‘Walk for Equality’ to fund vocational training for disabled adults in Hong Kong begins
- Faride Shroff founded the SENsational Foundation to improve the lives of people with disabilities in Hong Kong and encourage employers to hire them
- It has organised a virtual walkathon fundraiser called ‘Walk for Equality’ to support its vocational training, which anyone anywhere can join
Fewer than two in 100 companies in Hong Kong employ people with disabilities. It’s a statistic that Faride Shroff wants to change.
Shroff is the founder of SENsational Foundation, a Hong Kong charity that helps improve the lives of people with disabilities by providing diversity and inclusion training to encourage the hiring of people with disabilities.
There are good reasons why she wants to open corporate doors.
“Worldwide there are more than one billion people with disabilities, with 500,000 in Hong Kong,” says Shroff. Of the ones in Hong Kong, one-third are of working age yet only 39 per cent of this group are economically active.
“We want equal opportunities for people with disabilities, for them to have a chance to be employed, because there are so many who have the potential but are not given the chance,” she says. “We want to give everyone a chance to reach their potential, to serve and give back to the community and not be treated as charity. That’s not what they want. They want to be recognised for their talents.”