Alibaba staff get the sleigh bells ringing in festive fun ride
E-commerce company sponsors about 20 children to take part in race
The Chinese e-commerce company joined the list of donors to the charity this year after its acquisition of the South China Morning Post.
About 20 Alibaba employees built makeshift sleighs with cardboard and tinsel.
Cheongho Li, chairman of the Alibaba community team, said they were proud to support local charity groups.
“OSC is a very meaningful charity campaign that aims to support the Hong Kong community and beyond,” he said.
“We are thrilled to be part of it and make a contribution to the development of our society. It is also a great corporate social responsibility endeavour that glues us together.”
The charity’s new programme, A Step Towards Your New Life, aims to tutor 100 young adults and 2,000 primary school children, supported by HK$850,000 from OSC.
The programme’s young adults, aged 18 to 25, will then be expected to develop a sufficient proficiency in English to allow them to teach the children.
Founded in 1988, OSC, which is jointly organised by the Post and RTHK, has raised over HK$250 million for more than 230 charities in Hong Kong, many of which support young people. Last year it raised a record HK$21.3 million for a variety of good causes and this year the organisers set a minimum target of HK$17 million.
“It is important for our staff to participate because in Alibaba what we strive to do is to empower small businesses and make it easy to do business anywhere,” he said.
“This vision can only be achieved if our staff have the passion and commitment to lend our supporting hands to those less advantaged and thus make our society a better place to live in the first place.”
He added it was vital that companies such as Alibaba worked with partner agencies to reduce Hong Kong’s growing wealth gap.
