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Tag: Advocacy

Engage Students in Issue of Global Poverty – a Primary School Teacher’s Vision

Banner image: Ms. Jade Lee, CEDAR’s working partner of education ministry in HK ‘How many human traffickers are there in the world at present?’ ‘Apart from Hong Kong, will CEDAR Fund be raising funds for poor children in other places?’ In January this year, CEDAR went to a school under the Direct Subsidy Scheme in Shek Kip Mei to give a talk, which so interested the Primary 5 students in the audience that they raised their hands and asked many questions afterwards. The topic of the talk was ‘Anti-human trafficking’. Our staff explained the definition of human trafficking, talked about how some children in Asia and Africa have been trafficked in the past and described how we can

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Education on Helping the Poor Starts from a Young Age: Interview with the Rev. Eugene Leung of E.F.C.C. Jachin Church

Written by: Edward Lai How many clothes do you have in your wardrobe? You probably don’t remember the exact number, and you’d probably say: “I don’t know.” The truth is possibly that there are numerous items. Like many people in Hong Kong, The Rev. Eugene Leung owns more clothes than he needs. When a staff from CEDAR raised the question at a church gathering, The Reverend, who was present, realised that he owned the most clothes. That said, isn’t it normal to own more than what you need? The Rev. Eugene Leung Eugene Leung said, “I’d never thought about whether I needed that many clothes. The way the fashion industry works these days is that when I’m replacing

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Whose Neighbours Do I Want to Become?

Written by: The Reverend Anders Chan Ming-chuen (Board Member of CEDAR, Associate Senior Pastor of Mongkok Baptist Church) The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 is a well-known passage of scripture. An expert in the law asked Jesus to provide an objective definition for the word “neighbour”, but his real intention was to justify his xenophobic point of view – there were people whom he did not have the obligation to love (to him, “neighbour” probably only referred to other Jews). This reflected the sense of national superiority of the expert in the law and his moral values. Even though the Jews did not have their own country at the time, they still prided themselves in

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Let the Community Be Responsible for Their Children’s Education

Education is a very important part of eradicating poverty. Yet, many children living in low-income countries do not have the opportunity to receive proper education. Their parents are usually occupied by work to earn a living to put food on the table, thus they seldom think about the future of their children, who they thought would likely share similar fate like them. Because in their eyes, earning income to support their families is more important than getting an educational access for their children. We understand that if parents do not see the importance of education, they will not send their children to schools. Therefore, CEDAR has worked with World Concern Bangladesh and churches in the country to start

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A Story of the $100-Red-Packet

Written by: Edward Lai “This year, will you be willing to donate your red packet money to the underprivileged people in other countries? “ “Yes, of course!” Fung Tin-lam answered confidently. Ting-lam, a third-grader, is like any Hong Kong boy we know. His daily routine includes school, homework, and playing his favorite toys before dinner. His life and his world, never overlap with those who live in developing countries away from Hong Kong. Even though Tin-lam has never met them, he has determined to save up part of his red packet money to share with them. 100 dollars may not be much to a lot of people; but to Tin-lam, it is a significant amount for a new toy

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Uprooting Poverty: The Perspective of Christian Faith

Written by: Raymond Kwong (CEDAR’s Chief Executive) and Jady Sit In recent years, the international development sector began to emphasise the importance of human inner transformation for uprooting poverty. For instance, Cornell University Professor Kaushik Basu, who serves as the chief economist of World Bank from 2012 to 2016, shared in a public lecture, that no matter what kind of models of poverty alleviation is, one of the key factors to its success is whether people are willing to let go of some of their own interests or economic benefits and seek higher purposes, with which human being in general are common, and so, he advocates strengthening values education in society. This is about changing hearts and minds.

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TV Programmes That Could Benefit Children across the Middle East

Christianity was born in the Middle East, a region rich in culture, history, yet also, full of turbulence and persecution. SAT-7 is a Christian media network, making God’s love visible across the Middle East and North Africa through uncensored satellite television programme. Satellite television effectively break the barriers of religions, literacy, and censorship, making SAT-7’s programmes available to be broadcast across the Middle East and North Africa and accessible online internationally. CEDAR is supporting SAT-7’s new channel – SAT-7 Academy (launched in September). The channel produces holistic programmes, covering topics like education, health, and social development, for 6 million refugee and internally displaced children, and 15 million people who did not have access to proper education in the

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Living with the Poor – An Interview with Sir Mok

Interviewing & Editing: Tsun Wan Yan The acts of distributing necessities and visiting elder homes are still the dominant means of social involvement for some of the churches and Christian groups in Hong Kong. Mr. Mok Hing Luen (Sir Mok), a veteran in the field of Hong Kong’s social involvement and social work education, thinks that there are much more we could do to our society. “The church is complacent in giving the resources it has received from God to the people it sees that has a need,” said Sir Mok, who argues that such a downstream mindset of social involvement and poverty solving adopted by churches is self-limiting. But first we must cease boasting our roles among

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