Miss Lucy Ching Man Fai has had a distinguished career, spanning some 30 years, as a social worker in Hong Kong, helping the socially less-fortunate and others, like herself, who have lost their sight. Born in 1936 in Guangdong, she graduated from the Diocesan Girls' School in 1954, following which she went to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, in the United States, where she undertook a teacher's training course for the blind.
Miss Ching joined the Hong Kong Government Social Welfare Department in 1959 and in 1965 went abroad to study welfare administration for the blind at the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind in the United Kingdom. Until 1978 she was an Assistant Social Work Officer at the Western District Blind Welfare Centre. In that year she was appointed a Social Work Officer, and assumed professional responsibility for work in the fields of rehabilitation and the elderly in Central and Western Districts and the Outlying Islands.
Miss Ching is an advisor to the Hong Kong Federation of the Blind and a committee member of Christian Literature for the Blind. Miss Ching is widely seen as an inspiring example of courage and perseverance in the face of adversity, and in 1968 she won the Disabled Persons Award. She was a recipient of the Outstanding Young Persons Award in 1975, in which year she also received a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). Her 1980 autobiography One of the Lucky Ones, which was published internationally, has been transcribed into Braille and recorded on tape for the visually handicapped.
In recognition of her services to the community, the University has resolved to confer upon her the degree of Doctor of Social Sciences honoris causa.
