Background
Does anyone still remember South Asian Tsunami in 2004?
It killed almost 300,000 people around the world.
The huge casualties were blamed because of two main reasons: 1) There are no warning systems in the Indian Ocean to detect tsunami or to warn the general populace living around the ocean; 2) The relief system is laggard in India.
After that, many people from all over the world were kept reminded that South Asian countries are far more backward than they imagined. Therefore, they are not willing to accept South Asian cultures.
In addition, there are lots of negative news about how South Asians are, such as robbing local people and bullying their classmates, etc. The gap between locals and South Asians becomes larger.
As members of Hong Kong society, the prejudice of locals towards South Asians is a problem yet to be solved. To make changes happen in the current situation, we must have a change in our attitude. The most effective way is to encourage locals to communicate with the South Asians and to build up a sense of understanding between them, so that we live and share, in harmony.
Since March 2008, MEMO (Mission for the Ethnic Minority Organization), with its office located in Mong Kok, has started to provide services to both local and South Asian students. We first started cooking and language classes, and won much support. Because of the preceding success, we insist to provide services and events with quality.
South Asians, the largest ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, are facing difficulties adapting to the Hong Kong lifestyle because they cannot learn and communicate well because their mother-tongue is not Chinese. Because of it, some of them are even discriminated or bullied by local people, which makes their hard lives even harder. They find Chinese culture is extremely difficult to get familiar with. What make matters worse is that the local people choose to ignore them.
The provided resources are not enough to help South Asians in Hong Kong, such as schooling, aid for them to gain access to Chinese, etc. That is why MEMO is established. We aim to raise concern for the current situation, and wish to encourage local people to accept other cultures. The goal is to build Hong Kong a harmonic international city.
It killed almost 300,000 people around the world.
The huge casualties were blamed because of two main reasons: 1) There are no warning systems in the Indian Ocean to detect tsunami or to warn the general populace living around the ocean; 2) The relief system is laggard in India.
After that, many people from all over the world were kept reminded that South Asian countries are far more backward than they imagined. Therefore, they are not willing to accept South Asian cultures.
In addition, there are lots of negative news about how South Asians are, such as robbing local people and bullying their classmates, etc. The gap between locals and South Asians becomes larger.
As members of Hong Kong society, the prejudice of locals towards South Asians is a problem yet to be solved. To make changes happen in the current situation, we must have a change in our attitude. The most effective way is to encourage locals to communicate with the South Asians and to build up a sense of understanding between them, so that we live and share, in harmony.
Since March 2008, MEMO (Mission for the Ethnic Minority Organization), with its office located in Mong Kok, has started to provide services to both local and South Asian students. We first started cooking and language classes, and won much support. Because of the preceding success, we insist to provide services and events with quality.
South Asians, the largest ethnic minority group in Hong Kong, are facing difficulties adapting to the Hong Kong lifestyle because they cannot learn and communicate well because their mother-tongue is not Chinese. Because of it, some of them are even discriminated or bullied by local people, which makes their hard lives even harder. They find Chinese culture is extremely difficult to get familiar with. What make matters worse is that the local people choose to ignore them.
The provided resources are not enough to help South Asians in Hong Kong, such as schooling, aid for them to gain access to Chinese, etc. That is why MEMO is established. We aim to raise concern for the current situation, and wish to encourage local people to accept other cultures. The goal is to build Hong Kong a harmonic international city.