Hong Kong Christmas cracker project teaches teens about business, gets ethnic minority and international school students working together
- Lessons from business leaders help students design, produce and sell more than 30,000 crackers
- Project by Zubin Foundation and Irish Chamber of Commerce helps teens from different backgrounds interact
When Mehreen Hassan first heard of a Christmas cracker, she imagined it was a biscuit.
“I thought it was something to eat, but it’s not,” the 15-year-old Hongkonger of Pakistani descent recalled with a laugh.
She not only found out about the Christmas novelty over the summer, but also became part of a project that designed, produced and sold more than 30,000 crackers for charity.
The profits went to the Zubin Foundation, a charity that supports the city’s ethnic minority communities.
Mehreen was among 21 students who took part in a six-week programme organised by the foundation and the Irish Chamber of Commerce, with corporate sponsors, to teach teenagers business skills.
More than 20 business leaders volunteered as instructors to show the group how to create a product from scratch, moving from the idea stage to design, factory production and marketing.
The participants, aged 15 to 18, included seven ethnic minority students from public schools, including Mehreen, as well as students from international schools.
For their project, they used sustainable materials such as recycled paper made in Hong Kong. The crackers were made locally at a social enterprise factory and packed in boxes sourced from mainland China.
Christmas crackers, which make a snapping sound when pulled apart to reveal a mystery trinket or joke inside, are popular over Christmas in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The crackers went on sale in October, and exceeded the group’s target when more than 30,000 were snapped up at Christmas fairs and stores such as Bookazine at the Grand Hyatt hotel, and by local companies. They cost HK$250 (US$32) per box or HK$200 each for two or more.
Irish chamber president Ray Porter, who designed the programme together with chamber members Peter Darley and Aisling Keane, said the organisers were surprised at how quickly the items sold out.
“We helped the students and allowed people an opportunity to give back by buying something for charity,” he said.
For 18-year-old Aesha Ijaz, being part of the project allowed her to meet business professionals.
“I really took that opportunity to heart, because being from an ethnic minority in Hong Kong makes networking pretty hard,” she said.
I don’t experience that, and to hear that someone my age goes through that is insane. It really opened my eyes
A global health and development student at the University of Hong Kong, she said the initiative aligned with her dream of working for an NGO and making an impact in society.
It was also the first time that some ethnic minority teenagers and international school students, mainly children of expatriates, interacted.
Zubin Foundation CEO, Shalini Mahtani, said: “There were a couple of really big ‘aha’ moments.”
One was when a Muslim girl wearing a headscarf, or hijab, described how people often move away and do not want to sit next to her on the MTR.
“There were moments which I thought were equally beneficial to both sides, because I don’t think international school students realise that they live in a bubble,” Mahtani said.
South African Jess Boa, 16, who arrived with her family in Hong Kong when she was six, said she did not know much about the background of Hongkongers from ethnic minority groups, and was shocked to hear the story of the girl on the MTR.
“I don’t experience that, and to hear that someone my age goes through that is insane,” she said. “It really opened my eyes to what other people experience.”
She has since become friends with the ethnic minority girls in the programme, she added.
Hong Kong has an ethnic minority population of about 263,000, or almost 4 per cent of the city’s residents, excluding foreign domestic workers. About 80,000 are South Asians, including Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese, according to official data from 2019.
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Children from ethnic minority groups have long struggled through school, not least because of their lack of Chinese language proficiency, and faced difficulty getting jobs.
Porter said the programme was a way to expose the business community to a more diverse group of young people who might be potential employees, and he hoped to do another run in future.
“There are people in the minority groups whom I would hire in a heartbeat,” he said. “I would recommend them because of their mindset, their attitude and their hunger to get to another level.”
