The “Fitness x Mentorship” Scheme is a perennial project under the Lean Poverty Alleviation Initiative of this Centre. The Lean Poverty Alleviation Initiative sees “poverty” not only an insufficiency of essential resources to maintain a citizen’s living but also one’s relative disadvantages as compared to the members of a dominant socioeconomic group. The activities and services under this initiative have, therefore, reached out to both impoverished people (e.g. those in short of material possessions or income) and vulnerable members (e.g. disabled persons and ethnic minority) in Hong Kong. As for the “Fitness x Mentorship” Scheme, it has adopted an innovative approach which associates “exercising” with “volunteering” to foster a serving heart of the CUHK students and strengthen their understanding of the community. Participants of the scheme will be trained with basic skills of a designated sports item and given chances to partner various members of the community in pursuing sports.
In the first term of this academic year, the “Fitness x Mentorship” Scheme rolled out four sports items cum services, namely “Floor Curling x Elderly”, “Kin-ball x Ethnic Minority Youth”, “Dodgebee x People with Hearing Impairment” and “Mölkky x People with Intellectual Disabilities”.
On floor curling, students paid four visits to Yan Oi Tang Hong Kong Toi Shan Association Neighbourhood Elderly Centre to receive training with their partners of playing the sports, followed by small-team games and experience exchange. Regarding kin-ball, although students and the ethnic minority youth had no knowledge of the sports from the outset, they were attentively guided by the instructors in three sessions to grasp the basic techniques and rules before starting off a competition among three teams. The students toured their partners around the campus afterwards to let them enjoy the beautiful scenery of CUHK. For dodgebee, prior to acquiring the skills and playing friendly match with their partners from The Hong Kong Society for the Deaf for three times, students had to attend one elementary sign language lesson. As to mölkky, students and the residents of the TWGHs Lee Yen & Lee Yuk Lun, BBS, JP, Father & Son Lohas Villa actively participated in four sessions to receive training and to join hands to complete the challenging tasks.
The “Fitness x Mentorship” Scheme allows students to develop regular exercise habit and build up healthy lifestyle. Above all, mutual understanding between students and the circle of their counterparts will be facilitated. A new batch of students are being recruited for three sports items cum services to be held in the second term. They are “Floor Curling x People with Intellectual Disabilities”, “Soft Darts x Elderly” and “Dodgebee x People with Hearing Impairment”.
If there is any enquiry, please contact Miss Wong of this Centre at 3943 9957 (Tel) or cathy@cuhk.edu.hk (Email).
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