Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility u0026amp; Ethical Sourcing was held on 22 November 2005 in the Innovation u0026amp; Design Expo organised by HKTDC. Speakers shared their experience on ethical sourcing and corporate social responsibility.

List of Speakers:
Mr Cliff Choi, Business Director of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service
Dr Allan Wong, Vice President – Operation u0026amp; Compliance of Li u0026amp; Fung (Trading) Ltd
Ms Ophelia Quach, Project Manager of HSBC Living Business, Group Public Affairs
Mr Raymond Lo, Chief Executive Officer of Samond Traders Holdings Limited

In the conference, all speakers emphasized the importance and needs of ethical sourcing and corporate social responsibility, as they have become the advantages to compete globally. Many overseas buyers are now requiring ethical sourcing to be one of the selection criteria in choosing suppliers through applying international standards on CSR. Taking up corporate social responsibilities, for example, being environmental friendly, participating in community involvement programmes, etc, can benefit both the community and the company itself. These activities will lead to benefits like customer retention, cost reduction, staff absenteeism reduction, etc, which are vital for the sustainability of a company. As a result, SMEs are also encouraged to take part in CSR.

Speaker, Mr Cliff Choi, Business Director of HKCSS, introduced the Caring Company Scheme.

On September 21, Caring Company Scheme organized a Networking Tea Gathering cum Caring Company 2005/06 Scheme Briefing; to introduce the nomination activity, to share practical tips and experience to those who plan to participate in the u0022Outstanding Partnership Project Awardu0022 this year.

We had the honor to invite Ms Christine Fang, Chief Executive of HKCSS, to present a welcoming speech for the event. This year, there are two newly-added awards in the Scheme, namely u0022Caring Organizationu0022 Logo and u0022SME Community Participation Awardu0022, to encourage active participation in community involvement from different sectors and SMEs. In addition, awardees of 2004/05 u0022Outstanding Partnership Project Awardsu0022 also shared the key points of entering the competition.

Briefing and experience sharing of 2004/05 u0022Outstanding Partnership Awardu0022

Awarded cases and guests:

Company Programme
Ms Vivian Lau, Chief Executive Officer, Junior Achievement Hong Kong
Mrs Virginia Lo, Senior Manager of External Affairs, Group Public Affairs, HSBC

Personal Emergency Loving Link Checkup
Ms Wong Sau Ying, Head of Corporate Communications, The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited
Ms Esther Yuen, Assistant Public Relations Officer, Senior Citizen Home Safety Association

The awarded companies and social service organizations shared with us how they knew each other, the cooperation process, challenges that they faced and the non-monetary benefits they gained through the collaborations.

After that, Mr Cliff Choi, Business Director (Sector Development u0026amp; Partnership) of HKCSS summarized the keys points of being outstanding in the competition.

Guest shared the successful matched case

Besides, we invited Mr Joe Wong, Managing Director of Hhome Café to share his experience of a successful match. Mr Wong registered on the Caring Company Website about offering employment and training opportunities to youth and single parent women. Responses from social service organizations were overwhelming. Finally, Hhome Café partnered with the Hong Kong Employment Development Service Limited to offer a free training class for making coffee and healthy drinks. He at last highly recommended SMEs to utilize their unique business edge to serve the community, in achieving a win-win-win situation.

There were over 200 participants joined the tea gathering and the room was fully filled. They grabbed the chance to meet new friends and to become partners in the near future.

Welcoming speech by Ms Christine Fang, Chief Executive of HKCSS

Ms Vivian Lau, Chief Executive Officer, Junior Achievement Hong Kong (Right) u0026amp; Mrs Virginia Lo, Senior Manager of External Affairs, Group Public Affairs, HSBC

Ms Wong Sau Ying, Head of Corporate Communications, The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited (Right) u0026amp; Ms Esther Yuen, Assistant Public Relations Officer, Senior Citizen Home Safety Association

Mr Cliff Choi, Business Director (Sector Development u0026amp; Partnership) of HKCSS summarized the keys points of being outstanding in the competition

Mr Joe Wong, Managing Director of Hhome Café shared his experience of a successful match

The objectives of the community visit is to deepen the understanding of business sector of current social services for non-engaged youth and ethnic minority that facilitate integration, life engagement, self-help and mutual help ability.

u0022Let’s Walku0022 helps non-engaged youth to re-integrate to the society

Currently, there are around 100,000 non-engaged youth (who are neither employed nor in school and had been disconnected with the society) in Hong Kong. Organized by Hong Kong Christian Service, u0022Let’s Walku0022, a project that is specially designed for all non-engaged youth aged 14 to 21, aims at helping them to turn from being non-engaged to having school life or work life.

