2020-Present 2020-present 2020-Present Ageing Health & Well Being Other Health Projects Others Vulnerable Groups

Inner Peace

One Take Limited, Hong Kong

‘May the Five Blessings descend upon your door’ is an auspicious saying commonly exchanged on festive occasions. In fact, ‘Five Blessings’ comes from Confucian classic The Book of Documents and refers to longevity, wealth, health, virtue, and peaceful passing, in its chapter on Great Plan. In today’s Hong Kong, how can we ensure that our loved ones and ourselves enjoy all Five Blessings in our finite lives?

‘Five Blessings’ is Hong Kong’s first professional life-death planning service. It was launched by OneTake ted jointly with two other local social enterprises, ‘ForeverGift.hk’ and ‘Minimal Funeral Limited’. Let it Go.’ Our team of lawyers, doctors, and funeral planners offer a one-stop solution to arranging one’s will, enduring power of attorney, and advanced directive in relation to medical treatment, besides funeral planning and capturing life stories. We organise talks for social service organisations and the public, so as to help people of different socio-economic backgrounds make preparations for themselves and their loved ones with ease.

To ensure that underprivileged communities can access such services, we established Hong Kong’s first Five Blessings Center, with funding from ZeShan Foundation, other family foundations, and the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund (SIE Fund), as well as support from the Hong Kong Council of Social Service’s Impact Incubator. Our Inner Peace Program aims to popularise life-death planning through public education and professional consultation, as well as offering ‘Five Blessings’ services free-of-charge to older adults and chronically or terminally ill patients referred by social service organisations.

Five Blessings Centre, One Take Limited

The program’s lawyer partner is invited to speak at a talk for older adults, organised by the Senior Community Legal Information Centre website, on arranging one’s will, enduring power of attorney, and advanced directive in relation to medical treatment.

At the Five Blessings Centre, doctors, lawyers, and funeral planners offer regular, free-of-charge individual consultation and document witnessing services to the underprivileged.

A staff member promotes life and death education at an expo, introducing members of the public and different sectors to the ‘Five Blessings’ services and Inner Peace Program.

The program’s lawyer partner is invited to speak at a talk for older adults, organised by the Senior Community Legal Information Centre website, on arranging one’s will, enduring power of attorney, and advanced directive in relation to medical treatment.

At the Five Blessings Centre, doctors, lawyers, and funeral planners offer regular, free-of-charge individual consultation and document witnessing services to the underprivileged.

A staff member promotes life and death education at an expo, introducing members of the public and different sectors to the ‘Five Blessings’ services and Inner Peace Program.

‘May the Five Blessings descend upon your door’ is an auspicious saying commonly exchanged on festive occasions. In fact, ‘Five Blessings’ comes from Confucian classic The Book of Documents and refers to longevity, wealth, health, virtue, and peaceful passing, in its chapter on Great Plan. In today’s Hong Kong, how can we ensure that our loved ones and ourselves enjoy all Five Blessings in our finite lives?

‘Five Blessings’ is Hong Kong’s first professional life-death planning service. It was launched by OneTake ted jointly with two other local social enterprises, ‘ForeverGift.hk’ and ‘Minimal Funeral Limited’. Let it Go.’ Our team of lawyers, doctors, and funeral planners offer a one-stop solution to arranging one’s will, enduring power of attorney, and advanced directive in relation to medical treatment, besides funeral planning and capturing life stories. We organise talks for social service organisations and the public, so as to help people of different socio-economic backgrounds make preparations for themselves and their loved ones with ease.

To ensure that underprivileged communities can access such services, we established Hong Kong’s first Five Blessings Center, with funding from ZeShan Foundation, other family foundations, and the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund (SIE Fund), as well as support from the Hong Kong Council of Social Service’s Impact Incubator. Our Inner Peace Program aims to popularise life-death planning through public education and professional consultation, as well as offering ‘Five Blessings’ services free-of-charge to older adults and chronically or terminally ill patients referred by social service organisations.

Five Blessings Centre, One Take Limite

More Sustainable Source of Resilience and Recovery

In disaster management, the framework of participatory capacities and vulnerabilities analysis (namely “PCVA”) has been widely adopted for needs assessment over the past three decades in different countries. This lens was also referenced by ZeShan team to understand not only the impact of the ongoing 5^th wave of COVID pandemic on vulnerable people but also the systemic drivers behind such impact. These often touch upon issues related to social inclusion, public governance, health equity, equal access to public resources and even policy issues.

