October in Hong Kong.

Around me, one out of every six neighbours is poor, and one of seven employees: the income gap is the highest ever and there is no minimum wage. On a ten-minute walk to the subway station, there are perhaps 100 people just barely getting by.

To the south: of the many factory workers in Cambodia, about 90 per cent are women, and Hong Kong is the largest investor in the garment industry. In the Philippines, a worrying trend in the workforce is 'informal’ jobs, where salaries and rights are not formally protected.

To the west: the aftermath of huge floods in India and Bangladesh.

Look over to Darfur. If I were a resident of that dusty and violent place, would I sleep in my house? Would I be alive? Millions of people have had to desert their homes, to abandon their lives as they know it. About 200,000 have been killed. I would probably be waiting out time in an overcrowded camp, and as a woman, I might have been raped.

Look around again. A few cubicles away, colleagues are monitoring HK$12 million (about US$1.5 million) worth of grants for projects in Darfur and Chad. Other colleagues have just released a major report on poverty in the workforce, and are pressuring Hong Kong’s top leader, Donald Tsang, for policy change. Teammates are making progress with Hong Kong’s garment companies about transparency, while the innovative Oxfam Club (celebrating its tenth year) and our Interactive Education Centre (almost two years old) are helping teenagers to think, feel, experience, and think again.

"The world is wide enough for all of us," wrote Charles Dickens.

Madeleine Marie Slavick
Editor, Oxfam News E-magazine
Oxfam Hong Kong
emagazine@oxfam.org.hk

Always Learning

So Yuk Yan writes from the Oxfam Hong Kong Interactive Education Centre

Oxfam Hong Kong is located in a typical office building in Hong Kong – a glassy exterior, the ubiquitous marble lobby, and a set of three lifts/elevators that run 18 floors of workers up, and down again. Yet there is part of Oxfam’s office that doesn’t look like an office at all.

It begins with the corridor and its mock-broken walls, just to the right of the entrance. Arriving here, you wonder what is behind this design. It is this questioning that Oxfam wants to foster: the physical space creates a different thinking space in people’s minds. One student said "the broken wall looks like a globe" and another, "it sounds like the situation after gunfire".

Open a door, and in one corner there is a hut where a farmer might live. On another day, a dormitory for factory workers might be juxtaposed next to a Hong Kong teenager’s bedroom. If it is wartime, there are devices to filter contaminated water. What is it? Where are we? In one sense the room is basic. Look again and it is a mini-theatre, with equipment for lighting, sound and special effects.

This 1,800 square foot space, with changeable sets and props, is the Oxfam Hong Kong Interactive Education Centre (IEC), a place where young people meet and play, a place which provokes them to think and ask questions, a place where they learn and discuss poverty issues, not in the ordinary classroom setting, but in a unique environment through interactive methods, namely drama, role plays and simulation.

The centre exists in Hong Kong, one of the most capitalistic economies in the world, which has the global reputation for only caring about profit. It exists to contribute to the development of alternative curricula and pedagogy in the teaching and learning of poverty issues with an emphasis on global citizenship. It is innovative in Asia for its diversified and experiential learning that puts equitable development at its centre.

Since November 2005, when the IEC was established, Oxfam has provided more than 400 workshops for over 13,000 people from nearly 200 schools and youth groups. The number of participants more than doubled from 2005 to 2006.

When Oxfam was starting out with this large-scale project, we had several concerns. Would enough teachers be able to find the time to bring their students to a location-bound centre, when the teaching load can mean inflexibility and examination requirements can eat up timetables? Could we find room within the recent educational reforms to introduce more poverty issues into the curriculum? Would our site-specific programmes consistently arouse young people’s interest in poverty issues? For the IEC to be sustainable and effective, investments of resources needed to balance the outputs and impacts.

Two years and two feasibility studies later, we have received an overwhelming vote of support. Remarks by teachers are not very different from students. A teacher writes on a feedback form: "Compared to lecturing, it is much more effective. Students can easily step into the shoes of different roles. The discussion that follows is also helpful in arousing thoughts and stimulating analysis." A student contributes: "It is interesting in the adventure. I liked the feeling of discovery. This makes me curious, and I have more thinking about what is behind the story."

