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Hong Kong’s Dialogue in the Dark Foundation aims to nurture role models. Photo: Edward Wong

Hong Kong NGO Dialogue in the Dark is changing the game to help young Chinese disabled people shine in the workplace

  • The Dialogue in the Dark Foundation aims to nurture role models and has helped 20 trainees since 2016
  • Participants in the programme are taught self-advocacy and other ways to build assertiveness so as to open up career opportunities
City Weekend

At the age of 18, on the cusp of what he hoped would be a dazzling future, Raymond Sun Jingrui was stricken with blindness and found his life suddenly changed.

“It was like falling from the sky down to earth. I thought I had been thrown on the scrap heap,” he says.

Locking himself away at home for four years, the Guangzhou youngster finally worked his way through all the mental torment, developing an interest in psychology in the process.

But Sun soon realised the only realistic career open to him was being a masseur. Now 30 and the owner of a massage parlour, he says there is always a part of him yearning for something else: “I want to get out of this circle of the blind.”

The organisation helps graduates with job-hunting by harnessing its connections with mainland companies. Photo: Handout

This summer, Sun has been presented with such an opportunity by Hong Kong’s Dialogue in the Dark Foundation, an NGO that aims to nurture role models. In 2016, it launched a programme that offers three-month job training and internships to physically disabled mainlanders with higher education. The organisation continues to help graduates with job-hunting by harnessing its connections with mainland companies.

Dialogue in Dark opens visitors' eyes to visually impaired

The Dialogue Academy initiative has benefited a total of 20 trainees, including Sun and his four peers this year. Some 80 per cent of previous graduates have found new jobs in mainstream professions back in mainland China, according to its founder Chong Chan-yau, who himself is an emblematic figure in Hong Kong’s blind community.

“People with disabilities often end up putting up with things in their personal lives and in their jobs. We tell them that they can also be equal working partners and citizens, and not just passively take what society doles out to them,” Chong says.

Former finance minister John Tsang Chun-wah appears in a video for the Dialogue in the Dark Foundation in 2017. Photo: Facebook

Developing such values is not an easy task even for someone like Sun, who has managed to attain a degree of stability in his life.

“I thought I’d accepted who I was. I’d cured myself mentally by reading about psychology. But no one ever told me it was also important to let other people accept me,” he says.

Sun mentions his favourite course on the programme: self-advocacy, which encourages students to accentuate their talents and needs at work. “For example, my disability can be an advantage, because I tend to be sensitive and compassionate, which would help if I were to work as a counsellor one day.”

Hong Kong homes for the disabled struggling under subsidy pressures

His fellow trainee Susie Hu Wenqian, a Hebei resident born with total blindness, also finds self-promotion strategies effective during her internship as an office clerk.

“The first day at work, I introduced myself in front of all my colleagues, telling them what I can and can’t do. From then on, I never worried about shying away from asking for help, which used to be a big concern for me,” says Hu, whose job was offering massage sessions to employees at a mainland company.

 “It surprised me when I realised that sometimes people don’t mean to offend you. It’s just that if you don’t speak about your needs, they never know,” she adds.

Now 30 and the owner of a massage parlour, Raymond Sun says there is always a part of him yearning: “I want to get out of this circle of the blind.” Photo: AFP

Another trainee, Amanda Hu Cuiyan, who has albinism, recalls having difficulty exposing her poor eyesight to colleagues even after years of working. “I was promoted to the position of team leader in the company, but I am still sensitive about letting my guard down about my disability.”

Amanda Hu says that this programme particularly appeals to her because it offers guidance on career planning, which, as someone with disabilities, she has never had.

“I think [all the trainees] were selected partly because we shared a strong will to break out of the routines of life,” she says, even if they might entail stepping out of their comfort zone.

Tiffany Du Yanjie, a Gansu-based tutor who has been paraplegic since a car accident when she was in college, feels that this bonding among all trainees enables them to understand and respect each other.

“I’m really impressed by how [my peers] walk around and live independently with their blindness. I certainly wouldn’t have done so well,” says the 30-year-old wheelchair user.

The NGO helping Hongkongers with disabilities break into the workforce

The youngest member of the group, university student Victoria Xie Zihui, who was born with poor eyesight, says her experience on the programme taught her a priceless lesson about empathy, something she thought, as a disabled person, she could be exempted from.

The 21-year-old, who hails from Shandong province, thinks she used to be “arrogant” precisely because of her physical limitation. “I’m often like: my eyes are bad, so why don’t others come and care about me?” Xie says.

“It really changed the way I see things after I met these tutors, some of whom also have disabilities, who tried everything to understand me.”

All five say the Dialogue Academy may prove to be a life-changing experience. “It’s inspiring to know there are people like me trying to break the circle [of disabilities],” says Sun, who has just got an offer to do psychological counselling with a Guangzhou NGO.

Amanda Hu says: “I hope we can spark something off in the disabled community.”

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