Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Alina, HKIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

My name is Alina Fowler. I’m a current senior HKIS and I am the leader of the HKIS chapter of Mother’s Choice, and I’m also a member of the Youth Leadership Council.

I first got connected with Mother’s Choice because I’m adopted from there, so Mother’s Choice has always been super special to my family. So, throughout high school, I found it very important to be able to reconnect and volunteer there.

My most memorable experience with the YLC is probably the Hope Anchors event that I was able to volunteer at, where we were able to welcome Gary back to Hong Kong. And more independently from the YLC, I was able to give a TED Talk in March 2021 speaking about my adoption, and I also worked on putting together a video documentary on adoption for my high school community gathering.

My hopes and dreams for the YLC and Mother’s Choice is that we can continue to raise awareness for adoption and continue to help those that are in need.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/

Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Indy, Kellett Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hi Mother’s Choice, my name’s Indy Ray. I’m in year 12. My favourite subject is probably Psychology. My hobby is either dancing or being on stage and I am the leader of Kellett School YLC.

I first became involved with Mother’s Choice a couple of years ago. I joined the Kellett YLC at the time. As soon as I saw a reading about Mother’s Choice, I knew I wanted to work with them. I love how the whole community work towards improving the lives of young children and vulnerable women and that’s something that I’m really passionate about.

My most memorable experience working with my YLC was definitely organising and running the adoption awareness campaign back in November. I love doing a presentation where I shared a personal story of mine. The whole of Kellett also wore the Mother’s Choice colours for the day. We show the movie “Annie” at lunch. For most importantly I loved seeing how our whole school could just sort of come together and raise a really substantial amount of money for the Mother’s Choice organization.

I’m really looking forward to the future of Kellett of YLC especially after COVID relaxes a little bit. Hopefully we’ll be able to have weekly meeting in person. Hopefully our YLC will grow as well if somebody younger children can become more involved. And I know that there are many members of my YLC who are really looking forward to being able to work in the Mother’s Choice (Child) Care Home.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/

Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Tatiana and Kleio, ISF Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hi, I’m Tatiana. And I’m Kleio. We are grade 11 students from the ISF Academy and we are the co-president of a school Youth Leadership Council.

We first connected with Mother’s Choice after raising funds for them in the bake sale in 2019 and we decided to come into the charity after visiting the children in the center.

For us, this is one of the most memorable moments in our YLC work because we were able to see the change they were making for this town. Their dedication to the children really impressed us and inspired us to bring the spirit into our work for them as well. We decided to start a YLC in our school bringing our passion and diverse people students together to give back to the community. Someone is sports players and dancers. Someone is expert in STEM and the humanities. Someone inspired by our work in Adoption Awareness Month campaign and decided to join us then.

We hope that we’ll be able to continue working with Mother’s Choice, and one day see Mother’s Choice is full of every child in a loving family fulfilled. Thank you.

Some thoughts from our YLC Members!

In the future, I want to see the YLC reach out to more people trying to expand and show that they can positively impact the lives of children and bring happiness to the world.

I joined the YLC because the adoption awareness campaign open my eyes to a lot of issues that I was not really aware of before, and I wanted to learn more and get involved.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/

Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Carlynda, SIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hi everyone, I’m Carlynda from the SIS YLC chapter and I’m in year 14, and I’m the current YLC president for the SIS chapter.

I think I first was connected with Mother’s Choice when I was doing a work experience at the Mother’s Choice Borrett office, some of the staff contacted me about the YLC. I decided I was interested in creating my own YLC chapter in SIS. And so that’s how we started.

I think the most memorable experience in awhile experiences was when we did a donation drive for the Child Care Home. At first, because we were really unrecognized by a lot of students and some advertising issues, we didn’t have a lot of items. But then eventually after we did whole school emails, we also did whole school broadcast, and we also gave out leaflets to different students. Eventually, we had so many donations that we filled out the whole car trunk and the back seat of the volunteer’s car.

Davina, SIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hi, my name is Davina. I’m currently year 11 and I will be the next president of the YLC chapter at South Island School.

I actually initially heard about Mother’s Choice from my mom, as she was friends with two people who actually adopted children through Mother’s Choice, and they were both special needs children, and I found that really heartwarming, so I decided to join a Zoom meeting that sort of introduce the YLC to my school, and that’s how I joined.

I mean, for me, the most memorable moment was when I was the leader of the logistics team for the first time, and as all the members were older than me. I felt quite intimidated by that but at the end it managed to get everybody to cooperate and coordinate, and we were able to carry out a decent analysis for the #FindingFamily project. And so I think that helped me develop my leadership skills and helped me realize my potential, so I found that really memorable.

Some of the dreams or hopes that I have for the YLC is able to empower students and have more students at our school be able to learn about the issue, just be aware of the work of Mother’s Choice is doing and find out how they can actually contribute as well as the community. And I hope we can do this through having parents attend the seminars about possibly young mothers in the struggles they go through, so we can actually be able to share this with the students as well, as well as involving some of the students in the younger youth groups at our school through possibly helping them learn more about the issue, as well as being a represent to their peers, so we can further reach more people and be able to eliminate some of the stigmas or stereotypes of running issues.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/

Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Kristy, KGV Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hi, my name is Kristy and I’m a year 12 student. I’m currently the leader for the KGV delineation of YLC. I first got connected with Mother’s Choice through my friend passing on my details. She told me that it was great CAS opportunity and would allow you to meet a lot of different people while helping out the charity.