For comprehensive feedback, Oxfam also commissioned Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) to lead focus group discussions, interviews and questionnaires with about 70 teachers and 1,100 students who had joined IEC programmes. In all, the evaluation indicates that the centre has been effective in presenting global citizenship and in deepening people’s understanding of poverty.

The first stage in the life of IEC focused on the development of our workshops. We now have 12, covering such issues as the poverty gap, disasters and the environment, war and conflict, and international trade and poverty. The newest workshop, which we are fine-tuning at this very moment, will be on climate change and poverty.

'Siu Ying and Nick’, which dramatises the gap between the lives of teenage factory workers in southern China and middle-class teenagers right here in Hong Kong, remains the most popular in our series. The three-hour experiential journey is based on the real-life story of a woman who transformed herself from a migrant worker at a toy factory in Shenzhen, in the east of China, into an advocate and activist for services for people with disabilities back in her hometown of Chongqing, in the west.

The IEC is now in its second stage of development. An important finding by HKIEd was that participants were more inclined to change their attitudes about poverty issues rather than their behaviour. Oxfam’s one-off workshop approach, though successful in providing a unique learning experience and arousing participants’ interest and active learning, has had limitations in leading to in-depth and long-lasting change through action. Oxfam needs to go beyond this kind of short-term workshop and provide more follow-up and consolidated learning programmes, and we are currently developing ways to meet this need.

At just two years of age, the IEC is only a toddler: we are learning all the time. We celebrate the creativity, potential and success of the centre, yet we are also ready to find better ways of meeting our goals. The ultimate picture in our mind is a community of young people who understand their rights and responsibilities as global citizens, who have the knowledge and ability to act on global and local issues, and most importantly, who will remain committed to act for a fair society. They are Oxfam’s partners in community development, fundraising, campaigns, policy advocacy, and public education. They are sources of creative and innovative ideas to reduce poverty and injustice. IEC has this picture in mind. We invite you to join us in actualising this picture.

The IEC is open every day, Monday through Friday, except holidays, and sometimes also on the weekends. Most youth workshops are conducted in Cantonese, but programmes are available in English, too. To book a workshop or visit our adjacent resource library, contact us at 3120 5180 or education@oxfam.org.hk.

The Huge Shadows of Violence in Darfur

Lourdes Lasap writes from Hong Kong

The crisis keeps deepening – violence, thickening.

Most of the camps in Darfur are now full, and food rations insufficient, yet people keep arriving, with nowhere else to go. Violence, and the omnipresent threat of violence, has caused one out of every three people in Darfur to abandon their homes, their land, their livestock.

Almost two out of every three people in Darfur and eastern Chad now rely on, and survive on, humanitarian aid.

Armed violence happens every day in Darfur, especially in rural areas, with reports of several hundred murders in the past two months, on top of the many uncounted attacks, abductions, rapes, robberies… Even camp residents are not safe – armed men regularly come and steal, harass, intimidate – and peacekeepers, police and aid workers are also targets of attacks.

Tens of peacekeepers have been shot dead since February 2007, with the worst attack happening on 29 September: the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) was attacked by up to 2,000 armed men who stole weapons and vehicles and killed at least 12 peacekeepers. AMIS personnel see the violence as a "huge shadow" that will have lasting implications for the future AU-UN force. Rodolphe Adada, the AU-UN Joint Special Representative for Darfur, said, "I am profoundly shocked and appalled… Not only was it a flagrant violation of the Ceasefire but an unconscionable crime that breaks every convention and norm of international peacekeeping."

Aid workers also face assault: 13 aid workers, including an Oxfam driver, have been killed in the last 12 months – more than in the rest of the conflict combined. Vehicles are being hijacked and vital equipment stolen. At the start of 2007, aid agencies warned that violence had interfered to such an extent that operations had reached the lowest capacity for three years and that the entire humanitarian response – with last year’s budget at over USD12 million for Oxfam International alone – could collapse if the violence did not stop. In June, insecurity forced Oxfam to withdraw from Gereida, the largest camp.

