Tung Chung Integrated Service organizes work experience programme for children

Publish Date: 16-Jun-2021

A group of children aged six to twelve took part in the Kid Boss Weekend Work Experience Programme organized by HKSKH Tung Chung Integrated Service’s Children and Family Service Department. The inspiration of this programme was drawn from the experiences of the Dreams Come True team, who discovered that children nowadays focuses most of their time on schoolwork and the internet, thus lacking in proactiveness and real-life experiences, and as a result, the children tend to rely on others to resolve their problems.

Participating children tried their hands on being postmen, hairdressers, and hawkers selling fish. Social workers and staff at the Tung Chung Integrated Service played the role of bosses and gave these children instructions such as sorting letters, measuring the weight of parcels, hawking merchandises, sorting fishing, and dressing hair.

The social worker Lee Wing-lam, who played one of the bosses, said, “Although the children were inexperienced in their job skills and were not self-sufficient, they were enthusiastic about learning. What surprised the team was the children’s serious attitude.”

At the end of the “workday”, the bosses graded the children on their enthusiasm, job skills, and courtesy and rewarded them accordingly with coupons of different values. The participating children can use these coupons to purchase stationery, toy building blocks, biscuits, and instant noodles. The coupons served as tools to teach them money management skills and to cherish everything given by their parents. Some children decided not to spend their coupons on toys but on daily necessities because they learned how hard their parents had worked and they would like to lighten their burdens.