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Chairperson of the 43rd Term Board of Directors |
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Adhering to its mission of “Caring for the Aged and the Young, Promoting Education and Nurturing Talents, Supporting the Disadvantaged and the Sick, Serving the Community with Sincerity”, Yan Oi Tong has been serving the community for 45 years and providing a wide range of social welfare, education, medical, employment and training, recreation and sports, social enterprises and environmental protection services for the public. With the spirit of service kindled by its predecessors, Yan Oi Tong leverages the strength of teamwork to achieve greater benevolence.
I have always believed that good deeds from the heart can influence others so that kindness can bloom in every corner. This year, Yan Oi Tong adheres to its mission of “Spread the love and let the kindness bloom”, maintaining the philosophy of our predecessors while actively improving and expanding our services on a strong foundation to bring positive energy to the community amid the pandemic.
The pandemic has lasted for more than two years. The fifth wave, which broke out earlier this year, was more devastating than ever. The public demand for medical services surged. In this light, Yan Oi Tong will allocate more resources in the coming year to expand its Chinese medicine video consultation service for those helpless patients in isolation. Meanwhile, Yan Oi Tong continues to address the mental stress of Hong Kong people through online and offline approaches to support the community in the journey ahead.
Hundreds of thousands were infected amid the devastating fifth wave of COVID-19 and they lacked medical support during home quarantine. With the sponsorship of the AIA Foundation, the Medical Service Department of Yan Oi Tong immediately launched a series of emergency services to provide special support to the elderly and the underprivileged. These include free Chinese medicine out-patient services for people who have recovered from COVID-19 and elderly living in public housing estates, with three free medical consultation sessions with five doses of Chinese medicine which expectal to benefit 6000 people; the “Chinese Medicine Level-up” programme, which provides the elderly with three natural moxibustion treatments for free to improve their immunity; the “Medicine for the Pandemic” programme, which provide underprivileged families with emergency supplies, such as oximeters and medicine for pain relief and fever.
Yan Oi Tong promotes the concept of “preventive treatment”in Chinese medicine, helping people improve their health by preventing diseases. With the generous donation from the Advisory Board Member, Mr YAM Tak Cheung, MH, Yan Oi Tong will establish the “Yan Oi Tong Mrs. Kandy KK Yam Chinese Medicine Mobile Clinic” in the coming year, responding to the medical needs of more grassroots people. The Board of Directors will gather support from leaders of different sectors, striving to expand the service of Hong Kong’s first Chinese Medicine Mobile Clinics.
Last year, Yan Oi Tong held the “18th Anniversary Appreciation Day of the Chinese Medicine Mobile Clinics” to respond to the medical needs of the elderly, giving out HK$100 vouchers under the “Kind-Hearted” Free Consultation and Chinese Medicine Programme to service beneficiaries aged 60 or above for the first time. About 600 people benefitted from the activity. The current Board of Directors will continue to promote a culture of respect for the elderly and give out Chinese medicine vouchers to the elderly on the Senior Citizens Day in November in response to the Government’s policy, so that pre-retirees who cannot benefit from the Health Care Voucher Scheme can enjoy Yan Oi Tong’s high-quality and affordable self-financed Chinese medicine services to improve their health and immunity.
We would also like to express our gratitude to the Advisory Board Member, Ms. NG Ming Chun, Jenny, MH, for her generous donation of HK$1 million in the name of her sister, Ms. NG Ming Lai. The sum has been used to initiate the “Kind-Hearted” Free Consultation and Chinese Medicine Programme for a period of five years from 2020. As the programme is running for the third year, the Medical Service Department strives to promote the spirit of giving and help more grassroots people, including cleaning workers, single parent families and residents living in subdivided units, so that they can reduce their medical expenses.
Yan Oi Tong is committed to promoting the development of “evidence-based” Chinese medicine and the related research programmes. Last year, Yan Oi Tong - The Chinese University of Hong Kong Chinese Medicine Clinic cum Training and Research Centre (Tuen Mun District) and Yan Oi Tong – The University of Hong Kong Chinese Medicine Clinic cum Training and Research Centre (Islands District) completed a research programme related to knee-joint osteoarthritis, which shows that the combination of traditional Tuina massage and Chinese medicine treatment can effectively reduce knee pain, stiffness and immobility by about 40%. The initial plan is to apply the findings to regular services so that more patients suffering from knee-joint osteoarthritis can benefit.
