Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs is impressed!

Last week I told you about being grateful for several things that happened, but there was no space to tell you about one more thing – actually one person for whom I am extremely grateful. Mrs Carrie Yau Tsang Ka-lai, one of Hong Kong’s most outstanding Permanent Secretaries, has encouraged and mentored me over several decades (initially as a CA Board member) and recently came with me to Qinghai.  She travelled for many bone-jarring hours to get to our projects without complaint!

This is a little of the encouraging information Carrie emailed to me after our return:

CA is visionary! The target is not just to help the poor but help the poor to help themselves to rid themselves of poverty.  The strategy is twofold.  First, the brick house project CA helped pioneer has convinced the roving population that such an asset can be mortgaged for other productive purposes i.e. providing money to raise more cattle and sheep. So apart from helping the family to survive the cold winter, this has actually improved their all round quality of life.  Second, CA adopted the right direction in building schools and offering scholarships for high school students because education is paramount. Importantly, access is not denied to children in rural areas who have ability.

The challenge for CA is to design suitable programs since local governments with the support of the central government can now handle the building of schools and orphanages.  One approach is to provide culturally appropriate vocational training for teenagers including those coming out of orphanages.

I’m grateful to Carrie and all the people who came with me to Qinghai, including medical professionals from the U.S.  It wasn’t a comfortable trip, but as Carrie said, “It’s but a small taste of what your Christian Action team has to go through in order to reach the poor up here”. Carrie was fascinated by the culturally rich Tibetan region, where three of China’s five major rivers have their headwaters. And I like to think that out of this region will flow some of China’s leading students as well! 

Carrie has highlighted scholarships for students from this part of the Tibetan Plateau, and I’d love it if you could encourage others to consider providing a scholarship for these kids so that they can reach their full potential.  Let me know if you want to sponsor and encourage a student or two.

God bless you!