Since 1988, OSC has raised HK$353 million to support the Hong Kong community through 323 charitable projects. This year, the 35th anniversary of its launch, OSC is funding 15 charity projects, including Rhenish Church Grace School.

Each year, the group’s parent company Chinachem Group donates HK$200,000 (US$25,700) to OSC, but Nina Hospitality also engages with the charities it funds.

“Nina Hospitality is committed to helping the community in many different ways and this is just one of the ways,” said Simon Manning, Nina Hospitality Group’s managing director. “Today, we will be doing food upcycling. It really fits our sustainability goals … we’re doing it in a fun way.”

Under the tutelage of group executive chef Mak Kam-kui and with one-on-one help from the group’s hotel managers, the teenagers learned how to use cookie cutters shaped like Christmas trees, the crescent moon and a star to cut designs from plates of jelly made from overripe mangoes and bruised strawberries that the hotel cannot serve to guests.

Mak then showed the teenagers how to use the cut-out jelly and other edible ornaments to decorate their dessert platter, the centrepiece of which was a Christmas-tree-shaped cake made from the ends of chocolate brownies.

“There are snowflakes, beads … you can freely use your creativity. And you can sprinkle icing sugar to make it more like Christmas,” Mak told the group.

Dressed in a hotel apron and wearing a cook’s cap, Thomas, one of the teens, squeezed a big glob of green tea buttercream on his chocolate Christmas tree, and said that was what he especially wanted to eat.

Jaime Aromin, the group’s director of operations, said its five hotels normally donated leftover food to Foodlink Foundation, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger.

Teaching the younger generation to not waste food was also important, he said, “because Hong Kong has a very big food waste problem”.

The outreach activity was held during a hard time for the city’s hotel industry, with many operators struggling during the coronavirus pandemic.

The group’s hotels were normally 90 per cent full, but during the pandemic’s early stages in 2020 the occupancy rate dropped to below 50 per cent, Aromin said. It rose up to more than 70 to 80 per cent in 2021, but since late September this year, when hotel quarantine was cancelled, it fell below 50 per cent once again.

“We don’t know when tourists will come back,” Aromin said.

But the group still wanted to help the community – there was plenty of cheer and little sign of gloom during the workshop.

At the end of the activities, the hotel served each student a piece of cake and gave them a box of cookies from the Nina Patisserie to take home.

The hotel’s commercial director Chris Yuen Chun-yu, who was helping Thomas, said as a father of two, he especially wanted to help out.

“It’s really important to let them be happy and have a chance to enjoy a Christmas atmosphere,” Yuen said. “Many families don’t have this opportunity.”

Rhenish teacher Wong Hei-nam agreed, noting the teenagers’ parents did not take them out often because of discrimination and the youngsters’ emotional state.

“This is a simple dessert-making class, but what’s meaningful is it makes them feel special, worth it, with so many staff helping them,” Wong said.