Small acts, shared dreams: students find purpose in helping children in need

About 300 Hong Kong students applied this year for roughly 30 places on an overseas programme to help children in need, up from about 50 applicants last year.

Dream Compassioneers co-founder Chan Yik-yeung said the response also showed what students could achieve when trusted with responsibility.

Founded in 2020, the organisation runs local and overseas service programmes and is a member of the International Association for Volunteer Effort.

Its recent projects have taken volunteers to Cambodia, the Philippines and Nepal. Contacts made at an international volunteer conference in South Korea also led to exchanges with organisations in Zambia.

Participants can begin in junior committee roles before taking on responsibilities in event planning and fundraising, and eventually move into executive positions.

“We hope to serve the world and let more people understand those who need help, but nurturing young people is also an important part of what we do,” Chan said.

Co-founder and executive director Ice Or Ka-ying balances running her own start-up with what amounts to a full-time role at Dream Compassioneers, despite the organisation having no paid staff. Its network includes advisers, board members, executive committee members and school-based service clubs.

For Or, this embodies the “Hong Kong spirit”.

“Everyone contributes what they can, and we work towards the same goal,” she said.

Before sending larger groups overseas, the organisation sends smaller teams to visit potential partners and assess arrangements.

It also maintains contact with government bodies, Chinese diplomatic missions and local organisations.

During a recent programme in Nepal, participants visited four institutions serving children in difficult circumstances. Or said many students wanted to take part again after returning to Hong Kong.

Chan recalled how children at one institution remembered volunteers from the previous year and asked about them by name. Students also brought donated stationery and other supplies, while the group sought to identify needs that Hong Kong organisations could help meet.

In Cambodia, Dream Compassioneers has established the Trabaek Community Dream Compassioneers Preschool, which provides education and daily meals for children in rural communities.

Volunteering has also shaped some members’ study choices.

Adelin Lin Ho-yan, a first-year social work student at the University of Hong Kong and a vice-president of the group’s 2026-27 executive committee, said three years of service activities had helped persuade her to study social work. She previously served as president of the group’s club at Yan Chai Hospital Law Chan Chor Si College.

A trip to South Korea was particularly memorable for Lin.

“I saw that there were many people from different places who shared the same commitment to serving people in need,” she said.

Fellow vice-president Sophia Yau Yuet-sum, a first-year hotel and tourism management student at Chinese University, joined the group in Form Three. She progressed from learning to organise activities to chairing one edition of its debate competition.

The executive committee is led by president Charlene Fong Hoi-tung, a first-year mental health nursing student at Hong Kong Metropolitan University.

Another vice-president, Yanna Wong Yu-hei, a Form Six student at St Paul’s Convent School, joined after discovering the group’s Chinese New Year fair and debate competition on social media.

“Young people may sometimes underestimate what they can do,” Or said. “But when we come together as a team, we can achieve far more than we might expect.”

The Spirit of Hong Kong Awards were established in 2013 to recognise society’s unsung heroes and organisations whose work might otherwise escape public attention.