I think that one of the most memorable parts of Mother’s Choice has been to meetings. Although we haven’t been able to participate in many in-person events, I’m always shocked at the amount of freedom that Mother’s Choice gives us to lead the projects in the trust that they put enough. They really do treat us with respect and allow us to bring our ideas to fruition. It’s also been great working with my team to discuss and plan projects. Overall, it’s been a really fulfilling experience.

We strongly believe that the initiatives of Mother’s Choice are currently pushing will yield great results and we want to support them in the future with fundraisers in our school when COVID clears up and I’m being able to participate in more volunteer events. We’re currently working on the #FindingFamily project. I personally love that Mother’s Choice places the biggest emphasis on a family build through nurture, love and care as opposed to just being related by blood. It’s been illuminating to see loving families that don’t set the stereotypical structure and they try and help to spell the myths and prejudices surrounding adoption. We hope to work with Mother’s Choice in the future to help others realize this too.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/

Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Bridget, GSIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

My name is Bridget Sippel and I am a member and one of the co-leaders of the YLC chapter at German Swiss International School. I’m a year 13 student at German Swiss and my role in the YLC is alongside micro leader Valerie. We helped to organize and run meetings for our chapter and we also represent the GSIS YLC chapter, have monthly meetings with Mother’s Choice and other YLC groups.

My families have been involved in your organization for many years and I would help the gala dinner and walkathon and other fundraising events. And a few years ago, I was actually given the opportunity to become a weekly volunteer in the Child Care Home. I’ve been doing that for a few years now and just this past year I also joined the Youth Leadership Council at Mother’s Choice which has been such an amazing experience.

My most memorable experience being with the YLC so far has been the adoption awareness campaign that we did in November of this year. It was really great to see such a growing interest in the cause and in your organization. We had more students show up to our chapter meetings every week and it was really great to see such support from our student body. And personally, I also learned a lot more about adoption in Hong Kong through this campaign.

My hope for Mother’s Choice is that they continue to do the amazing work that they’re doing, supporting families and children and our local Hong Kong community and I hope that more young people and students in Hong Kong, like myself, are able to take advantage of the opportunities at Mother’s Choice and learn more about this amazing organization and the work that they do.

Valerie, GSIS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hi, I’m Valerie and I’m in year 11 of German Swiss International School. I’m the co-founder and leader of the Youth Leadership Council at GSIS. Bridget and I represent the GSIS school chapter each month at monthly meetings, as well as organize group discussions and come up with action plans with the teammates to raise awareness for important social issues.

I live very close to the Child Care Home and walking pass there everyday made me feel more curious about it. After my father became a volunteer at the Child Care Home, I decided to take action myself and help the children there through being a school team.

I always enjoy listening to my team members ideas and feedback, discussing with them future plans and actions is something always very memorable and inspiring to me. I especially love seeing their devotion, dedication and passion towards the causes and this motivate me to further serve our community.

I strongly believe that each and every child deserves a loving and nurturing home, and because of this, my dream for Mother’s Choice is for a continue serving the various stakeholders in our community. I hope that your child can feel love and safe and that we can build this strong future for each and every one of them.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/

Let’s hear from our Youth Leadership Council school member!

Anson, DBS Chapter, Youth Leadership Council

Hello, I’m Anson Leung, I’m the leader of the DBS chapter of the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council. I’m currently in grade 11 and I’m studying the IB. I first knew Mother’s Choice in grade 10. And when I to choose a CAS service program, it was then that I started to understand what Mother’s Choice does and what facilities they provide to help children, families and pregnant teens. I was really moved by the mission after volunteering for 1 year. It was something I would never have thought of before and so I decided to take on the leader position in DBS in grade 11 as my IB CAS project, so I can recruit more people as volunteers and also spread the word about the work of Mother’s Choice amongst our school and our community.

I’ve had a lot of memorable experiences in my work for the YLC. Despite facing a lot of challenges due to the coronavirus these two years, we have had a lot of activities such as hiking, visiting Child Care Home and holding meetings with other leaders, both face-to-face and through Zoom, to understand really how different schools may approach the mission of volunteering. It’s spreading the world differently and it’s really, really inspiring. Although a lot of training is required to take care of children and deal with real cases, and you really have to be professionals to help them, so as youth volunteers, we may not have the ability and time to do that, it is still very, very meaningful to help in the background by raising awareness among the younger generation.

I hope that more people will understand the work of Mother’s Choice and see the relevance of our mission with their daily lives. Especially because I’m from a boy school, so a lot of people have the misconception that… you know, pregnant teens have nothing to do with them. But actually everyone can take an active role to spread the word and learn about child protection, and learn about the mission of Mother’s Choice and to become volunteers as well. I believe that Mother’s Choice will reach a wider audience in the future and it will make a huge impact in lots of families in Hong Kong. Thank you.

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Started in 2015, the Mother’s Choice Youth Leadership Council is a youth centered advisory group designed to provide leadership development for student members as well as facilitate teamwork, build youth confidence and strengthen student skills with problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

If you are interested in starting up a Youth Leadership Council in your school, please email us at mcvolunteers@motherschoice.org

For more details, please visit www.motherschoice.org/en/take-action/student/