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Hong Kong youth
CommentHong Kong
Kenny Lam
Kenny Lam

Opinion | Mentorship scheme needs a clear focus to deliver for Hong Kong’s underprivileged students

  • While the strive and rise programme has come together quickly, there are concerns about the motivation of mentors and lack of structure
  • Pairing mentors with industry veterans, providing sponsorship and having a clear plan will show that the government is committed to real change

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Unprivileged children do homework in Sham Shui Po on August 22, 2022. The government has unveiled the Strive and Rise Programme to help address intergenerational poverty. Photo: Nora Tam
Kenny Lam
The government’s Strive and Rise Mentorship Programme, led by Chief Secretary Chan Kwok-ki, aims to address intergenerational poverty by mentoring students from low-income families, mainly those who live in subdivided flats. It began in late November and has accepted some 2,800 students, against the initial target of 2,000, in the first year.
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At first glance, mentorship makes sense. It locates a problem – the lack of role models and social capital for underprivileged students – and provides an intuitive solution by matching them with volunteers.

However, some of the research carried out on mentorship programmes paints a rather different picture. David DuBois, chair of the research board at the US government-funded National Mentoring Resource Centre, concluded in some of his most cited meta-analysis papers that, on average, mentorship programmes have only small effects on participants’ intended outcomes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, running a mentorship programme well is difficult. There are many moving parts in mentorship, and not getting everything to gel can lead to a reduction in the programme’s effectiveness.

How is the strive and rise programme faring? Ivan Chong, one of the programme’s earliest mentors and the initiator of a self-organised group of mentors on LinkedIn, has expressed some concerns, despite his generally positive feedback about the programme.

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While he praised the programme for putting together a large quantity of mentors, students and activities in a short period of time, he said the motivation of some mentors and lack of structure could hurt the effectiveness of the programme. Some mentors were asked to join by their companies, he said, and there was no formal event calendar and activities were held at short notice.
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