IN DETAIL: ALL CHILDREN MATTER
From Crisis to Hope Hong Kong’s most vulnerable children faced crisis long before COVID-19 arrived. Now they need your help more than ever. – By Harriet Beavis
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very year, PathFinders provides critical support and care to protect hundreds of babies and children born into crisis in Hong Kong. Established in 2008, our founders discovered two babies and their Foreign Domestic Worker (FDW) mothers living in extreme poverty in Chung King Mansions. Unlawfully fired upon becoming pregnant, the mothers could only afford to feed their babies leftover rice water. The babies had no identity, The no access to healthcare and a bleak PathFinders future ahead of them. No one was Community Centre willing or able to help them, and so PathFinders was born, to ensure all children born in Hong Kong are protected and have a fair start in life. To date, PathFinders has improved the lives of over 7,000 vulnerable babies, children and women who have fallen through the cracks in Hong Kong’s public welfare and healthcare services, and were at risk of abuse, neglect, abandonment and even trafficking.
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Born into poverty Hong Kong currently employs 390,000 FDWs, mostly women of childbearing age. All working women in Hong Kong, including FDWs, are legally entitled to 10 weeks of maternity leave, but currently no clear guidelines exist on how to successfully manage a FDW pregnancy. As a result, many expectant FDWs
