Same as last year, two Gods of Fortune’s arrival brought the climax of the evening. They were extremely popular, not because of their gold ingots. The main reason behind was "they are who they are". They are our German colleagues. All of a sudden, all elderly became “little fans” showing up their hands for taking pictures with the two Gods of Fortune exclusively from Siemens. Every one of us, the elderly and the volunteers, had a very enjoyable evening together.
This summer, we had our first cooperation with Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong (BGCA), a long-established organization in Hong Kong since 1936. We have co-organized a Project “Revive My Dreams” to give children more exposures and opportunity to try out new and meaningful experiences. We had our first co-organized activity on August 16 for some 70 children to experience organic farming and bread making in the Produce Green Foundation. The farm tutors taught us what organic is about, what we could do in our day-to-day living to save the environment, which was the theme of the day – to raise the children’s awareness of conservation and environmental protection. The farm tutors also taught us how to make organic bread. Every child became a baker and enjoyed making their own bread. We then further learnt the process and benefits of organic farming and worked like a farmer on the fertilization, planting and etc.
On September 20, we had our second activity for the children to visit two Siemens customer sites, the CLP Power Plant in Castle Peak and the MTR West Rail Control Centre in Pat Heung. More than 100 participating children, volunteers and BGCA staff joined this activity. The ElectriCity, an exhibition centre next to the Castle Peak Power Plant, has quite a number of exciting and interesting models showing the mechanism of power generation. The children had the chance to know more about various power generation methods and the amount of electricity that is being generated by different power plants in the New Territories and Shenzhen. After visiting the Power Plant, we went to the MTR West Rail Control Centre in Pat Heung. In the Main Control Room, every West Rail train can be monitored through the advanced control systems. All children felt so excited to learn more about the technologies supporting our daily life.
Despite the fact that June is a typical rainy season, we had perfect weather on June 21 which brought us together with 60 elderly from St. James’ Settlement for the one-day outing to 2 Disney Hotels & Hong Kong Airport SkyPlaza. At our first destination, Disney Hotel, some elderly enjoyed walking and talking photos in the hotel garden under the bright sunshine, while some were rather looking for little souvenirs for their grandsons and granddaughters in the souvenir shop. We then moved to Hollywood Hotel to have a rich buffet lunch at Café Deco. The restaurant is nice and spacious. However, the irregular table sizes (varied from 5’s to 18’s persons per table) increased our difficulties in the seating arrangement especially for those with special needs. Our volunteers were busy at picking up food for the elderly who were very satisfied with the 2-hour buffet lunch.
Having fully filled up our stomachs, we went to the last stop, Airport SkyPlaza. There was a special exhibition hall, the Aviation Discovery Centre, which is devoted to the history and technology of aviation. Some of the elderly showed great interests in the exhibits which reminded themselves of the first experience on the plane. On the way back, we had a Q&A game about the history of Hong Kong & the 2008 Olympics. Surprisingly, all elderly were able to give correct answers and won all the prizes. This outing volunteer service ended in loads of laughter from the elderly.