Wanted: 2,500 people. Must be able to donate at least HK$50 for a very good cause.
Guests and visitors at the Kowloon Shangri-La may have noticed that inside its lobby entrance stands a crystalline bead curtain with little Christmas wish-cards. It is a 'tree of hope'.
For Operation Santa Claus this year, the hotel's resident manager, Jens Corder, thought something different was needed to encourage people to make donations in these desperate financial times.
He hit on the idea of a four-dimensional tree.
'It literally started out as an abstract structure - just the beads dangling down, there is no real pattern or meaning to it yet,' he said when the tree was launched on Monday.
'But as people make wishes and tie their wishes to the beads, then the tree will start to take shape. Eventually the wishes will line up and you will have a silhouette or an outline of a tree. That's why we call it the tree of hope,' said Mr Corder, an Australian who has been in the post for six months.
The hotel made the first donation of HK$5,000 to kick off its drive and presented the cheque to the organisers of the OSC, the South China Morning Post and RTHK.
