Workcamp @ Tai O Community (January 2015) 大澳工作營
This is the third Workcamp @ Tai O Community (大澳工作營) organized by HKUST Connect since 2012. It aims to positively impact the remote Tai O community through various types of services. This year, the services mainly focused on social, environmental, and cultural aspects.
Volunteers prepared and delivered sweet soups to the elderly in the community to show their care on the first day of arrival. As they observed that most of the elders do not travel much, they conducted a "Travel around the globe" carnival for the elders and gave out specially designed photographs of participating elders being photoshopped into pictures of historical sites or tourist spots in foreign countries. The volunteers interacted with the elderly in a show-and-tell session which provided information about the New Year traditions of countries like Korea and Spain, and gave out handmade Chinese New Year decorations to them. Furthermore, they guided the elders to do two sets of simple physical exercises to promote healthy lifestyle.
During the ecological assessment in the pre-camp visit, volunteers found out that the beaches and river bank in Tai O are contaminated by solid waste. They thus organized cleanups in the workcamp to preserve the natural environment of Tai O. On top of that, the volunteers also observed that Tai O culture from the view points of the locals were not well documented. So they conducted interviews with a few Tai O residents such as retired fishermen, the chairman of the dragon boat club, a painter, an eco-tour guide and a planner of traditional water wedding. The interviews were videotaped and will be edited and share to the general public to promote the culture of Tai O.
One of the highlights of the workcamp was renovating the stilt house for the elderly. The iron-made stilt houses are built along the water channels and they rust easily due to weathering. In order to improve the living conditions of the elderly, our volunteers repainted 13 stilt house in one and a half day with the support from Dulux Paints HK. It was also the 3rd year that Dulux Paint HK sponsoring paint for the refurbishment service in Tai O.
In this 4-day-3-night Workcamp, volunteers were able to get a taste of the tranquil fishing village lifestyle by staying in traditional stilt houses and they all enjoyed conducting services and preparing meals together as a team. It was also a great opportunity to improve their skills in activity design, project coordination, communication and logistics management through planning and implementing the activities during the pre-trip workshops and workcamp.
