5 Hong Kong-based female NGO founders you should know about

It all began when Michele Lai’s five-year-old son was having a conversation with his parents about children across the world who don’t have access to all that he did. He asked a pertinent question, “How can I help?”, and suggested that he sell his toys to raise money. Emblematic of the generosity of spirit in the Lai family, mother and son then got working on creating a stall, called Preloved Treasure Box, at a local open market. While Lai was tempted to take over as it would be a lot easier to manage, she ensured that her son was involved in all the steps, and was overjoyed when she saw his enthusiasm. He even stayed at the stall all afternoon, helping sell the toys and raise $800!

This critical incident proved to Lai that we should not underestimate the power of kids who have the capacity to make a difference from a young age. She started to involve and empower children of all ages in supporting other children and communities. Having grown leaps and bounds from their early days, Kids4Kids celebrated their tenth anniversary in 2020, and have established six key programmes working across 300 schools and inspiring 21,904 students!

For Lai, some of the most impactful work has been at the secondary school level, working with students who have not had the resources to strive for their goals. “Powered by Service,” a programme developed by Kids4Kids, aims to develop confidence, communication, and resilient skills among low-resource students, whereas the annual “Powered by Youth” forum provides the opportunity for students to hear from changemakers. Finally, “Action for A Cause” allows students to plan and execute a community project they are passionate about, with full support in terms of mentors and funding. Often, it only takes just an opportunity and someone who believes in them for the students and their projects to flourish and grow.

The overarching goal of Kids4Kids has, with Lai, evolved over time. The organisation aims to provide sustainable growth opportunities for all students in an attempt to build an empowered, socially conscious younger generation. With over 10 years of success data, Lai and her team aspire to create learning ecosystems, equipping schools and teachers with resources to run the programs themselves to ensure lasting impact on the students. “You are never too young to change the world,” she says.

As a journalist writing about the environment—especially pollution and waste—Christina Dean was appalled and angry on a day-to-day basis; the further she dug into the data, specifically within the fashion industry, the greater her dismay. In 2020, an average of 392 tonnes of textiles a day was sent to landfills—and that was just Hong Kong!

Dean’s training as a dentist allowed her to examine the impact not just on the environment (which obviously saw great degradation), but also on public health. Her tenacious and persistent nature led her to further and deeper investigation, and ultimately, she had no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She founded Redress, Asia’s first fashion sustainability NGO, with a mission to reduce waste in the fashion industry. Since its founding in 2007, Redress has grown dramatically, with Dean at the helm. In addition to the educational work with fashion brands and designers, Redress hosts a number of events, including pop-up shops featuring pre-loved clothing, accessories, and upcycling workshops.

An added feather on her already filled cap, Christina Dean also recently launched Redress’s new headquarters and permanent shop in Sham Shui Po, the heart of the garment district in Hong Kong. But to Dean, her work as a leader is to provide a platform, not just for sustainable fashion designers through the Redress Design Award, but also for her own team. When hiring, Dean always looks to see what makes a person tick, what are their needs and requirements, and how they see themselves. Having led the Redress team for over 13 years, and having come into herself, she now strives to ensure that the individuals on her team, with their varied experiences and backgrounds, are allowed space to become themselves.

13 years later, the future and vision of Redress remain the same: to prevent and transform textile waste. As with all organisations at a certain stage of maturity, Dean aims to further strengthen the systems and processes that allow this work to happen, something that is often overlooked in the NGO space. With stronger board governance and organisational systems, she is certain that the impact will be greater. In her years as the founder of Redress, Dean understands the importance of patience and persistence; after all, “nothing happens overnight.”

Steph Ng’s Body Banter story began in her early teens, at the onset of an eating disorder. Lost, confused, and overwhelmed with not just the illness, but also the lack of avenues to express her feelings and emotions, Ng tried countless options to make sense of her experiences. However, she found that misconceptions about eating disorders existed not just amongst the general public, but even amongst experienced professionals who were supposedly “experts” in the field.

Painful as her experiences of feeling misunderstood were, they acted as fuel for her fire of advocacy which eventually led to her founding of Body Banter. A platform for individuals to share their stories, specifically about body image and its role in our lives, the initial goal for Body Banter was to help people feel less alone and find solace in their sharing. What emerged was an evident mosaic of overlapping stories and experiences, tying into larger patterns of stigma around mental health.

Since then, Steph Ng’s message and story have reached and resonated with people around the world. Moreover, her positive energy and welcoming demeanour have created a safe space and community where ambassadors and volunteers are able to embrace the cause and plan their own projects, bringing their own ideas and aspirations that are relevant to them and their environment. This has led to the rapid growth of Body Banter over the last two years, with eight chapters across the world and stories spanning across mediums; blogs, podcasts, Instagram, and even an upcoming book!

Perhaps most importantly, Ng has grown and developed through this journey herself, and with her, the mission and vision for Body Banter. While her nuanced approach to this complex and increasingly important topic touches her team and volunteers, she has also allowed the community to impact her. Her leadership team has made Ng question her work from a multicultural and intersectional lens, thus examining the structural and cultural influences on our body image.

Her vision for Body Banter in the future is “to spotlight the ways in which body image perceptions are not formed in a vacuum, and always interact with our experiences and identities to culminate into what they are today. I want to continue to honour stories, rather than just statistics—to underline that we need to get comfortable with things being less clear-cut, to understand that our most authentic messages are often ‘messy.’”