HKU Bulletin April 2006 (Vol. 7 No. 2)

9 Mentors Teach Outside the Classroom T he University’s Mentorship Programme will celebrate its 10th anniversary in the next academic year, having given thousands of students the opportunity to observe and learn directly from Hong Kong’s leading lights. The programme pairs second-year undergraduates with lawyers, doctors, pol i t icians, businessmen, journal ists and others in the community. Over a year, they are expected to develop a relationship in which students gain new perspectives and skills and mentors gain insights from a younger generation. Mo r e t han 550 f r i ends and alumni of the University are volunteer mentors, including one of Hong Kong’s most prominent po l i t i ca l f i gures , Mar t i n Lee Chu-ming. “ I was asked to join this programme and I thought it was a good idea. I think university undergraduates would like some exper i ence and exposure to leaders of their community and to follow them around,” he said. Mr Lee joined the programme five years ago and has taken his ‘mentees’ to watch him during t r ials and Legislat ive Counci l sessions and on hill walks, where they can have long, uninterrupted talks. His goal is to gain their confidence and make their time together worthwhile, even when his mentees are not law students. “I can show them that success in life has to be fought for. You can’t expect to be successful without putting your heart and soul into whatever career you choose for yourself,” he said. His mentee in 2004-05, law student Natasha Khan, found her time with Mr Lee exciting and enlightening. “A really good aspect of the programme is that you can be with a successful, prominent member of society in this candid environment. Mr Lee made me feel really at ease and he was caring and wanted me to learn from him. “I’ve talked to other students and all of them have said they benefited a lot. Your mentor is a parent figure but not a parent, so there’s no rebel dynamic. You can just learn from them more readily and accept their opinion,” she said. Mentors, for their part, have the satisfaction of helping young people and learning about their concerns and opinions. Businessman Peter Wong Man-kong joined the programme in its first year precisely for that reason. “I t was coming up to the change-over [of sovereignty] and I felt the younger generation had a lot of questions and worries. I wanted to know how they felt about the change-over and if there was anything I could do to alleviate their doubts,” he said. His first mentee was Agnes Wan Ho-ying, now a lawyer. He took her on family outings and business trips over the border. “The programme provided a platform for me to meet someone like Mr Wong and open my eyes to Mainland China. I was able to go there and learn more about the economy, society and cultural development,” she said. Mr Wong is sti l l mentoring today and his newest recruit is Stephanie Yung, a second-year medicine student, who said it was often difficult for students to meet up with other people in society. “Students usual ly communicate with other students. This programme gives us the opportunity to widen our horizons and step out into society,” she said. And at the end, hopefully emerge with a more mature outlook on the world. Natasha Khan hopes to work in the human rights field one day and gained professional and personal insights from having Mr Lee as her mentor. “Mr Lee has spent most of his life pushing for human rights and universal suffrage in Hong Kong and I asked him about it. He said as long as he doesn’t give up, things will be okay. That was really inspiring to me. There are lots of challenges in human rights and you won’t always have instant results. But if you don’t give up, you won’t lose,” she said. 8 TEACHING AND LEARNING Conservation Experience F our students have been given the opportunity to learn firsthand about Mainland China’s conservation programmes thanks to the generous support of Hong Kong’s Ocean Park Conservation Foundation. The Foundation, which last year provided scholarships for our students to join conservation programmes in Cambodia, funded a ten-day trip to the mainland for four students from our Department of Ecology and Biodiversity. Two helped monitor the finless porpoise and baiji (a freshwater dolphin found only in China’s Yangtze River) in Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province while another two conducted a baseline survey of the Mabian Dafengding Nature Reserve, in Sichuan. Dr Cynthia Yau Sin Ting, Assistant Professor of the Department of Ecology and Biodiversity, said the purpose of the scholarships was to allow students to experience the life and culture of different countries. “It gives them the chance to learn about the conservation projects that are ongoing in these countries and experience the life and culture of societies beyond their own, so that when they return to Hong Kong they can share their experiences with their classmates, friends and the local media. It’s a way of raising public awareness of these issues.” Environmental Life Science undergraduate, Tracy Pang Chui Yi and Milla Fok, an MPhil student in the Department, both worked alongside researchers from the Wuhan Baiji Dolphinarium in monitoring the baiji and finless porpoise populations in the Yangtze River. The porpoise, which had a population of about 2,700 before 1991, is now thought to be little over a thousand in number. Pang said: “Both of us were so delighted to have the opportunity to take part in the internship programme. We joined Dr Wang Kexiong, of the Wuhan Baiji Dolphinarium, to monitor the abundance and movement of the finless porpoise and baiji in the outlets and adjacent waters of Poyang Lake. “We also took a five-day boat trip in Jiangxi where we observed over 200 Yangtze finless porpoises and learned the methods and skills needed in surveying cetaceans population. We tried zig-zag survey and fixed-point survey for visual survey, also the use acoustic data loggers for acoustic survey.” The students were also made aware of the effects of economic development on the local communities and wildlife in Jiangxi. “Although we all know that cetaceans and other wildlife like fish are seriously affected by dredging it’s hard to say the industry should be banned when you consider the life of the local citizens. “The skills we gained will be useful in promoting cetacean conservation work. We can now explain what and what conservationists in mainland China are doing to try to save the cetaceans,” she added. “And although neither of us is working on cetaceans right now, the enthusiasm for conservation work we gained from this trip will help us in our future conservation work here in Hong Kong.” Second-year MPhil student, Fion Cheung Ka Wing, helped conduct a baseline survey in the Mabian Dafengding Nature Reserve with researchers and postgraduate students from Sichuan University. She said: “Since we were interested in bird-watching, we followed an ornithologist to conduct bird surveys every day in different parts of the Reserve. “The extent of his knowledge was amazing and through our conversations, we learned about what kind of birds are to be found in Sichuan, the ability to distinguish between different subspecies and how to identify birds which are morphologically similar. We also learned about the interesting distribution patterns of birds.” She and fellow student Tony Hung Tun Hei gained better knowledge of how the Reserve is managed, the problems that it is facing and the possible ways to improve the situation. “I have heard for a long time that the natural environment of Sichuan, just like that in other western provinces in China, is being destroyed by the building of dams and hydropower stations. “This trip gave me the chance to see what’s happening with my own eyes and to speak with the local people to find out how they feel about it. “Before I went I had no idea that coal mining has become another serious environmental problem in Sichuan. When we did the survey, we could hear booming all the time which frightened off many of the birds. “Sichuan province is renowned for its high biodiversity and I think it will be at risk if large-scale development continues in the future,” she added. Peter Wong Man-kong with mentees.