what we do
What We do
We empower young asylum seekers and refugees to imagine, build and sustain a future for themselves and their community that they are proud to own. We aim to overcome barriers that hold back young people from achieving their dreams.
Learning Together fosters initiatives that integrate asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong and build leaders within an empowered community. Through a dedicated leadership program, education scholarships, and a unique English conversational class, we are helping to build a confident community and provide a framework to develop new skills for students, teachers and the wider public alike.
While many NGOs provide goods and services to the community, a one-way flow to community, in 2015 very few focused on creating capacity within the community. Our approach is to avoid the trap of donation by prioritising upskilling and leadership training.
Why We Do It
The average waiting time for an Asylum Seeker in Hong Kong in 7 years.
Over this time one major hurdle for the asylum seeker and refugee community (ASR) is inter-generational learned helplessness (a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They believe that they are unable to control or change the situation even when opportunities for change become available.)
In an environment where pathways to careers and education seem impossible, Learning Together sees a clear need to provide a platform that would help steer young people to see an optimistic future for themselves, build tangible skills, develop an entrepreneurial mind set, hence harness their ambition and self-confidence.
What We've Acheived
To date we have taught over 150 students (adults in the community) and nurtured the leadership skills of 14 teachers (young Asylum Seekers and Refugees between 15 and 25 years old). The English classes have become a bedrock of our activities. In this simple program we witness the transformation of the participants, both teachers and students. The young teachers are trained to take responsibility, managing the classes they learn accounting and budgeting, scheduling, and much more. In leading the classes they are trained in public speaking, in holding order and discipline amongst the students (remember these are teenagers managing full grown adults) while nurturing empathy and compassion (understanding the challenging situations experienced by the students).
Witnessing their transformation, and having planted the seed that “anything is possible”, the young people begin to aspire to enrol into university. In 2016 with the support of Justice Center, Global Shapers and Prof Gordon Matthews from Chinese University, we proudly helped admit the first Asylum Seeker into a Bachelors degree student into a Hong Kong University. Four years later we have provided scholarships to six more tertiary school students.