Hongkongers reach out across the border

It was in 1994, when a telephone repairman working for Hong Kong Telecom heard about a flood in the Guangxi autonomous region. With his job he was able to take time off, so he contacted a few friends and a group of them decided that rather than just coming up with a donation, they would head to the mainland to give direct help. They raised more than HK$200,000 to buy some rice and clothing, plus hand out cash to villagers affected by the disaster.

Well, that was the plan. But unscrupulous local merchants sold them bad rice, and the "disaster" wasn't the calamity on the ground that they expected - which was a good thing. But the villagers were happy to take the cash anyway.

"So we left with a feeling that this outreach had been fairly ineffectual, and hadn't had the impact we wanted," said the former repairman, Kan Yiu-kwong, 66.

These days, he is the chairman of the Grace Charity Foundation. "Afterwards, we had funds left over. So we discussed what we could do with the money. We decided that in future, we would minimise cash handouts."

Kan and his friends decided to contact the Hope Foundation, an international children's charity, at its branch in Guangxi. "We conducted a site visit, and that was a place that really needed our funds, to rebuild dilapidated schools and help the children [with school supplies]," Kan said.

It cost Kan and his group of donors just HK$200,000 to build their first school. Once built, he invited the donors to come and see the school and meet the children. "All my friends came and they said: 'Wah! It's a good deal! It's so big, with toilets and a playground.' And they wanted to build more schools."