After the introduction of the project by Ms Eugene Ma and Mr. Ekman Chak, social workers of HKCS, we sat in students’ tutorial period. Afterwards, all the participants had chance to chat with 4 students and listened to their feeling, difficulties encountered and their expectations of joining the project. Friends from the business sector also shared their own experience. We hope the youngsters would be enlightened through the u0022Let’s Walku0022 project and would be having better lives in the future.

Project SASA enhances direct interaction between the minority and local people to promote social inclusion

Ethnic minority, e.g. Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese and others non-Chinese ethnicity, makes up of approximately 5% of population in Hong Kong. Differences in culture, language and skin color are some barriers for them to integrate into the local society.

After visiting the u0022Let’s Walku0022 project, we continued our tour to Project SASA (South Asians Support Alliance). Project SASA provides services through collaborating the minority and establishing supportive network; facilitating the establishment of mutual support group so as to increase their self-help and mutual help abilities; and enhance mutual understanding between the minority and local people to promote social inclusion.

After a brief introduction by Ms Karrie Chan, person-in-charge of Project SASA, two of her Nepalese colleagues gave us an overview of how they search for mentors from different industries also the challenges which the next generation will be facing. To our surprise, a group of Nepalese children performed a dance to us and invited our participants to join as well, as an experience of social inclusion.

We encourage the business sector to involve in community participation

Through arranging these community visitations, we hope to show the community needs to the companies and how the companies could join hands with social service organizations in meeting those needs, thus to create a harmonious society with care and social inclusion.

Participants sat in students’ tutorial

Students shared their feelings and expectations with the participants

Nepalese children invited participants to dance

Children and participants experienced social inclusion through participation

香港城市大學及深圳大學合辦的「大學生領導才能研討會」，邀請了來自不同地區的三十二間大學百多名學生參與，在為期八日的行程中穿梭深港兩地，互相交流。論壇是研討會其中一個項目，題目為「未來領袖肩負的社會責任」。

香港社會服務聯會行政總裁方敏生於論壇上指出，可持續發展是指在經濟發展上，各人都需要同時考慮從環境著手，例如減少廢物生產、多循環再用物資、關心家庭、積極參與社會及消除歧視等。

另一位講者為公益企業的創辦人兼行政總裁馬夏邐。她認為要企業負上社會責任，一定要令他們明白履行社會責任的好處。她指出，大部分香港企業都以為履行社會責任，就是等同捐獻，但其實這樣只能帶來有限的曝光率，而且有實際的經濟損失，這未必是企業股東所期望見到的。更實際的做法是將企業社會責任融入營運及生產等過程，最後使企業得到最好的回報。

要履行企業社會責任可從不同方面入手，例如企業能合理地對待員工、懷孕員工可得完整的產假而不受歧視、給予員工安全如意的工作環境，這些都已是其中一種。

～相關新聞：《信報》

To promote the positive image and workability of people with disabilities, some rehabilitation organisations have set up u0022social enterpriseu0022 in recent years. A u0022social enterpriseu0022 is a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the service or in the community.

u0022Social enterpriseu0022 aims at providing a close-to-market workplace and training environment, helps them to reconstruct self-confidence, build up workability, improve quality of life and make good preparation for reintegrating to the society. Commonly seen social enterprises include catering, convenience stores, car beauty service, floral arrangement, printing and graphic design, etc.

In order to deepen business sector’s understanding of the u0022social enterpriseu0022, u0022Caring Company Schemeu0022 has arranged a half-day community visitation on June 28, 2005 to introduce the concept and operation modes of u0022social enterpriseu0022 to the participants. Through the visitation, we hope some collaborative projects will be inspired and further cooperation of business and social service sectors can be facilitated.

On that day, we first visited Flower Workshop u0026amp; First Sense Design organised by the Hong Kong Federation of Handicapped Youth. To start with, Mr. Eddie Suen gave us a brief introduction of the organization, then the managers of Flower Workshop u0026amp; First Sense Design led us tour around the workplace and introduced their business modes. In addition, they showed us staff’s job portfolio, which included advertisement design, promotional leaflets of famous brands and corporate collaterals of listed companies. The organisation is now planning to set up another creative social enterprise, to give chances to disabled to make use of their skills and talents.

