Work experience for disadvantaged young adults in Hong Kong

Evangel Children’s home help youth improve their employability 

The Evangel Children’s home aims to help disadvantaged children and young adults grow up and mature. It also aims to help them to build better family relationships which will in turn benefit the community.

With support from the Hong Kong government and outsiders such as ourselves (ORFL) Evangel Children’s home have launched an initiative to provide disadvantaged young adults with the opportunity of getting an internship to improve their employability to help them discover and develop themselves as individuals. Their aim is to build up the self-confidence of the young adult and prepare them to becoming financially self-sufficient through joining the local work force.

They must apply for the internship and the application is evaluated by social workers. During the internship the social worker is highly involved as a liaise between the employer and the young adult to help with any problems they may have. At the end of the internship the young adults performance is reviewed by the employer. This programme has given the interns a priceless experience, building their work skills but more importantly building their self-confidence. Thankfully this intern experience has lead these young adults into full time jobs.

It has been an excellent transition for them. From 2014 to 2015 ORFL was able to help three young adults get work experience which helped them secure full time jobs. These young adults are lacking confidence and find it difficult to talk to colleagues or customers. In the work experience environment, they learn how to handle themselves and eventually gain confidence allowing them to interact easily with colleagues or customers. Some of the young adults who were able to do the work experience ended up with customer facing jobs showing a big change in their confidence.

The young adults who took part in this work experience were all extremely grateful for the experience. They not only learned a lot about the work place, the also more importantly learned about themselves and self reflected on what they wanted, who they were and how they wanted to improve themselves. They all wanted this internship programme to keep running so more people could be given the opportunity to experience what they have.