Volunteer event at Dawn Island rehab centre helps tear down stereotypes of addiction
Law firm sends 20 volunteers for a programme sponsored by Operation Santa Claus that helps people struggling with drug addiction
Before Michelle Chan Tsz-wai made the one-hour boat ride to an island drug rehabilitation centre with 19 other volunteers from a Hong Kong law firm, she thought she had a pretty good idea about what people who suffered from addiction were like.
Chan, who works at Deacons law firm, said she was expecting to find a group that would be covered in tattoos and difficult to talk to after being hardened from the drug life.
What she found, however, shattered her stereotypes about addiction, she said, and her trip to the Gospel Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre of Operation Dawn has left her world view forever changed.
“I think it’s very meaningful, you get to see the people, you know that they have changed from taking drugs and now they are like a new person, they share with you their experience, they tell you how God has done work in them. So I’m very impressed,” she said. “I thought they would have tattoos and may not be very nice, but now after I’ve joined this session with them and I actually talked to them, I realise that I was wrong before.”
