Serving with kindness: the Hong Kong restaurant that helps people with intellectual disabilities find their way in the workplace
- Holy Cafe in Cheung Sha Wan employs staff with mental disabilities, offering them a welcoming space free from discrimination
- Owner Maria Sung opened the restaurant to give her autistic daughter a place to work
Every day at lunch hour, a small restaurant in Cheung Sha Wan is packed with diners. But, unlike most establishments in the city, the pace is not hectic; dishes are served slowly and diners do not mind that most of the employees have mental disabilities.
The restaurant, named Holy Cafe, serves western-style food and was opened in 2011 by Maria Sung Law Man-kwan. The initial idea was to give her autistic daughter, who had difficulty finding a suitable job, something to do.
Having seen the challenges facing people with mental disabilities in the job market and their potential, Sung, 60, opens the door to them.
“They are a bit slow in understanding and working, but they are willing to learn and work hard as long as they are given opportunities,” she says.
There are anywhere between 71,000 and 101,000 people in Hong Kong with intellectual disabilities – between 1 and 1.4 per cent of the population – according to a 2013 survey by the Census and Statistics Department. Many of them have limitations in learning and reasoning and lack social skills.