Meanwhile, the Medical Service Department (Self-financed Services) will launch a pilot clinical study on the use of Bao He Wan for the treatment of eating disorders of children, and has invited Professor Lin Zhixiu, the Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Integrative Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as a consultant for this Chinese medicine research programme. Using traditional compound formulations of ancient Chinese medicine, the study aims to investigate how Bao He Wan can relieve eating disorders of children.
With the gradual loss of memory and self-care abilities, people suffering from dementia and their caregivers are under a lot of stress amid the pandemic. In April this year, the Medical Service Department of Yan Oi Tong launched “Safeguarding Brain Health for the Elderly”, a caregiver support project designed for the new normal. In collaboration with the Social Service Department of Yan Oi Tong and the Hong Kong Carer Alliance for Dementia, the Medical Service Department organised mental health seminars and volunteer training activities as well as forming “Family Support Teams” in Tuen Mun, Yuen Long and Kwun Tong, both online and offline, to raise public awareness of dementia and caregivers’ mental health. The project is expected to benefit nearly 3,000 caregivers, volunteers and other people in the community with a government grant of HK$1.95 million.
Children and the youth are the future of the society and their mental health has always been a subject of concern for Yan Oi Tong. The average waiting time for new cases at children and youth psychiatric out-patient clinics of public hospitals is 80 weeks. In view of the increasing demand for medical services for children and the youth suffering from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, the Yan Oi Tong Mrs Shi Lop Tak Youth & Children Medical Foundation established a new consultation spot in Tai Po so that lower primary school students studying in New Territories East can receive timely diagnosis and treatment by psychiatrists without missing the optional time for treatment.
With the title sponsorship of the Yuen Yuen Institute and the generous support of the Yan Oi Tong Choi Wong Ling Ling Education Fund, the second “Yan Oi Tong Mentorship Programme” successfully guided 56 young people in self recognition and future career planning with the assistance of the Education Bureau and different sectors of the community. The third “Yan Oi Tong Mentorship Programme” is expected to be launched in the 2022/23 academic year. With the ongoing support of the Yan Oi Tong Choi Wong Ling Ling Education Fund, the new programme will feature regular meetings with mentors and sharing of work experiences in different industries. It will also focus on enhancing career planning training for the mentees by organising career orientation workshops, team experience camps and job shadowing experiences, providing more practical opportunities beyond career-related knowledge so that mentees can establish social networks and become future talents by recognising themselves and cultivating good qualities needed for different careers through career planning.
The “Yan Oi Tong Choi Wong Ling Ling Education Fund” adheres to the mission of developing high-quality education programmes, promoting the whole-person development of students and broadening their global vision. In the coming year, the Education Fund will focus on the promotion of traditional Chinese culture by sponsoring Yan Oi Tong’s primary and secondary schools in organising a series of activities, including “When Hua Tuo Meets Li Shi Zhen”, “Inheriting Love”, “The Cultural Stage”and “Journey of Tracing Origins”, to nurture students’ sense of national identity. Through the “Show and Tell Series” programme, the Education Fund organised creation competitions related to Chinese culture, such as the “Homeland Local Flavours Competition”, to promote intergenerational inclusion and kindle the spirit of spreading Chinese culture. Other programmes, including the “History through Word of Mouth from Grandparents” video competition and the “Web Design” competition, were also held to cultivate students’ interest in Chinese culture and history.
The Funding Scheme for Children’s Well-being and Development of the Commission on Children funded Yan Oi Tong’s “Love and Support for Special Education Need Families” programme, which organises activities such as parent seminars and stress reduction interest groups so that parents can reduce stress from child raising and establish a parent support network with enhanced cohesion. This year, Yan Oi Tong will continue to form “Joy and Love Parents Groups”, organising a cappella choir, cooking and child raising workshops for parents, the “Love to See You” parent-child day camp and the “Community Carnival” so that a parent support network can be established at the community level with the “Social Support” philosophy.
With the support of the Labour and Welfare Bureau, Yan Oi Tong will launch “Dare to Dream”, a new Child Development Fund project providing support to 100 grassroots youngsters and their families for three years. It also promotes the long-term development of underprivileged children and aims to alleviate intergenerational poverty through programmes including “Personal Development Plan”, “Target Savings” and “Mentorship”. Moreover, the programme also features trainings that enhance career planning of the youth so that they can develop a positive attitude towards learning and working as well as developing saving habit, while helping them accumulate intangible assets such as resilience and social networks, which are all useful attributes for future development. Different trainings are also provided to mentors so that they can offer more comprehensive support to the youth.