Yet Oxfam International remains committed. We advocate at the national, regional and global level to influence policy concerning Darfur. Alongside, an integrated on-the-ground humanitarian programme is currently assisting about 500,000 people with water, sanitation, public health and livelihoods projects. With the conflict now in its fifth year, and showing no sign of abating, our response is becoming more and more long-term. We now provide opportunities and training to reduce dependency on aid, and promote better management of scarce natural resources.

In all interventions, Oxfam ensures that our approach does not create or fuel conflicts or divisions between nomads and pastoralists, and between factions, tribes, religions, races and ethnicities. We take this into account in our targeting, beneficiary selection, and choice of projects.

Basic infrastructure projects also uphold safety requirements: Oxfam wells, latrines and other facilities, for instance, are always located in safer areas. Fuel-efficient stoves reduce the number of times women need to leave the camp on long walks for firewood: on each trip, they face the risk of rape. Oxfam also works to make sure that camp residents know their rights, and that when a crime has occurred, such as rape, each person knows what services and options are available.

Oxfam’s calls for permanent ceasefire, adherence to international humanitarian law, strengthened peacekeeping efforts, and safe access for humanitarian personnel. Only a cessation of violence and an effective ceasefire can bring civilians the immediate security they need, and only the political process can bring about a sustainable long-term solution, a process inclusive of the many groups involved, including the millions of displaced people.

Poverty for One out of Eight Workers

The common view in Hong Kong is that when the economy booms, poverty falls. Yet, poor people are not benefiting from Hong Kong’s recent growth: since 1997, poverty has risen seven times faster than the GDP, and the Gini-coefficient – the standard measure of income inequality – now stands at 0.533, the highest ever.

Poverty in the workforce is particularly worrying, according to Oxfam Hong Kong’s new report, Employed but Poor: Poverty among Employed People in Hong Kong:

• 13 per cent of the workforce is poor in 2006: this rose by 87 per cent from 1996 and 2006, from 222,800 to 418,000 workers. It is defined as people earning less than HK$5,000 a month (about US$1,300) or half the median income.
  
  
• 103 per cent more workers earn less than HK$3,000 a month – from 68,600 workers in 1996 to 139,000 workers in 2006.
  
  
• Workers are earning 10 per cent less than in 1996: this is the case for service workers, such as dishwashers and cleaners.
  
  
• Poverty among women workers: in 2006, 63 per cent of workers in poverty are women, particularly middle-aged women, who face both sex and age discrimination. Typically, they work in casual jobs, with a low wage and little job protection.
  
  
• Poverty among minorities is disproportionate, especially among South Asians, who often face racial discrimination: 44 per cent of Nepalese work in menial jobs; 36 per cent of Pakistanis earn less than HK$6,000/month.

Oxfam’s report examines poverty trends in the workforce, reviews Hong Kong SAR Government policy, makes policy recommendations , and presents two case stories, one of age discrimination, one of racial discrimination, but both showing a strong desire to work.

Oxfam Hong Kong recommends an immediate introduction of a statutory minimum wage. Surveys in 2006 found that 60 per cent of small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) support the minimum wage, as does about 60 per cent of the public.

Oxfam’s report points out problems with Hong Kong’s main welfare programme, Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA). Despite people’s low wages, few eligible workers apply for their allowance through CSSA. The stigma is too severe. In 2006, there were only 1,551 new cases, while there were 418,000 workers in poverty.

The report also reveals the limitations of the government’s Wage Protection Movement (WPM), a voluntary programme for the private sector designed to protect cleaning and security workers, who are typically among the lowest paid in the workforce. Only about a third of the relevant companies participate in WPM and even then, according to a recent survey, the majority does not pay the wage set by the government: some cleaners receive only HK$21.90/ hour, not the required HK$26.60.

The research leading to Oxfam’s 44-page report was conducted by Wong Hung, Professor of Social Work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Wong also worked alongside Oxfam Hong Kong in 1996 to release a landmark report on Hong Kong poverty. Poverty in the workforce – also referred to as ‘employment poverty’ – is an issue that Oxfam Hong Kong has been addressing for several years through research, advocacy, public education, and support for community projects.