After an hour at HKFHY, we continued the visit to New Life Restaurant, which is organized by New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association. We had the honor to have Ms Deborah Wan, JP, Chief Executive Officer of NLPRA to give us an overview of operating social enterprise, and guided us around the restaurant and kitchen. We saw how they prepared food and cleaned up the premises. Afterwards, the staff served us delicious tea sets, which included different kinds of beverages, like red bean cooler, and assorted cakes. The manager, Mr. Chuen, told us that the restaurant could supply over 300 lunch sets during peak hours in weekdays.

Lastly, we paid a visit to the New Life Healthy Living Specialty Shop, located at Tai Wai Station, Ma On Shan Rail. The shop sells mainly organic vegetables planted by ex-mentally ill persons, herbal tea and other healthy food products. The shop has no difference with other retail store; staff greeted and introduced products to customers cheerfully and patiently. It was the peak hour while we were there and the shop was full of customers, but still staff there were capable to handle the situation well.

At around 6pm, we ended the visit after taking group photos. During the visitation, participants showed interest in the service projects, and they rose out questions actively. Participants from the business sector told us that they had more throughout understanding of the concept of social enterprise after this visitation; some even said they would soon propose to give suitable works and job orders to the disabled or ex-mentally ill persons. This is undoubtedly the purpose of the Caring Company Scheme in organizing community visit, we hope the business sector can recognise the workability of people with disabilities, offer them more work opportunities and help them reintegrate into the society eventually.

About The Hong Kong Federation of Handicapped Youth
The Hong Kong Federation of Handicapped Youth was established in 1970. The flower workshop u0026amp; First Sense Design are its social enterprises. Through providing floral design u0026amp; retail services, and professional desktop design u0026amp; printing service to the business sector, government departments and schools, the working opportunities of people with disabilities are enhanced.

About The New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association
The New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association was organised and run by a group of ex-mental patients 1965. Its u0022social enterpriseu0022 provides a real, open u0026amp; inclusive working environment for people will mental illness and the disadvantaged groups. All these can enhance their reintegration into the society and the empowerment of being self-reliance.

Staff of Flower Workshop is making a flower display

Viewing the job portfolio of First Sense Design

Staff of First Sense Design is finishing an advertisement design

Staff of new life restaurant is preparing food

Ms Deborah Wan, JP, Chief Executive Officer (Right) and Mr Chuen Chi Man (Middle) of NLPRA are briefing the operations

Staff of Specialty Shop is introducing products patiently

Group picture of participants with some staff

Launching of Caring Company Revamped Website

Caring Company Scheme has been promoting partnership between business and social welfare sector since its inception in 2002. In 2004-05, there are nearly 700 companies awarded the Caring Company logo for their active participation in community service. The Scheme plays an important role in matching partnership projects.

In order to facilitate companies and social welfare NGOs in searching partners in future social service collaborations, the revamped Caring Company website (http://www.caringcompany.org.hk) was launched to provide a more convenient and effective platform for closer communications. A Networking Tea Gathering cum Release of Website’s New Image was organized on June 3 and Mr. Paul TANG, Director of Social Welfare Department was the Guest of Honor.

Some newly added functions are added to facilitate both NGOs to upload their offers of participating opportunities in social service, and companies to upload their offers of resources including donation in-kind and staff volunteers. The Council will then act as the match-maker of these offers and requests.

Several successful partnership projects were invited to share their initiatives and experience with the audience. For examples, a department store encouraged its business partners to donate to NGOs instead of purchasing congratulation baskets to celebrate the opening of its new store. Employees of various companies have been continuously helping the young new arrivals to improve their learning skills. Some of these volunteers have deep reflection on life and are able to face the challenges of life proactively. Besides, a spot sharing of offers and requests from companies and NGOs were made and some companies kindly made the pledge to donate in-kind. Some NGOs also appeal for partners to carry out innovative service projects.

Mr. Paul TANG showed appreciation of Council’s efforts in matching partnership projects and appealed to the business and social welfare sectors to build up stronger partnership to provide more diversified services for the needy. The Hon Bernard CHAN, Chairperson of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, expressed that this kind of partnership can create greater and stronger impact for both parties can actualize their expertise and potentials to the full.

