Meet the Vietnamese expats making a difference to Hong Kong’s homeless
Volunteers distribute necessities and build air cooling systems, among other projects, to help city’s Vietnamese refugees and local homeless population
In a modest workshop perched above a side street in Yau Tong, four expatriate women sat at a wooden table, diligently cutting pentagon-shaped holes in bottle caps with small knives and chatting in Vietnamese.
In another workstation just across the room, another cluster of people were also hard at work, drilling into a thin piece of wood.
They are a grassroots group of expat volunteers making an environmentally friendly and low technology air cooling system out of used bottles and wooden parts – a system they hope will help the homeless population living on the streets of Sham Shui Po, said Nina To, who organised the gathering.
“We were thinking of ways that these homeless people could tackle the heat. A lot of them raised the concern that they can’t sleep,” To said. “We don’t know whether it will work, but we’re building it for them.”
It might seem like a strange way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Yet for To and other volunteers, it was just one of many projects they are working on to help the city’s homeless population, where some of the most vulnerable are Vietnamese.