The case story of Mr. Hui is published in Life on Welfare in Hong Kong: Ten Stories, a book (in Chinese) by the Alliance on Concerning CSSA Review and Oxfam Hong Kong (2007). The case of Mr. Hass comes from A Research Report On the Life Experiences of Pakistanis in Hong Kong, produced in 2003 by the Centre for Social Policy Studies of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the S.K.H. Lady MacLehose Centre.

Talking About Transparency

Kalina Tsang

November 2007 marks one year since the release of our "Transparency Report: How Hong Kong Garment Companies Can Improve Public Reporting of their Labour Standards". Back then, the majority of the companies we surveyed were reluctant to respond, and the results of the 60-page report were alarming: the highest score on transparency was 10 out of 100, with only four of the 16 companies scoring above zero at all.

Times are changing.

I am now in regular dialogue with Giordano, Goldlion and U-right, among other Hong Kong-based clothing companies. Esprit is currently reviewing our recommendations and has indicated that Oxfam Hong Kong is the first NGO here that they engage with on transparency. And just a few weeks ago, I had a third meeting with senior management at Moiselle. In all, during the past year or so, "Corporate Social Responsibility" – or more often, CSR as its short form – has become an almost everyday term in the Hong Kong vocabulary.

To sustain the impetus, and to help make sure that CSR becomes part of the core of everyday business practices, not just public relations ‘talk’, Oxfam is undertaking more research into the clothing industry for a follow-up report on transparency. The report, to be released in Spring or Summer of 2008, has an expanded scope, reaching some of Hong Kong’s biggest garment trading companies and manufacturers. We are also going beyond clothing companies and mapping the CSR initiatives of Hong Kong’s top publicly-listed companies in 28 sectors. Given their enormous impact on the economy in Hong Kong and the region, it is crucial to benchmark their social, environmental and CSR performances with international best practices.

Oxfam is also conducting research into labour and CSR in the clothing industry of Cambodia, where Hong Kong is the largest investor. Almost one-third of all garment factories in the country are solely or partly owned by Hong Kong companies, and our research will target this group, specifically ones which joined the Better Factories Cambodia Project, which is monitored by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Eight years ago, in 1999, a textile agreement was signed between USA and Cambodia which granted quotas for Cambodian exports in return for better compliance with international labour standards. The ILO was contracted to monitor compliance and by March 2007, over 300 garment factories had joined the Project, about 100 of which are Hong Kong owned or invested. One aim of the research is to see if lessons learned through this Project can be applied to workplaces around the region.

Within the realms of Oxfam Hong Kong and its various networks, I will soon be discussing transparency and ethical sourcing with corporations which have been long-time donors to the organisation. (Almost 90 per cent of our funds comes from individuals and companies in Hong Kong.) My colleagues and I encourage youth to take action on injustice in the garment trade; these Youth Campaign Partners and Oxfam Club members visited Cambodia last year to witness the reality of workers firsthand, and when they returned home, they ran public education events on the streets of Hong Kong, and on the Internet too. My editorc olleagues have published English and Chinese editions of the book PHOTOVOICES, in which workers speak, in their own words and through their own photographs, about their daily work life in the factories of southern China.

All of this advocacy and public education work began in 2002, when the 64-city Make Trade Fair campaign kicked off in Hong Kong. Oxfam Hong Kong has researched the sugar industry in southern China and the cotton industry in northwest China; we have promoted Fair Trade products in Hong Kong; and we have lobbied the World Trade Organization (WTO) and various governmental, bilateral and multilateral bodies. In 2004, we released the report "Turning the Garment Industry Inside Out – Purchasing Practices and Workers' Lives" and distributed our "Resource Kit on Corporate Social Responsibility" to the business community of Hong Kong.

Kalina Tsang directs Oxfam's private sector engagement efforts. You too can join our call for a fairer garment industry, and for fairer trade as a whole. Visit: www.maketradefair.org.hk/trad_06/petition_eng.asp.

INDIA: Where Plastic Bottles Become Life Jackets

Floods are a fact of life in the northeast state of Bihar, one of the poorest regions of India. Every year, people die by drowning.

