HKFYG Inno Impact

Focusing on social impact

The HKFYG Inno Impact Project

In challenging times like this, we need to be agile, innovative and embrace change warmly. That’s why the HKFYG Inno Impact Project stimulates young people in their 20s and 30s to respond to society’s needs.

The HKFYG Innovation for Social Impact Project

(HKFYG Inno Impact) was launched on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups. It allocates resources that recognize and celebrate young people who use creativity and innovativeness to solve issues that confront Hong Kong. Award winners create social value by applying their ideas while working towards the common good of improving society.

Target Young people aged 18 to 35 who found startups and medium, small or micro-enterprises including social entrepreneurs, professionals, the self-employed and students. Objective To identify and pilot promising, solutionbased plans and actions that approach problems and issues of concern within the community in a new, creative way. The aim is also to encourage young people to use their potential for giving back to the community through their actions, building civic responsibility, and thereby helping to create a caring community with social value and a return on investment.

HKFYG Inno Impact Awards Each award is valued up to HK$200,000 and includes professional mentorship, guidance, introduction to networks and service promotion.

Meet the finalists

Flowclass finding tutors for special needs

Ivan Wong, in his final year of a degree in Global Business Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has devised a proposal with four team mates to help special needs (SEN) students who need private tutoring.

“The proportion of SEN students in Hong Kong tripled from 2.5% to 8.8% in the past ten years. Their parents have to knock on the doors of thousands of tutorial centres and NGOs to find suitable tutoring services. We want to create a SEN tutoring ecosystem in Hong Kong that will change all that.

With Flowclass, they can look for tutors with the tag ‘SEN Education.’ It saves weeks of aimless searching. We also want to develop AI that asks a series of interactive guiding questions that will help them choose the most suitable service provider.

I believe every student deserves personalized lessons and after my DSE exams, many schoolmates told me that they were under immense pressure and had very limited support at school. Now, as a social entrepreneur, I want to support them and taking part in this competition has allowed me and my team to think more deeply about putting our ideas into practice and then implementing them outside schools.”

Foster Worldwide offering virtual internships

Yanice Mak went to the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Boston University. Now she and her partners have designed an internship placement service for young people.

“We believe that education can change lives and our mission is to foster the next generation of young global leaders by providing quality career education and virtual global internships. We have launched the first-ever virtual global internship programme in Hong Kong and can offer overseas internships, online vocational training and career guidance.

With us, talented youth can extend networks and improve both their employability and social mobility. Underprivileged students with outstanding performance will receive scholarships. We also support schools and NGOs that provide career education and life planning advice as well as placement opportunities and aim to reduce teachers’ heavy workload. Corporate partners use our services for recruitment and thereby help empower young people. Most importantly, we hope to bring change to the world through collective effort.” Christine Chan, a teacher, with her designer team mates, Ryan Cheng and William Chan and four others, help elderly people with dementia and their caregivers.

“Ryan realized during his internship at a local elderly centre how difficult it is to find appropriate cognitive training products. Usually, social workers have to use worksheets, children’s toys or overseas products but they are unsuitable for Asian people and fail to engage them effectively.

So we started designing and producing resources relevant to Hong Kong. We want to offer a fun, interactive gamebased cognitive training. Service-learning for tertiary students that builds understanding of dementia issues and fosters intergenerational harmony is another goal. It is very satisfying to see happy faces at the elderly centres and the positive comments are a great encouragement.

Lighten Dementia engaging local seniors

Prof Leung Chi-hung of the Education University, an expert in therapeutic play advised us and helped to establish the research foundations for our compassionate project.”

Project Drain preventing floods

Andy Wong has a degree in English and ten years’ experience in technology and operations with international firms such as Manulife and UBS. His team members also have varied backgrounds in areas such as accounting, engineering, risk analysis and AI.

“Wellbeing and stability are essential to everyone’s daily lives and we are all at risk during floods. We have been monitoring the problems and want to find long-lasting solutions.

After the rainstorm in June 2020 and other flash floods, we decided to learn more about blocked drains and prevention of flooding that creates a lot of damage and – in extreme cases – even death.

Our plan is to install stormwater drain filters in high-risk flood zones that reduce drain blockages, hazards to the public and potential damage to goods and property. We can also offer both voluntary work opportunities and part-time jobs with minimal technical requirements. Lessons for younger children in avoiding blocking drains with plastic bags and an education outreach programme are all part of our commitment. Safety and sustainability are central to our vision.”

TEE.AI mastering AI step by step

Leung Kwan Cheung, a graduate in electronic engineering, has devised an ed-tech solution with his team members. It helps young students master the concept of AI and coding.

“Doing an internship with a fintech company in Beijing inspired me to become a social entrepreneur. The experience taught me what it is like to run a startup company. Most importantly, I learned the lesson that if you discover a problem, you should try to solve it by creating your own solution.

There are many educational STEM tools on the market but none of them helps students understand AI with a step-by-step approach. That’s what TEE. AI does. It centres on block-based data analysis and AI machine learning. It’s a solution for teachers and is suitable for Hong Kong students from Primary 3 to Secondary 3 who are willing to learn useful skills rather than play with robots and toys. Reaching the finals of the HKFYG Inno Impact Project has given us great encouragement the motivation to keep going.”

翻轉網上教室 學 STEM 人人都得

tailor-made for children

Harry Leung, with partners, Zoe, Tony, Darren, want to do something meaningful for Hong Kong schoolchildren.

“Every young child should have the opportunity to study STEM subjects. Our main target groups are primary school students but we are also reaching out to tertiary students who plan to become teachers. We want to provide them with the chance to experience teaching STEM.

When I was in a junior class at secondary school, some senior students inspired me. They told me about their creative work and were always willing to give me a chance to develop my own ideas at the school robotics club. Now, in my turn, I want to share my knowledge with the younger generation.

We provide all kinds of STEM courses for schools, such as robotics, coding, science experiments, creativity, design thinking and logical thinking. We can also tailor-make our courses based on specific needs of schools and students and encourage them to think out of the box just like myself when I was at school.” Socif enabling travel with an app

Jason Yuen, co-founder of Socif, explains how he and his team mates developed a public transport app that helps the elderly and the disabled.

“At HKUST, my team mates and I were frustrated by the minibuses. Their schedule was unknown. That’s when our idea for a B2B technology startup specializing in smart transport AI solutions was born.

Our app tells commuters the live arrival time of green minibuses. It particularly targets the elderly and the disabled, incorporating a Geographic Information System (GIS). We can leverage the project on our business network and industry experience to give it both potential and sustainable social impact.

Because of the Inno Impact project we have rebalanced our business concept and given it social impact that we hope will bring smart transport to everyone across the city.”

Labwork setting up real-time labs

WC Wong holds an MPhil in Physics and is a former university science researcher. His partner, Tony, did internet and multimedia technology at university and then joined a university science department before becoming a Cloud engineer with a Hong Kong listed company.

“Labwork offers real-time online laboratory setups for students to perform experiments at their own pace, anytime and anywhere. We also provide allround STEM education for primary and secondary school students. Our vision is to create better science research and a learning environment in Hong Kong that enhances interest in science.

We acknowledge the importance of equipping students with a scientific mindset and will try our best to make a difference, not only benefiting those who have decided on science for their careers, but also students who might otherwise choose different pathways.”

Enquiries May Lee Tel 3595 0945 / 3956 8001 Email sic@hkfyg.org.hk Web sic.hkfyg.org.hk Facebook hkfyg.sic