Stay calm, pray & do your best!

Summer is a time of happy holidays abroad or entertaining activities for the children at home in Hong Kong. But money is scarce for some parents of children from ethnic minorities. Such holidays are an impossible dream for children whose parents are struggling to make ends meet.

I'm happy to say that our SHINE centre for Ethnic Minorities is helping at least some of those children to enjoy the holidays and at the same time be encouraged to make their own dreams come true.

Cavin was bullied because he kept to himself. He appears to be an awkwardly shy teenager, but once you gain his confidence, he interacts delightfully and shares his feelings about how much he enjoys our barbecues, hiking activities; martial arts and tutorial classes. Janice, our social worker at the SHINE centre, says Cavin has grown in confidence since coming to SHINE so the other kids don't bully him as much.

Then there's Asma, an A-grade student, whose parents are from Pakistan.

She has ambition, but Asma quickly gave up when activities became challenging. Our role was to help her realize that she will have to be determined if she wants to fulfil her dreams.

A few days ago we took Cavin, Asma and thirteen of their teenage friends on an overnight camp. They were both wide-eyed when they spoke of having to navigate a dark path up a (short) mountain on their own. They admitted they were terrified and didn't want to do it. An encouraging song was located on someone's mobile phone before the first walker stepped out of the circle of light. Asma said "I now know that if I am ever in a challenging situation, all I need to do is stay calm, pray and try my best!"

Very soon, we'll be extending the challenges by collaborating with other charities and giving these children some volunteer training, such as visiting an old people's home.  In this way, we'll build bridges between local Chinese teenagers and the teens at our SHINE centre. Asma has already firmly stated her own ambition: "I want to (volunteer to) teach Chinese!" She speaks, reads and writes fluent Chinese, so this may well be an expectation we can meet!

About 150 children have attended our SHINE Centre Youth Programme over the past year.  We can pray they will do their best and learn how to make their own dreams come true!