PCVA is rooted in two proven social development methodologies. First, of course, it stems from the traditional tool of CVA which enables frontline workers to design and plan relief projects, based on capacities and vulnerabilities of a community. It recognizes vulnerable people have capacities to cope with adversity and can take actions to improve and rebuild their lives, before, during and/or after a disaster. Second, PCVA has originated from the belief that empowering communities to participate in program design, planning and/or management would lead to increased ownership, accountability, and impact. This is therefore the best way to bring about recovery or even changes.

This framework indeed aligns very much with ZeShan’s core approach of community empowerment in all program planning. We believe, in every community, people have resources and capacities, but often unnoticed and then under-utilized. In the process of disaster relief and recovery, it is therefore very important to identify these resources and capacities, and then empower people at all levels, including the so-called victims. This process is always a more sustainable way to help people help themselves and others, and rebuild their own life and community.

In the past three months, through this lens, we discussed with peer foundations, project partners and people in Hong Kong. We have identified the pressing needs of the most vulnerable ones as well as some of their precious but unnoticed resources and capacities. With more than 10 new relief grants, ZeShan has focused on those marginalized or excluded under the existing policy frameworks and mainstream service provision or subsidy schemes. These include grassroots families, ethnic minorities, refugees and asylum seekers, small businesses and social enterprises struggling with unsold food stock and poor cashflows. Designing each of our relief programs, we have tried hard to mobilize their own untapped labour and unused materials inside our hard-hit communities, with a view to preparing themselves better and stronger in the forthcoming process of economic recovery.

For a charitable foundation, we consider it not difficult to hand out materials to the needy. We are therefore trying hard to be more forward looking. At this current relief stage, whenever possible, a more empowering process was consciously designed and executed in our relief projects. For we believe, this will be a more effective and sustainable way to help them rebuild their own communities at the next rehabilitation phase.

Our recent relief grants:

Initiated by	Project
Chow Tai Fook Charity Foundation	Wu Wu Cheng” Community Mutual Support Initiative”
Fullness Social Enterprises Society Limited	Love Our Neighbour
Dialogue in the Dark (HK) Foundation	WeCare (Emergent Emotional Support for Vulnerable Elderly)
Health In Action	Emergency Relief to Cleaners and Deprived Families Working and/or Living in Kwai Chung
Run Hong Kong	Covid Relief – Health and Essential Services Covid Relief – Psychological Support
Christian Action – Centre for Refugees	COVID-19 Fifth Wave Emergency Distribution
United Christian Nethersole Community Health Service	COVID-19 Care for Ethnic Minorities
The Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council	Friendly Food Support Scheme
Hong Kong Unison	5th Wave (COVID-19) Ethnic Minority Emergency Relief Project

Irene SO
Executive Director
ZeShan Foundation

Staff and volunteers distributing relief packs to elderly (Dialogue in the Dark (HK) Foundation)

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Volunteers distributing vouchers to beneficiaries
(“Wu Wu Cheng 2.0” Community Mutual Support Initiative/ Chow Tai Fook Charity Foundation)

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Social Enterprise (Angelchild) staff packing food packs
(Fullness Social Enterprises Society)

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Staff distributing daily necessities to refugees and asylum seekers (Christian Action- Centre For Refugees)

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Fresh shop at RUN! Refugees and asylum seekers collecting fresh food, milk, cleaning supplies and toiletries every fortnight.
(RUN Hong Kong)

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Volunteers packing COVID relief packs
(Hong Kong Unison)

With help of volunteers, the COVID-19 Care Package were delivered to different districts
(United Christian Nethersole Community Health Service)

Staff visited cleaners’ workplaces to talk about the proper usage of PPE correctly and the use of Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits, etc.
(Health In Action)

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When Refugees Meet Locals

Branches of Hope, Hong Kong

Branches of Hope (“BoH”) started the Lunchbox Outreach Project in November 2020, which provides healthy food to street cleaners in Wan Chai. Beyond ordinary relief work, the scope of this project aims to address issues around the social inclusion of often marginalized communities. For the first distribution of 90 lunchboxes, meals were made from recipes provided by members of the Nepalese and South Asian community, who were also able to interact with the cleaners who received the lunchboxes. The feedback from one local street cleaner reflected that the kind gesture of sharing food and friendly attitude during social interactions had made them feel welcome and accepted in Hong Kong, as it was not something they regularly experienced in their daily lives.

Despite the suspension of lunchbox preparation due to the fourth wave of COVID-19, BoH has continued to support street cleaners around Wan Chai, reaching out to distribute care packages, face masks, canned food, and snacks. Taking the lead, members of the refugee community came up with the idea to buy scarves, lip balm, and hand cream to gift to the street cleaners on Christmas Eve, packing them into nicely wrapped gift packs along with other donated items and supermarket vouchers.

In January 2021, BoH expanded their outreach to include waste pickers and the homeless.

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Refugees and BoH staff distributing relief supplies to local street cleaners