Category: Taking Action

Step Out, Live Out the Blessings

Written by: Tiffany Lam During holiday, would you travel abroad, or do something meaningful? A team of 10 brothers and sisters from Evangelical Free Church of China Waterloo Hill Church (WHC) spent their 10-day holidays in Nepal last April. They travelled to mountainous communities in Gorkha to visit CEDAR’s partner ACN who are doing post-disaster work. “Through this trip, we hope to help brothers and sisters realise what integral mission is and broaden their gospel vision,” says Joshua, former WHC staff and part of the team. Therefore, they stepped out of the air-conditioning room at church and went to remote mountainous area where they practised walking with local people and the meaning of offering a cup of cold water to

Divine Intervention in Broken Livest

Written by: Maylin Hartwick (Leader of Harmony Baptist Church) When one wants to reconcile with oneself, God’s intervention is indispensable as God transforms the life of a person. In the past few years, CEDAR has witnessed many encouraging testimonies of its partners. We saw how God healed the brokenness in the lives of the poor and exploited. Harmony Baptist Church (HBC) is a friend of CEDAR. Like CEDAR, HBC is active in mobilising local believers to care for refugees, asylum seekers, domestic workers, and victims of human trafficking here in Hong Kong. Maylin, a leader of HBC, is going to share with us stories of women they have served and how God has intervened in their lives. At Harmony Baptist Church,

This is Community Development

Written and edited by: Jojo Poon I enjoy hearing stories and sharing of different development workers very much. If we put their sharing together, then we would get a complete picture of God’s purposes for the poor and the world. For this issue’s “Taking Action”, we invited CEDAR’s staff from different eras to share about their learnings and experiences along the way to put together a blueprint for CEDAR. “We were in Gansu’s Hui village working on the project… When we conducted home visits, we would ask: ‘Is anyone home?’, and if there were only women in the house, they would answered: ‘No!’” shares Alice, who served in Gansu, China. “We spent half a year to build relationship

She Saw the Beauty of Development

Interviewee: Alice Kwan (Former CEDAR Staff) Interviewed and edited by: Jojo Poon How far would you go for the poor? Would you visit the Guangdong industrial district alone to investigate sweatshop labour, or venture to Northwest China alone and live among the Hui people, or supervise earthquake rescue efforts while carrying a baby in your tummy and worrying about your husband’s safety who is responding at the frontline, or devote your family as a fulltime volunteer for four years, only to wake more hearts to care for the poor? That was Alice Kwan’s story. Alice had served in CEDAR for 12 years, 4 of which were spent supporting the community development projects in rural communities in Gansu, China.

Experiencing God in Development Projects

Interviewees: Bonnie Ho (Administrative Staff) & Cee Foong Fung (Former colleague of CEDAR) Interviewed and Edited by: Jojo Poon Bonnie and Cee Foong had been serving CEDAR for over 20 years. Although they worked in the supporting role at the office, but that did not make them less knowledgeable about development work than others working in the same field. Such was evident during one of our regular morning meetings, the host led us to think in the shoe of the poor and we were to think about what their expected results for their community were after a project commenced. At the end, they both gave the most sensible answers. Bonnie has always been managing our accounting and finance,

Local and Abroad ．Mission and Development

Interviewee: Fountain Chik (Senior Programme Officer) Written and edited by: Jojo Poon “Previously, I have worked in Tung Chung, Sham Shui Po, and Yuen Long before.” Many of us know that Fountain is the “Bangladesh guy” or “Prince of Bangladesh” at our office, but little have heard of his story before CEDAR. He says he began in community work locally. From different times of his service, there has always been one unified goal – to look for God’s footprint wherever he goes. When he was working in Tung Chung, Fountain was assisting community members on job employment as a social worker. Due to its long distance from business districts and to save on transportation fees, low-income residents in

Poverty Relief: A Childhood Dream Realised

Interviewee: Grace Lai (Head of Partnership Development) Interviewed and edited by: Jojo Poon People take part in poverty relief works with different reasons. For Grace, the seed to care for the poor was sowed and rooted in her heart since her childhood years. “Every time the TV showed a commercial from a development aid organisations, I would be deeply moved… After I became a Christian, I wanted to do something meaningful. The moment came when I was changing jobs, where I recollected those old thoughts in my heart. I wanted to enter the poor’s community and live with them. Therefore, I began to realise this childhood dream by joining the development field.” About 10 years ago, Grace went

MAD for God

Interviewee: Rebecca Lee (Senior Programme Officer) Interviewed and edited by: Jojo Poon Devotees in the development industry often started out with a calling derived from a unique personal experience. For Rebecca, our Senior Programme Officer, that special experience took place during her university years. She was pursuing a degree in International Politics, and one of the subjects was International Relations. It was her first time acknowledging the wide disparity between the world’s rich and poor, “I didn’t think God intended the world to work this way: while some people were starving to death, others enjoyed excessive abundance. This was clearly wrong. I wanted to do something to make the world a better place,” Rebecca says. Since then, to

The Church and the Public – Three Pastors on Community Service

Written and edited by: Tony Chan To echo this issue’s theme: Church and Community Mobilisation, we interviewed three pastors who are heavily involved in caring and serving their communities. They are Rev. Anders Chan Ming-chuen (Associate Senior Pastor of Mongkok Baptist Church), Mr. Jonathan Au (Lecturer of Christian Ministry Institute; Deacon at Kai Tak Peace Evangelical Centre), and Ms. Teo Yun-sarm (Conference Parish Worker of The Methodist Church, Hong Kong). They share their experiences in mobilising the Church to serve the community. It was an enriching conversation, touching on topics such as Gospel and social services, preaching social-related topics sermons, and advocating for justice. Though each of them had different views and approaches on social service, they all came

Mobilising Churches: From a Social Organiser’s Perspective

Written and edited by: Tsun Wan Yan The Church’s role in Hong Kong’s social development dates back to early missionary times. However, in recent years, churches in Hong Kong were often accused of being absent from major social discussions, except issues that spiked its interest. For this issue’s “TAKING ACTION” section, we interviewed the Organiser of the social organisation, HK Citizens, Daniel Man, and asked him how they mobilise churches to respond to current issues through Community Organising. The Beginning: Non-profit Work in England HK Citizens oragnises community to work together for common good, which involves mobilising churches to bond with their communities. And this is not something new to Daniel. Daniel started off as a social worker