Cupid’s aim: ChickenSoup Foundation programme helps Hong Kong’s neediest families weather the storm
- Project Family Cupid helps local families on the brink with food vouchers, counselling and help navigating the government’s aid bureaucracy
- Version 3.0 of the programme will become a reality thanks to funding from Operation Santa Claus, organised by the South China Morning Post and RTHK
Lisa Hou, a mother of two, recalls eating wild vegetables her elderly mother picked in Kowloon Park for dinner last year so they could save the family’s meagre resources for the children.
“We would buy the children vegetables from the market when they became cheaper at night,” she said, fighting back her tears.
Hou, 41, is a Shenzhen resident, while her 10-year-old son and four-year-old daughter were born in Hong Kong.
The family’s situation took a major turn for the worse in 2018 when Hou’s husband, also from Shenzhen, abandoned them, unable to accept that their daughter had autism.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Hong Kong government allowed Hou to renew her visitor visa without returning to mainland China every three months – a previous requirement – and she has been living with her children in Hong Kong full-time since August 2020. Her mother joined them a few months later.