Oxfam Hong Kong has been working with villages on a disaster preparedness programme, such as providing basic supplies, including torches/flashlights, and working together to design inexpensive life jackets. Discussions with staff from the Integrated Development Foundation (IDF), a local group based right in Bihar, came up with this formula for a life jacket:

• 10 plastic 2 liter bottles (5 bottles for the front, 5 for the back)
• Cellotape
• Fast-drying but thick cotton
• 3-ply thread

IDF sought the support of several local eateries to donate empty plastic bottles in bulk, and cloth merchants recommended a durable fabric that would not retain water for long.

At first, villagers were hesitant to make the life-jackets. They had never seen anything like it before. But now, after several lives have been saved, the home-made jackets are in demand. IDF is conducting training on this and other basic disaster preparedness measures.

Oxfam Club: Empathy to Action

Every year for ten years now, Oxfam has been running a club with Hong Kong teenagers and twenty-somethings. Every year: overnight camps, workshops, and a trip to a developing country. In August, 30 Oxfam Club members went to Cebu in the Philippines, and saw what many typical tourists there never see: daily life in slums, in a factory, and on a mango farm. In other words: poverty, exploitation, discrimination and unfair trade. Through all of the encounters, they developed a deeper sense of empathy and justice, along with a more thorough understanding of poverty, labour and trade. When the Club met garment workers, they felt the hardship of their lives. One student said of the man photographed at the sewing machine "He will have to go back to his low-paid job. I can leave for Hong Kong."

Now, three months later, the students are back home in Hong Kong, ready to take their new wisdom to the streets. They have chosen Causeway Bay, one of the busiest districts for their Cebu-inspired dramas, photographs, and installations. They want to show the public how our shopping habits can create or deepen other people’s poverty. They want to urge us all to travel fairly, buy Fair Trade, and to live our daily lives fairly.

For more, visit the Oxfam Club blog for photographs and stories (in Chinese): oxfamclub.mysinablog.com

Of Rage and Passion

A good man named Joe Mitty just died, at age 88.

Joe Mitty was Oxfam's very first employee: he set up Oxfam's very first shop, in Oxford, in 1949.

During World War II, when the British public was donating a lot of clothes for the thousands of impoverished people around Europe, it was Joe who spotted the potential for a second-hand market: Oxfam became a shop that sold everything, but bought nothing.

He even sold a live donkey once!

Joe said that when he was starting out, he had no idea how to price items, "but I had two words – RAGE and PASSION – rage, because of the inequality and injustice in the world, and a passion to do something about it."

He got the Beatles to join the cause, as well as Laurence Olivier and many other revered celebrities. Today, tens of thousands of people volunteer at Oxfam shops around the world, including at two in Hong Kong: in Tsimshatsui (Silvercord) and in Central (Jardine House).

Joe once described himself as a "little old man".

The Director of Oxfam Great Britain, Barbara Stocking, sees Joe Mitty as "truly a giant... His death is a great loss to Oxfam and to the world, but his life should be a beacon to everyone..."

What can people do about Climate Change and Poverty?

		Please tell us at: http://forum.oxfam.org.hk/?c_lang=eng

OXFAM BOOKS
Oxfam Hong Kong has created more than 30 books, some in Hong Kong, some in Taiwan, some on the Mainland, some in Chinese, some in English, some bilingual, and some mostly with images, which cross all languages. Through publishing the voices of poor people around the world, we want to change the way people think about poverty. We want justice.

Oxfam recently supported the publication of 西部．希望　大山里的孩子們 (a book on education in western China, in Simplified Chinese).

		To order books: www.oxfam.org.hk/public/bookstore/list?lang=iso-8859-1

CAN
Oxfam Hong Kong is supporting this new photo-based magazine in China. CAN means both "look" and "do" in Chinese, and each 150-page edition (in Simplified Chinese) examines a different topic. The next edition, in October, will focus on workers and their products. The Chief Editor of the quarterly is the writer-photographer, Liu Wai Tong. CAN is available on the mainland and at select bookshops in Hong Kong.