Student group finds diverse ways to advocate for refugees in Hong Kong
By Sophia Lawrance
RCHK student activist group Refugee Action is working with Asylum Action for a project called Live like a Refugee that starts on 6th December. Participants will have to live off of $40 for a day, and they can choose to participate for 1/3/5 days. They will be sponsored for the length of their simulation so that they can fundraise.
Refugee Action Team, started in 2019 by Sammi Choi and Gina Ng (class of 2020) aims to “raise awareness about refugees within the RCHK community, and to help through fundraising and active engagement.”
Taken over by six students: Grace Chong, Juliette Ho, Solenne Palmer, Heer Jhaveri, Hemashri Mohan, Theresia Purnomo, the organisation is continuing on for another academic year.
In Hong Kong refugees do not receive extra government funding for masks as they are unregistered citizens. The diversity of cultures in Hong Kong stems from refugees coming from neighbouring countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and India. Moreover, the current refugee acceptance rate here is only 0.6%, which is extremely poor compared to the global average of 43%. While asylum seekers wait for claims to be processed, the HK government provides them with just over HK$3,000 per month for housing, transport and food; a very minimal amount.
Grace Chong, project manager, explains the main goals and objectives as four main points: raise awareness, fundraise, get hands on involvement, and to help refugees during the COVID-19 situation.
“Last year, we focused mainly on advocacy amongst the primary school students. However, we hope to expand our reach and allow our secondary peers to learn more about the refugee crisis in Hong Kong, especially amidst the global pandemic. For instance, one of our initiatives for this year is creating an instagram page to educate people about these refugees and how the pandemic has affected them.” On their instagram account @refugeeactionteam, the student-led organisation communicates their aims regularly through a series of posts.
As a team, they decided to focus on working with Christian Action primarily. “Christian Action is one of the largest NGOs in Hong Kong that work with refugees, and we have contacted them last year for extra school initiatives,” she explains. “Through Christian Action, we hope to gain more first-hand experience and a deeper understanding of the struggles refugees face. Hopefully, this will allow us to become more educated about the crisis and more helpful when advocating for them.” Elaborating further, she talks about building connections so that once the pandemic has passed, they will be able to invite them to potentially host talks at school.
As for their daily schedule, she says “We have meetings every Monday and discuss initiatives. We don’t have a clear timeline as of right now but we are planning to do something school wide on 20th June for World Refugee Day.”
Juliette Ho, finance and logistics manager, describes the experiences she's had as part of the team. “Last year, we did a world map activity where we had students pin where they are from on a map. We also did fundraising for Branches of Hope, selling bracelets at the school fair which raised over $3000. For the primary kids, we did a presentation and simulation where we made paper bags, dividing some groups that were allocated more privilege depending on what resources they received.”
Solenne Palmer, art and design/marketing manager, commented on ways that students can get involved. “There are many ways to help refugees. Multiple organisations in Hong Kong offer volunteering programs which are available for students, whether it's helping in the admin office or hanging out with the refugees.You can bring your own talents into the volunteering, if you are good at basketball you can volunteer to play basketball with them, if you’re good at painting you can volunteer to paint with them, anything is possible! Other ways to get involved can be participating in refugee related activities at school and donating money to organisations.”
Refugee Action Team’s impact on the community is felt both on a smaller and larger scale across Hong Kong. Palmer says, “As we are planning on holding multiple fundraising initiatives throughout the year, the money raised helps Christian Action provide the refugees with a better lifestyle, education, quality food, shelter, sanitation products, job opportunities and more. Not only this, the health care products such as masks, hand sanitizers, etc, that we will be collecting could help them feel more safe and secure during COVID-19. By advocating for refugees, we could abolish the stigma that may exist in Hong Kong and the preconceived notions about them, allowing people to understand who they are and why they need our help. The advocacy will also allow the RCHK community to understand the real extent and severity of this issue, which would encourage them to possibly give in the form of donating products or money.”
Updates about the Live like a Refugee initiative can be found on the Refugee Action Team’s Instagram page.