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Cindy Sui

At a park at a Hong Kong housing estate, an elderly South Asian man sits quietly by himself as a group of ethnic Chinese residents chat nearby.
This snapshot is all too common in the city’s Eastern district, which is home to a large population of South Asian residents.
Some residents in the area are elderly people from Pakistan, India and Nepal who have lived in Hong Kong for decades and came to the city to take care of their grandchildren while their sons and daughters worked long hours.
Emily Yeung Yin-chi and Kaur Kirandeep, who are leading a coming community project to support such residents, said many of them led lonely lives as they could not speak Cantonese or English.
“The loneliness is so great. They have no support from the community,” Yeung said.
Kirandeep said her own grandmother had come from India to look after her as a child and had experienced the same situation, explaining that one of the biggest challenges was fitting in.
“They have a small circle compared with Hong Kong Chinese elderly … They don’t go out and make friends,” she said.
“They rely on their caregivers for all their support, even their grandchildren, for doctor’s appointments, translations. There’s a huge language barrier that limits them from going out by themselves.”
The Integrated Children and Youth Service Centre (ICYSC) of Methodist Epworth Village Community Centre, Social Welfare is set to launch the project next year and will invite elderly residents from ethnic minority groups to share their life stories.
The scheme is set to receive money from Operation Santa Claus (OSC), an annual fundraising initiative held by the South China Morning Post and public broadcaster RTHK since 1988.
The annual drive has raised HK$383 million (US$9.1 million) to support the Hong Kong community through 353 charitable projects since then. There are 11 causes being funded this year.
The OSC funding for the project will go towards training 45 volunteers, who will record the stories of 30 elderly people and 16 youths from ethnic minority groups to be translated and shared to foster inclusion and mutual understanding.

Yeung, an assistant social work officer with the ICYSC’s integrated youth team, which serves 200 families in the Eastern district, half of whom are from ethnic minority groups, said she learned from youths and parents that they at times felt frustrated by their elderly relatives’ reliance on them for everything.
“Sometimes it’s really frustrating because you are their only support … We tend to not have our own time,” said Kirandeep, who is a welfare assistant on the team.
“They only want to go out with the grandkids. They think they don’t know anything and people are going to judge them,” she said.
“What I hear from my grandma is ‘If I go out alone by myself, what will people think of me that I still don’t know how to communicate?’
“She’s heard from locals: ‘You’ve been here for 30 years, how come you don’t speak English or Chinese?’”
Kirandeep said many of her grandmother’s generation never had the opportunity to go to school, so learning another language felt daunting.
Elderly people in such situations could feel isolated and were unaware of the services available to them, including medical tests and treatments, she said.
The project will also connect participants with therapists for art sessions where they can better express their feelings.
Project members will work with centres for the elderly to help ethnic minority residents get to know their peers.
“The neighbourhood community centres want to do something, but they don’t know how,” Yeung said.
“We hope to build a bridge between ethnic minority elderly and the elderly community centres … Their mission is not just to serve the Chinese elderly, but the non-Chinese elderly as well.”
Yeung said she also wanted to connect elderly people from ethnic minority groups with one another, so they could make new friends and build their own support groups.
“We hope Hong Kong will be more inclusive,” she said.
For more information on this year’s OSC beneficiaries, please click here.


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Hong Kong

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Community project under Methodist Epworth Village Community Centre set to launch next year with funding from OSC


Community project under Methodist Epworth Village Community Centre set to launch next year with funding from OSC.


Operation Santa Claus