Press Releases

（25 May 2019, Hong Kong）Nowadays, there are 177,000 impoverished children in Hong Kong. The poverty rate has reached 17.5% with the North District ranks top. Impoverished children lack resources to participate in extracurricular activities, thereby greatly reduce their opportunities to expand their horizons, not to mention to get in touch with innovative technology, build up knowledge and social capital. 

Po Leung Kuk is aware of the existence and severity of the child poverty problem, therefore the Kuk decided to launch the iSTEM “InnoTech for the Future” scheme and set up trial points at three centres in Sheung Shui, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun. In addition to establishing the iSTEM Zones including the robotic and virtual reality (VR) learning facilities in the centres, a series of child safety-themed trainings will be provided to students in the districts, with contents covering VR glasses making, programming and coding. Seminars about STEM application and implementation will also be conducted for teachers in order to offer comprehensive support through this two-pronged approach. The scheme received generous donations from the Rotary Foundation Global Grants to support the children and youth development with the Kuk.

Mr Ching Nam MA, CStJ, JP, Chairman of Po Leung Kuk, stated that the Kuk has all along attached great importance in innovation and technology development and is committed to integrating technology into teaching. The scheme will have great significance in stimulating creativity of the service recipients. The iSTEM Zones located in the three Po Leung Kuk children and youth centres in Sheung Shui, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun enable students to experience how technology would be applied to daily life, whereas some mobile iSTEM devices will be gradually introduced in the communities to engage more public participation. Through the scheme, the Kuk will also provide iSTEM trainings such as programming, VR experience or coding to the students and teachers within the districts and eventually achieve the target of benefiting 10,000 people.

Dr David CHUNG, JP, Officiating Guest cum Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology, said, “The era of innovation and technology requires more versatile talents with interdisciplinary, cross-sector competency and strong adaptability. This is also the idea of STEM education. This year, the Government has earmarked HK$5 billion in the Budget for promoting the IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Programme, subsidizing all publicly-funded secondary schools in organising IT-related extracurricular activities. We expect the programme would nurture young people’s interest in IT, and inject new blood into the local IT sectors and other scientific research and development areas in the long run.”

Mr Kenneth SO, Donor cum President of Rotary Club of the Peak, indicated the initiative to cooperate with Po Leung Kuk in promoting the scheme is to cultivate students’ knowledge on the major areas of STEM involving science, engineering or mathematics via training, so as to repay the society in the future.

Starting from the Kick-off Ceremony today, the scheme will be officially launched at the three regional centres of Po Leung Kuk to bring technology to the living of the children and youth from the grass-roots families, with an aim to create opportunities for students to study IT, inspire their learning interest, build up self-esteem, further reach out to the community and establish the social network. An exhibition of the results achieved in the scheme will be organized in June next year.    

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About Po Leung Kuk

Founded in 1878, Po Leung Kuk, as one of the largest charity organisations in Hong Kong, has been serving Hong Kong for 140 years with its objective of “Protecting the Young and the Innocent”(保赤安良). Currently, the Kuk has more than 300 units strategically located in Hong Kong and provides services in social welfare, education, recreation and cultural fields. We have more than 45,000 students in our schools and attend to more than 600,000 visits for services a year.

For more information about Po Leung Kuk, please go to www.poleungkuk.org.hk.

Media Enquiry

Senior Corporate Communication Executive

Corporate Communications and Public Relations Department

Po Leung Kuk

Mr Alan Ng

Tel: 2277 8453 Email: [email protected]