Welcoming Remarks: Lifelong Learning
Ms Helen Yiu (Supervisor, Kowloon City Baptist Church Neighbourhood Elderly Centre (Lok Fu)

As a part of Kowloon City Baptist Church Neighbourhood Elderly Centre, I am very glad to have the opportunity to work in partnership with the Faculty of Social Sciences of Hong Kong Baptist University for the second year of the inter-generational, inter-disciplinary Learning Community project.

The activities in the project fully demonstrate learning and harmony between generations. For instance, the university and secondary school participants introduced a lot of green household cleaning tips and tricks to the older adults, in response to this year’s theme “Green Living”. The older adults could keep themselves up-to-date with modern ways of cleaning while the young adults learned about the traditional ones. Such intergenerational exchanges also happened through games, songs, crafts and much more.

Our four older adult participants often gave advice and played a part in the project preparation process, which realises the project’s objective of intergenerational cooperation as well as the much respectable spirit of lifelong learning.

The entire project would not have run smoothly without the help of the teachers and students of Hong Kong Baptist University, as well as the students of Lee Kau Yan Memorial School, who are all caring individual willing to serve our community.

Lastly, I wish for every teacher abundance of talents in their pupils and for every student and older adult a fulfilling journey to come.

Welcoming Remarks: Harmony
Ms Law Kit Ying
District Director, H.K.S.K.H. Welfare Council Limited

Time flies, also is the time we spend together in the project. I believe that this project is a platform for inter-generational harmony between university students, secondary school students, older adults and staff from HKBU. We spent happy times together, devoting ourselves into the activities and shared with each other fervently.

I was most impressed by meticulousness of the students. They not only designed their activities to match the needs of the older adults, but also put in some creative elements so that the older adults experienced something new. I trust that these activities were meaningful to our older adults seeing them using products they made during the activities. Apart from carrying great memories of the participants, I hope this website can also serve as a witness to the inter-generational mutual learning and create a harmonious community.

Welcoming Remarks: Respect
Mr Jonathan Lai
Principal, Lee Kau Yan Memorial School

Being in the field of education, I hope that students not only acquire knowledge but also develop proper values. The latter is a complicated lesson to teach. This project taught them the most important principle of it — to respect.

The project leader, Professor Sivan, is not a native Cantonese speaker. Yet, she tried her best to speak to everyone in Cantonese, which shows her deep respect for the local culture. In the meantime, the university ambassadors are very humble. Instead of undermining the opinions of the less-experienced secondary school participants, they respected their points of view and worked to reach compromises with them. This project is one of inclusion – one with a mixture of people from different generations and professions who were all able to work in partnership with one another’s differences, shortcomings and talents.

Under the direction of Mr Wong King Hong, our school’s students have been the participants of the project for the past two years. I am excited to know that the project’s publication will be issued soon. I believe it will be a memoir of the students’ learning journey and all the participants’ happy memories in the project.