Helping senior citizens is one thing, but making a lasting positive impact on their lives, while also enriching the lives of your staff members, is another altogether. Late last year, banking giant HSBC sought to achieve this goal with the launch of its 'Silver Dreams Come True' campaign.
Spearheaded by the company's corporate sustainability team and fully-funded by the Hongkong Bank Foundation, the wide-ranging programme - with its multiple aspirations - may be the group's most ambitious to date.
'We were trying to devise a way to better impact our beneficiaries, while also positioning our staff as a force-for-good in the community,' says Teresa Au, HSBC's head of corporate sustainability for Asia Pacific. To achieve this, participating staff members were grouped into teams of five. Each team was then asked to independently cater to one of 50 shortlisted 'dreams' - the lifelong wishes sourced from members of Hong Kong's elderly community - with little more than their wits and a meagre budget of just HK$4,000 per group.
'As a result, volunteers could not simply rely on money alone,' explains Au. 'They had to leverage their skills, experience and other resources.'
Rosemary Mak, an assistant manager for the bank's financial control and reporting department, was one such volunteer. Shortly after agreeing to help 90-year-old Fung Wai-chu host an exhibition of her late husband's calligraphy works, Mak and her teammates quickly found themselves short on funds.
'The quotation for the 10 exhibition panels we needed to display the calligraphy was seven times over our budget,' she says. 'We hadn't even begun to factor in the cost of the venue.'