The topics of diversity and inclusion (D&I) are nothing new to The Zubin Foundation, a Hong Kong-based social policy think-tank and charity that works to improve the lives of the city’s marginalised ethnic minorities. Founded in 2014, The Zubin Foundation has been working extensively towards boosting representation of ethnic minorities in senior government advisory and policy making; empowering ethnic minority women and girls; and providing mental health counseling, education, scholarships and training opportunities for Hong Kong’s marginalised ethnic minority community.
Within the years of engaging different stakeholders to shed light on and remove chronic barriers to fairness and opportunity in Hong Kong, The Zubin Foundation has witnessed a changing landscape of Hong Kong’s D&I scene. To the mission-driven charity, D&I agendas were mainly pushed by different non-governmental organisations like Equal Opportunity Council and CareER in Hong Kong previously, but now the local government and multinational companies have also started the journey and became more involved in the conversations. While multinational companies usually have lots of resources, their D&I strategies were usually globally devised and led by top management.
“The initiatives are great, however the localisation and adaptation may not be as effective in terms of really reaching its local end-service users. We have seen a lot of large companies providing comprehensive internal D&I trainings, but no concrete next steps for hiring and follow-up actions.” Matthew Yu, Project Manager at The Zubin Foundation, says. “Up to now, we have seen little efforts in SMEs unfortunately. Most provide little to no D&I training to its employees. Without proper education, it is very difficult to push the agenda forward.”
Group photo: (left) Molly Yeung – summer intern, (right) Matthew Yu – Project Manager at The Zubin Foundation