Listen to #Hashtag Hong Kong every Sunday morning at 8.15
Focusing on issues affecting civil society, we'll hear from representatives of NGOs, associations, statutory bodies, and non-profit groups.
(Sundays 8.15am - 8.25am)
Good morning everyone!
Hong Kong is home to over 340,000 migrant domestic workers. They are the backbone of our households, caring for our children, supporting our elderly, and keeping our homes running smoothly. Yet, many face financial pressures, recruitment debt, and even fraud.
Enrich exists to change that story. I think of Eka, a migrant domestic worker from Indonesia who has lived in Hong Kong for more than 20 years. When she first arrived, she faced enormous financial pressures and struggled to manage her income. Like many women, she carried the weight of supporting her family back home while navigating life in a new city.
Eka joined Enrich’s financial and empowerment workshops, and she describes the experience as life changing. She learned how to budget, save, and plan for the future. Over time, she built the confidence to take control of her finances and even began to dream of starting her own business.
What inspires me most is her determination. Eka told me that before Enrich, she didn’t know how to manage money. Now she feels confident and knows that she can build a better future for herself and her family.
Her journey reminds us that true empowerment goes beyond statistics—it's rooted in dignity, hope, and rekindling the capacity to dream. Eka’s story reflects the resilience of so many migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, and why Enrich’s mission matters.
Through financial and empowerment education, we help women learn to budget, save, and plan for their futures. We also provide workshops on communication, well being, and entrepreneurship. Since 2007, tens of thousands of women have joined our programmes, and many have told us how these tools gave them hope, confidence, and control over their lives.
People often ask me why I chose to lead Enrich. The answer is simple: because empowerment is transformative. When a woman learns to take charge of her finances, she doesn’t just change her own life; she changes the lives of her children, her family, and her community back home. Education is the most sustainable form of support we can offer, and I am proud to be part of an organisation that invests in women who, in turn, invest in the world.
At Enrich, we were deeply saddened by the devastating fire at Wang Fuk Court. Our hearts go out to all those affected, especially the migrant domestic workers who lost their homes and belongings, and the families that lost their sisters, daughters, and mothers. In the days that followed, we witnessed the generosity of the Hong Kong community, but we also saw opportunists trying to exploit the tragedy. That is why we dedicated our Giving Tuesday donations directly to those impacted, with a special focus on migrant domestic workers.
This March, we will celebrate International Women’s Day with one of our biggest events of the year: “Empowering MDWs: Resilience, Wellbeing & Pathways Forward.”
Today, we celebrate the resilience of migrant domestic workers and support those affected by the tragic Tai Po fire. Together with our co host, the Social Innovation Team at the Knowledge Transfer Office of the Chinese University, we will welcome migrant domestic workers and the wider community to InnoPort in Sha Tin. We chose this venue to reach more workers living and working in and around Tai Po.
The event will feature:
- Booths offering practical support, from mental health counselling and women’s health resources to financial consultation, legal aid, and upskilling opportunities.
- Interactive sessions covering financial literacy, fraud prevention, safety awareness, women’s wellbeing, and entrepreneurship.
- Wellness and art activities, such as Piloxing, artwork creation, and breathing exercises, to refresh and inspire participants.
- Booths showcasing migrant domestic worker groups and NGOs with business ideas and skill demonstrations.
This event is about more than services. It is about community, empowerment, solidarity, and pathways forward for migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong.
Reflecting on my journey with Enrich, I realize that empowerment starts with listening—listening to voices that are often overlooked and recognising their strength, resilience, and dreams. Hong Kong is a city of opportunity. Let us ensure that opportunity is shared. Let us invest in the women who invest in us every day.
I invite you to join us on International Women’s Day to stand with migrant domestic workers, celebrate their resilience, and help build a future where every woman has the tools to reach her goals.
Thank you for listening, and I hope you can support Enrich HK in some ways. Together, we are making a meaningful difference.
Higher educated people with disabilities and special education needs have a much higher unemployment rate than the general populations. In 2016, we have a survey. We reviewed that half of the population for higher educated people with disability was unemployed at that time. For those employed, nearly 40 percent, they took more than half a year to find the first job. We realize a lot of our higher educated graduates from university - if they have disabilities and special education needs they were expected to work in low-skilled labour jobs such as cashier, a server in a restaurant or even those having a stigmatized effect that we couldn't perform professionally. In 2010, increasing number of higher education are given to people with disabilities. It was caused by the integration education implementation and also the 12 years free education in Hong Kong.
I am Walter Tsui, a person with visually impaired. I was born in 1988 and I graduated with my degree in economics and minor in German in 2011. It was the big fear of graduation equals to unemployment. I was working in multinational companies and investment banking when I was in university. However it was extremely hard to find my first job. Searching more than half a year, eventually I was placed into a human resources role in a construction firm. After I secured my jobs in a commercial world I realized there are so many of our peers with disability just like myself who are struggling in the battlefields of getting career development opportunities. Eventually I quit my commercial jobs in 2015 to found the organization called CareER. It’s a charity registered in Hong Kong dedicated to support higher educated students and graduates with disabilities and special needs in Hong Kong for employment. We focus on ability not disability. We serve 10 kinds of disability types including visually impaired, hearing impaired, mobility impaired, neurodivergence and also people who are experiencing mental well-being issues. We serve as a peer support community for our mutual support but for our employers it is an untapped talent pool.
And also we are a free of charge recruitment channel, providing talent solutions for our employers. Every day we are supporting the society for supply of talents and nurturing inclusive hiring. So first in our candidate empowerment side we focus on two very important things. One is to empower the employment readiness for our candidates. Therefore we have coaching, workshops, partnering with our major corporate partners and also we have run our inclusive recruitment fair.Second we need to focus on building our disability pride, disability acceptance and our own confidence to disclose our disabilities. Therefore peer support is so important because we let our alumni, to share our experience going into the workplace so that no one should feel shame on disclosing disabilities at the workplace throughout the recruitment cycles as well as onboarding and at the workplace. After the COVID time we realize there are two elements need to add into it. There are social manner trainings at the workplace as well as focusing on the mental well-being support for the younger generation for highly educated people with disabilities.
So second we also need to nurture the demands of our talents with disabilities. So we need to work on the willingness to hire as well as the readiness to hire with our employers. Therefore we have developed CareER Disability Inclusion Index, which is a systematic approach to nurture disability re-inclusive readiness with our employers from a leadership commitment on this topic, social commitment, HR practices, flexible working arrangements and workplace accessibility on physical and digital environments.
The both candidate empowerment structure as well as our employer disability readiness structure has been recognized by United Nations Affiliated Award Zero Project Award in 2021 and 2025. So after 10 years of our work we have surveyed on our CareER candidates pool we realize now we have improved the unemployment or we have improved the employment rate from 10 years ago - it was 50% of employment and now actually over 70% of our candidates already got a permanent job in their journey. Now in this fluctuating economy and also a talent loss in Hong Kong, we need to have more employers tapping into this untapped talent pool and we should become a talent solution for you to provide an alternative or new energies into the workplace
And at the same time after the COVID and also the current labor market we need to invest more of our energies to train our members on the social manner workplace etiquette and also the more important would be the mental well-being of the younger generations when they're transiting into the workplace from school. Let's work together to build a more inclusive society and community together with disabilities. Today I'm bringing in for those who are working together with us to drive disability inclusion including our volunteers, advisors and our staff teams. We always dream to have a better world with all peoples are equal and also have a universal designed environment for all. We understand this dream is sometimes quite crazy but I know I'm not the only one. So bringing you the song Imagine by John Lennon
