Answering pregnant teens’ calls for help: huge rise in service demand prompts Hong Kong charity patron to step up
- Teen pregnancy charity Mother’s Choice has seen an 80 per cent increase in calls to its hotline this year, as well as rising demand for other services
- As part of new ‘Our Hong Kong Family’ initiative, patron Purviz Shroff is stepping up to encourage the community to help
Mother’s Day is a day of celebration, to recognise and shower gratitude on mums for all they do. For many, though, it’s a day tinged with pain and grief, such as those who have lost their mothers or for those who long to become mums but cannot.
It can be a particularly heartbreaking day for mothers who have lost a child. Renowned Hong Kong philanthropist Purviz Shroff is one of them.
Twenty-nine years ago, Shroff’s only son, Zarir, was killed in a car accident on another day meant for celebration: Father’s Day. Devastated, Shroff felt she could not continue with her own life. Then one night, she says her son came to her in a dream. He told her to be brave, and “go to where the children are”.
“I became a volunteer in the child care home, working four days a week with the babies – I call them my ‘pumpkins’ because that was my nickname for Zarir. In caring for thousands of babies who were waiting for parents, I could give the love I had for the child that I lost,” says Shroff, now a patron of Mother’s Choice and one of its longest-serving volunteers.
