The teacher giving disadvantaged youths hope for a brighter future
Gilbert Chow Yun-cheung, 67, a former airline executive, is finding new purpose in retirement as a volunteer teacher at the Society for Community Organisation
On a sweltering afternoon, a large, middle-aged man sits chatting with a woman in a corridor. He tells her she’s lucky, because, touch wood, if anything happens to her, at least she has a husband to look after her child.
“I’m sick as a dog,” the man says, “but I’m all she’s got.”
He is referring to his eight-year-old daughter, whose squeak of “Bye bye, Chow sir!” can be heard from where they are sitting.
He sighs. “I have to take her to class here, or she’ll end up like us, poor for life.”
Across the very narrow corridor is the Sham Shui Po office of the Society for Community Organisation, where an English class is being held by Gilbert Chow Yun-cheung, 67, a retiree who used to head the local operations of an American airline. Here, he teaches, for free, phonics and basic grammar, aiming to provide the children with some building blocks for the language – something they are not taught in school.
The key, he says, is to help them overcome fear.
“English is easier to learn than Chinese, actually; if they can learn the relationship between letters and sounds, that’s already a lot of words figured out. But fear of the language, that’s what really stops them.”
After Chow retired, he searched for something meaningful to do. He was inspired by an article written by the organisation’s director, Ho Hei-wah, and got in touch with the group.
“I was quite shocked the first time I came up here, before this recent renovation. It was so shabby,” Chow says.
“The children who come here are from grass-roots families, many of them with single parents, and almost all with no one to help them keep up with school work.”
At first, Chow went to the centre one or two days a week, but realising how much the children needed help, that turned into three, then four days, then full weeks. He has been committed to that schedule for the past seven years.
He recalls essentially taking no holiday in the first few years.
“I have no teaching background, so I spent all my time researching and learning how to teach.”
When asked if it gets tiring, he simply says that if not for the work, he would just be sitting at home reading newspapers.
“At least this gets me out of the house a few times a week.”
Poverty is not novel for Chow. He grew up in a poor resettlement area not far from the organisation’s office.
“But back then there were opportunities for us to work our way out of it. Now, it’s just so much harder, with massive inequality, no social mobility,” he says.
He’s eager to help give disadvantaged youngsters, many of whom he describes as having been “losing at the starting line” given their lack of resources, a chance to change their situation.
Chow has been nominated by the organisation for the Compassion Ambassador Award in this year’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, organised by the Post.
Before class starts, a shy young girl comes up and hands a folded piece of orange paper to Chow. In it is a message of appreciation written by a grateful mother, signed by her and a number of students, complete with a rainbow drawn on, thanking “Chow sir” for selflessly giving the children hope for a brighter future.