Details
Date: June 3, 2005 (Friday)
Time: 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Venue: Auditorium, 1/F, Duke of Windsor Social Service Building, 15 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Rundown
– Opening remarks by Ms Christine Fang, Chief Executive, HKCSS
– Sharing of successful partnership cases
1. JUSCO SUPERMARKET (Kwun Tong Store) u0026amp; Christian Action
2. NWS Holdings Ltd u0026amp; The ABM Hong Kong Swatow Baptist Church Community Service Association
3. Asia Financial Group u0026amp; Evangelical Lutheran Church Social Service – Hong Kong
– Website launch ceremony – Mr Paul Tang, Mr Bernard Chan and Ms Christine Fang
– Demonstration of the website functions
– Idea sharing from companies and NGOs on offers and requests
1. Appledaily would like to talk about the Resources Sharing – Special Column in Newspapers
2. CLP introduces the Care for the Elderly campaign
3. Fu Hong Society introduces its new Specialist Centre for Adolescents and Adults with Autism
4. Hong Kong Family Welfare Society introduces the Project Navigation – Children and Youth
5. IBM would like to donate computers for kids at aged 3-7
6. Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited is seeking volunteer work opportunity for the elderly
7. Junior Achievement introduces the u0022Job Shadowing 2005u0022
8. NEC would like to sponsor a telephone system for use in call centre or hotline service
9. Ounce baking Corner offers cake-making courses
10. HKCSS proposes collaborative projects on u0022Promote Senior Citizen Day 2005u0022
– Words from Guest of Honor – Mr Paul Tang, Director of Social Welfare
– Remarks by Mr Bernard Chan, Chairperson, HKCSS

Organiser: Home Affairs Bureau and Committee on the Promotion of Civil Education
Co-organiser: The Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Community Business and Corporate Environmental Governance Programme

This seminar is aimed at enhancing public awareness of u0022Corporate Citizenshipu0022. Participants can share their experience of being a corporate citizen and how to involve the community. Ms Christine Fang, our Chief Executive, had shared the ways of How to Find Your Community Service Partner with Caring Company Experience. Download the Powerpoint

Other speakers:
Professor Richard Welford – Deputy Director, Corporate Environmental Governance Programme, University of Hong Kong
Ms Shalini Mahtani – Founder u0026amp; Chief Executive Officer, Community Business

u0026nbsp;

(2) Current Social Services for Disadvantaged Families

– There are currently over 1 million people who belong to the low-income group. What are the major problems that they are suffering? How do social service organisations in Hong Kong support them?

Download the Powerpoint (Chinese version only)
歡迎下載投映片 (只提供中文版)

Date
April 22, 2005 (Friday)

Time
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Speaker
Mr Jackey Lo, Chief Officer (Family and Community), The Hong Kong Council of Social Service

Venue
Function Room A
The Hong Kong Medical Association
5/F, Duke of Windsor Social Service Building
15 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Speaker: Mr Jackey Lo

(1) The Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged

– The Chief Executive has announced in 2005 Policy Address the setting up of a $200 million partnership matching grants to donations made by business organizations to support social welfare projects of social service organisations. More details about applying for the Fund will be covered…

Download the Powerpoint (Chinese version only)
歡迎下載投映片 (只提供中文版)

Date
April 14, 2005 (Thursday)

Time
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Speaker
Mr. Fu Tsun-hung, Chief Social Work Officer – Social Welfare Department (Subventions)

Venue
Function Room A
The Hong Kong Medical Association
5/F, Duke of Windsor Social Service Building
15 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Speaker: Mr Fu Tsun-hung, Chief Social Work Officer of SWD (Subventions)

Speaker: Ms Christine Fang, Chief Executive of HKCSS

Luncheon photo

Good Practice Sharing

Partnership Practice on Enhancing Family and Community Solidarity
– To share practical experience on building and sustaining partnership for service development on strengthening family and community solidarity
– To explore the critical success factors, strategies and issues of concerns
– To share the service impact/ outcome effectiveness in delivering service by partnership practice

Items
1. u0022One-Stop Household Services in Residential Complexu0022 (Partners: Henderson Land Development Group – Well Born Real Estate Management Ltd and SWD)
Speaker: Mrs Grace LAM, Coordinator, Neighborhood Action-Advice Council

2. u0022Caring Around Usu0022 (Partner: SmarTone Mobile Communications Ltd.)
Speaker: Mr Keswick CHUK, Development Officer, Research and Resource Development Department, Evangelical Lutheran Church Social Service – HK

3. u0022Every Step Counts – Social Inclusion Campaignu0022 (Partners: 11 NGOs)
Speaker: Mr LAI Chi-tong, Convenor, Organising Committee, u0022Every Step Counts – Social Inclusion Campaignu0022 u0026amp; Director, Aberdeen Kai-fong Welfare Ass. Social Service Centre

Powerpoint of the Sharing (Chinese version only)