Referred by the Advisory Board Member Dr. TANG Kam Hung, MH, Yan Oi Tong has become a beneficiary of the third phase of the “CUHK Jockey Club Myopia Prevention Programme” launched by the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which provided free comprehensive eye examination worth HK$5,000 for each school-age grassroots child and basic examinations such as optometry, corneal thickness and intraocular pressure tests for the parents. The service target of the programme has been extended to the 4 to 12-year-old so that more children can benefit from it. 922 students from Yan Oi Tong’s 11 kindergartens and two primary schools will benefit with a total value of services subsidised reaching HK$4.61 million.
The social service units of Yan Oi Tong were dedicated to maintaining regular services such as home care and residential home care amid the pandemic. With AIA Foundation’s donation, Yan Oi Tong launched the “Fighting the Virus” programme to provide short-term and flexible emergency support, including free pandemic care packs, room temperature food packs and service centre vouchers for 10,000 elderly and the underprivileged. It also provided appropriate and timely support for families in need through mobile supplies vehicles, which delivered anti-pandemic supplies to areas that required focused support. In addition, Yan Oi Tong’s home service teams provided free home cleaning and disinfectant coating services for the elderly and grassroots families living in inadequate housing. Meanwhile, Yan Oi Tong established a counselling and support team for community cases, reaching out to those who need help and providing them with comprehensive services, such as counselling, crisis intervention and emergency support, in order to respond to their anti-pandemic supplies and mental health needs.
Given the ageing population and the increasing number of people with chronic diseases, Yan Oi Tong’s District Elderly Community Centre and four Neighbourhood Elderly Centres organised the “Jockey Club Community eHealth Care Project”, encouraging the elderly suffering from chronic diseases to receive regular health examinations, exercise and participate in healthy activities so that they can manage their own health using digital technologies. In collaboration with Lingnan University, the Yan Oi Tong Woo Chung District Elderly Community Centre organised a series of educational and promotional activities with the “Gerontechnology” theme to learn about the home and living needs of the elderly so that gerontechnology products can be designed and recommended. With the sponsorship from Phase 3 of Social Welfare Development Fund of the Social Welfare Department and the support of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Yan Oi Tong developed the “Integrated Data Lake System for Elderly Care in the Community” to improve the quality of community elderly care using big data, organise the personal data of the elderly in each unit and optimise the personalised community care service package using the “Integrated Data Lake System for Community Care for the Elderly”.
With a grant of over HK$1.15 million from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the Family and Youth Services Department of Yan Oi Tong launched “Jockey Club Project IDEAL” to enhance “competence” and “resilience” of the parents of primary and kindergarten students through intervention strategies such as narrative therapy and parent empowerment. Meanwhile, the Yan Oi Tong Lo Tai Chin Caring Foundation (Mental Health) launched the Wellness Model-based “Caregivers Support Programme” to coordinate Yan Oi Tong’s four main departments, namely medical, social services, education and recreation and sports departments, in relieving the stress of caregivers through providing matching services. In September 2021, Yan Oi Tong launched the “Caregivers Mental Health Programme - Caregivers Connect” with the funding from the Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged. With a period of two years, the programme will provide relaxation training groups, health seminars, mutual support activities, online support platforms and caregiver’s guide and is expected to benefit 3,410 people.
Yan Oi Tong was granted two separate sums of $4.31 million and $4.38 million by the Community Investment and Inclusion Fund to launch Community Support Programmes for New Public Rental Housing in Ching Tin Estate and Wo Tin Estate, Area 54, Tuen Mun, which adopt the “Community-School-Business” collaborative model to help new residents with flat in-takes and adaptation so that they can fit in their new lives while building a helpful, caring community with mutual trust. The programme also links stakeholders from different areas to strengthen partnerships, increase community capital and connect people from different collaborative and sharing platforms and organisations.
