IT'S 8PM ON Christmas Eve, and social worker and former legislator Nelson Wong Sing-chi slowly moves to the stage of the Chai Wan Baptist Church to face its 600-strong congregation. The Democratic Party member is not here to organise a protest or discuss government policies tonight, but to deliver a sermon about his personal ordeals.
'In 1994, I lost my seat in the district council election,' he says. 'My wife just gave birth to our son, and she was discovered to have kidney problems and needed expensive treatment every month. My son was underweight and was constantly ill. I had to stay home to take care of both of them. And my mother died of cancer that year. I was very depressed and lost confidence and felt that I was useless.' But with the encouragement of friends such as former legislator Tik Chi-yuen, Wong fought back. He won a seat as a regional councillor in 1995, followed by successes in the 1999 District Board elections and, finally, a directly elected seat in the 2000 Legislative Council elections.
After he finishes his speech, Wong rushes to a stage behind the Sogo Department Store in Causeway Bay where, before hundreds of by-standers, he interviews Tik about his values of life and family, to be broadcast as the second episode of his new Cable TV's series Right Wind Forum on life education.
Wong's activities are part of a new project to promote life education in Hong Kong as a facet of his self-funded, non-profit-making Restoration Centre in Cheung Sha Wan. Formed in 2000 by Wong and his younger brother (university social work professor Dennis Wong Sing-wing) to help young offenders, the centre added a new service in 2002 to provide life-education courses for students.
In October, a month after his Legislative Council election defeat, Wong joined the centre as full-time superintendent of life education and started targeting the wider public. He's still raising funds for this enterprise, but he invites friends who have overcome their own problems to tell others how to face them.
'They have different experiences,' says Wong, 47, one of eight social workers at the centre. 'One is a barrister and another is a district board member, both of whom spent time in prison. Another is someone in a wheelchair who helps other patients, and there are long-term hospital patients who help others, too. They'll give talks, training and share their experiences with teenagers and adults.'
