was the project initiated in school or the road to entrepreneurship, Vivian said she is very grateful to have the social workers who provided helpful insights and suggestions. All the positive influence contributed to her personal growth.
“Ms. Ma had given me a lot of trust and support during the ‘Happy Influence” project, which elevated the project to the next level. When I was starting up my own business, I also talked to her because she’s very experienced and always gives me good advice. I am very grateful to have her, the social workers and friends at BGCA, for their support along the way. They are the people I cherish a lot.”
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