Changing Lives, One Scholarship At A time

For those of us who’ve been blessed enough to grow up in a family where we take our education for granted, it’s hard to envisage what it’d be like to not complain about having to go to school every morning but instead struggling and begging our parents to pay our way through it.

Growing up in a city like Hong Kong, most of us have had our parents pay our way through high-school and most likely even university, without thinking much of it. Unbeknownst to many, just right across the border in the Northwestern Guangdong Province of China, promising young female students were forced to drop out of a top tier high school in the area and the reason being their families couldn’t afford to pay 3000 HKD a year for their education.

In 2006-07, three high school seniors from HKIS (Hong Kong International School) initiated a project with the aim of supporting these girls to attend high school, partnering up with the Concordia Welfare and Education Foundation (CWEF), a Hong Kong-based non-profit organisation to create the Care for Learning and Community scholarship program.

In 2010, some of the past project leaders created EMBER with the help of a few friends. EMBER aims to ensure the long-term sustainability of the scholarship program and help spread the message to a wider audience in Hong Kong. EMBER provides scholarships to girls from rural Guangdong, whoae annual family income generally fall between $1000-3000 HKD, The EMBER executive board focuses on both expanding educational resources and opportunities for the female scholarship recipients in China through various career and college counselling workshops as wells as leadership camps and mentoring Hong Kong high school students at EMBER campus branches to become more socially conscientious leaders.

EMBER official website/ember-hk.org/?page_id=87&wppa-album=1&wppa-photo=12&wppa-occur=1

Now, in it’s 7th year of it’s existence, EMBER has managed to raise more than 1.5 million HKD and over 300 students have benefitted from their scholarship program.

For more information and details of how you can also help, visit EMBER’s official website here.

The Ivy Social 2014

Just last week, the annual Ivy Social networking event endorsed by the Hong Kong Student Associations of 8 Ivy league Universities was held at Boujis Club at Central. The event was aimed at creating opportunities for university students to meet each other in a fun and casual environment, all profits the night were donated to EMBER.

For more information on the Ivy Social click here.