Yan Oi Tong supports the Government’s transitional housing policy by preparing for the development of “Yan Oi Estate”, a Transitional Housing Project at Hung Shui Kiu. The project has been approved by the Town Planning Board. A funding of $222.2 million has been approved by the Transport and Housing Bureau to support the “Modular Integrated Construction” of the project. Expected to provide housing for more than 700 people, the project will offer about 404 1-3 person flats at rents lower than the market rate, each having a floor area of under 300 square feet, with an individual kitchen and toilet, for low-income families who have been waiting for public housing for over three years and are currently living in inadequate housing so that they can improve their quality of life. The project is currently in tendering process for the main contractor contract. The construction is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2022 and flat in-takes in the second quarter of 2023. The social service teams of Yan Oi Tong will provide a wide range of social services to the residents of the Transitional Housing Project.
As a green organisation, Yan Oi Tong is always active in promoting recycling and environmental education in the community. Having secured the contract for the operation of the “Tuen Mun Community Green Station” for the next three years, Yan Oi Tong will focus on organising volunteer training activities in the coming year, expanding the network of “Green@TM Volunteer Team” and contacting different schools and organisations in the community. Volunteers with environmental knowledge will be provided to help with the planning of various environmental education and recycling promotion activities.
With the funding of “The Enhancing Self-Reliance through District Partnership Programme” of the Home Affairs Department, Yan Oi Tong will establish the “Neighborhood Home Support Service”, a social enterprise providing home care and support services for the elderly and families in need as well as addressing the shortage of foreign domestic helpers amid the pandemic by promoting home care services of the “Neighborhood Home Support Service” to large private housing estates in the area. The organization will also aim to identify potential customers for the future “Star Home Support Service”, which will help create more employment opportunities for the underprivileged people who are unemployed and less competitive. Yan Oi Tong also calls upon corporate leaders to pledge “Home Care Service Vouchers” to support the elderly living alone or with an older partner, or families with chronic patients in need of services such as home cleaning, personal hygiene care, meal delivery and out-patient escort.
Hard hit by the pandemic, many industries are expected to lay off workers in the coming year and the unemployment rate will likely rise again. As one of the top ten training organisations in Hong Kong, Yan Oi Tong will continue to provide various training courses for the public so that people in need can find jobs or change jobs. A record high of 7,711 vacancies have been approved by the Employees Retraining Board for the first round in 2022-23.
The Yan Oi Tong YES Training Institute applied for the new round of the “Funding Scheme for Youth Life Planning Activities (2022-25)” of the Youth Development Commission under the Home Affairs Bureau. The programme covers four major areas, namely further studies, personal development, diversified career pathways and employment, with a new theme added this year, learning about the Greater Bay Area. The amount applied for under the programme is about $8 million, which is used to provide career planning services for 16 secondary schools. Yan Oi Tong will submit the project to China Merchants Group in the coming year to provide local secondary students, tertiary students and teachers with positive education, including organizing “Positive Mentors” training and the “Running for a happy life” sports competition.
Meanwhile, the Sham Shui Po District Council Mei Foo Neighbourhood Activity Centre has been funded by the “Children’s Rights Education Funding Scheme” for the third consecutive year. From July to September 2022, workshops, mini games and carnivals which are casual, free and non-restrictive in nature will be held to promote visual, auditory and tactile experiences so that children and parents can have a better understanding of children’s rights. In addition, the Centre received a grant of $390,000 from the “Beat Drugs Fund” for launching “Say I know to exercising, say no to drugs”, a year-long programme which includes setting up “Anti-drug Information Zones” and training “Anti-drug Ambassadors”, aiming to encourage sports participation in the community and promote a healthy lifestyle and anti-drug messages.
Through “The Chief Executive (CE)'s Community Project List”, Yan Oi Tong received funding from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust to establish the “Career Planning and Entrepreneurship Support Service Centre”, which will feature a “Job Searching Platform” incorporating a mobile app and a website. This will mainly provide recruitment and job search services for employers and job seekers in New Territories West. The platform is expected to be completed in 2022 and fully operational during 2022-23.
Concluding the Service Report, I have come to realise that I am shouldering great responsibilities. In the coming year, I will do my best to lead Yan Oi Tong with the concerted effort of the Board of Directors. We look forward to the continued guidance and support from the government departments, leaders from different sectors of the community, Yan Oi Tong’s predecessors and individuals who are devoted to charity, so that we can work together to spread our benevolent spirit as we fight the pandemic with Hong Kong people.
