Paris

Five children's books about Paris that inspire Hong Kong family to visit

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 05 May, 2015, 6:00am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 05 May, 2015, 11:06am

Annie Ho life@scmp.com

Last month, my husband and I started brainstorming our next holiday while we were, funnily enough, on holiday. We considered Amsterdam, Prague and cities in Spain or Italy. And then our eyes lit up at the idea of going back to Paris, the destination of our first trip together. I admit that, while he was envisioning this romantic getaway for the two of us, I fantasised about bringing our daughters along to discover the famous landmarks and many attractions for families.

My fantasy is undoubtedly fuelled by our well-read copies of Madeline and Adele & Simon. The story of a red-headed seven-year-old girl living in a boarding school in Paris, Ludwig Bemelmans' Madeline has been read aloud in our home dozens of times. We love the rhyme and rhythm of the text, and have spent so much time poring over interesting details of pre-second world war life. There is a doctor who makes house calls, and then proceeds to call for an ambulance by instructing a telephone operator to connect him to "Danton-Ten-Six". At the hospital, Madeline convalesces in a bed that is adjustable using a manual bed crank.

Barbara McClintock's Adele & Simon is equally charming and nostalgic for life in a different era. The story starts with Adele collecting her younger brother Simon after school. On the way home, the two children make detours through many iconic scenes of early 19th century Paris: a street market, city garden, museum, Latin Quarter enclave and a tea salon. At each stop, Simon absented-mindedly leaves behind his hat, scarf, school bag, coat… until he arrives home with nothing but the shirt on his back.

For this column, I wanted to compare these two books, and was curious to find out which book had been written first. When I saw that McClintock's book was published in 2006, more than six decades after Bemelmans published Madeline, I did a double-take, then made sure it wasn't the date of reprinting. What a pleasant surprise to learn that McClintock is a contemporary illustrator who enjoys creating picture books that evoke a past world.

Her story is also a pleasant surprise. She left her childhood home in North Dakota and moved to New York after cold-calling Maurice Sendak to ask about how to become a children's book illustrator. He took the time to chat with her on the phone, advising her how to put together a portfolio and recommending that she move to New York.

There are other wonderful picture books about the City of Light. A Giraffe Goes to Paris is Mary Tavener Holmes' account of the true story of Belle the giraffe. She was a gift from the pasha of Egypt to King Charles X of France, and, in 1827, she sailed from Alexandria to Marseilles, and then took more than one month to walk the 800km to Paris. Old maps, photographs and portraits supplement Jon Cannell's illustrations.

Emily Arnold McCully's beautifully illustrated Mirette on the High Wire won the 1993 Caldecott Medal. It is an inspiring story about courage and perseverance. Mirette is a feisty and fearless little girl who, through her determination to learn to walk a tightrope, helps a retired tightrope walker to overcome his fear.

For beginning readers, Dodsworth in Paris is about comic foil Dodsworth and a mischievous duck. The simple, succint sentences present a hilarious story and the expressive illustrations will have children and adults laughing aloud at the silly antics of the troublemaking duck.

The wonderful thing about all of the above books is that each is part of a series, so you can enjoy books with the same premise or characters, in a new city or adventure.

Annie Ho is board chair of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong bringmeabook.org.hk a non-profit organisation advocating for family literacy.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Books unlock a world of travel

Cinderella stories around the world

Between the lines: the Cinderella story is common to many different cultures

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 11 February, 2014, 11:01am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 11 February, 2014, 11:01am

Kind-hearted girl, oppressed by step-family, encounters magical guardian who transforms girl into the only one worthy of marrying the king. Does this plot sound familiar? Here's the big hint: king finds a wife by way of lost slipper of uncommon shoe size.

Yes, I am describing Cinderella. The elements of the Cinderella story are so universally appealing that variations exist in almost every culture around the globe. Let's begin with the most familiar, the Disney version. It is based on Cendrillon, a fairy tale written by Charles Perrault in the 17th-century.

Perrault retold this existing folk tale, together with other oral stories, and published the collection as Tales of Mother Goose. Some of the stories, including Cinderella, were then rewritten by the Brothers Grimm for their collection of fairy tales.

One thousand years before Perrault put pen to paper, a strikingly similar tale was being shared among families in China. Retold by Ai-Ling Louie, Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China is illustrated by Caldecott medalist Ed Young.

Instead of a fairy godmother, Yeh-Shen's guardian is a fish. When the fish is eaten by the evil stepmother, Yeh-Shen saves the bones, which turn out to have wish-granting properties.

There are two variations of the Cinderella story that don't mention footwear.

In Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, John Steptoe retells the well-known African tale and lends his artful illustrations to recreate a jungle setting in Zimbabwe.

Mufaro has two beautiful daughters. One is selfish and conceited, while the other is kind and sensitive. Both travel to the city upon hearing that the king is seeking a wife, but their journeys and destiny diverge as a result of their character.

Steptoe is African-American, and all of his works deal with African history and culture. Yeh-Shen's illustrator Young is Chinese, and like Steptoe, is among a small group of ethnic minority artists who have made a career in children's literature.

The other variation tells of a disfigured Algonquin girl who beats out the competition - two beautiful but spoiled girls from the same village - to win the coveted role of new bride to the powerful Invisible Being.

Rafe Martin adapts this Native American folk tale in The Rough-Face Girl, with some remarkable portraiture by illustrator David Shannon.

For those who are interested in comparative studies, Judy Sierra'sCinderella presents 24 different versions in one anthology, complete with plot summary and cultural background for each story.

Marian Roalfe Cox collected even more versions in Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap 0' Rushes, Abstracted and Tabulated, with a Discussion of Mediaeval Analogues and Notes.

The interest in collecting Cinderella stories is not a recent phenomenon, as Cox's tome was first published in 1891 by The Folklore Society in London.

Two questions to ponder during a candle-lit Valentine's Day dinner: Is magical assistance the only way a nice girl can expect to make a good marriage? And, if Cinderella's shoe fitted so perfectly, why did it fall off in the first place?


Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me a Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them. Visit bringmeabook.org.hk

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Cinderella also spent time in the jungle, and among the fishes

Hong Kong Public Library

Lessons in shelf awareness

Tuesday, 18 June, 2013, 9:34am

Annie Holife@scmp.com

My daughter and I are now proud card-carrying members of the Hong Kong Public Library. My plan to get library cards for us last year got as far as completing the form and queuing at the registration counter because I had forgotten to submit proof of address. I'm ashamed to admit that it took us six months to get around to returning with all the necessary documentation.

This is especially momentous for me because I grew up in public libraries in Canada. Both my parents worked during the week, and most shops were closed on Sundays back then. So every Saturday afternoon, my parents would drop off my brother and me at whichever public library was nearest to where they were planning to shop, because this was the safest place they could think of to leave two primary school-aged children. They would pick us up hours later, after they had finished their errands.

In those early years, I remember reading books only while at the library and participating in the librarian's circle time reading. By the time I reached the age of nine or 10, an afternoon at the library always ended with struggling to decide which books to take home, and being rushed by my parents because I could not edit down my choices for the coming week to the maximum I was allowed to borrow at one time.

There is a wide variety of picture books about going to the library, Don Freeman's Quiet! There's a Canary in the Library is a favourite in our home, with elegant sentences about animals causing a rumpus and giraffes reading tall tales.

Famous siblings Charlie and Lola make a trip to the library in Lauren Child'sBut Excuse Me, That Is My Book. Precocious Lola doesn't quite understand the concept of borrowing when she sees another girl walk by with the book that she wants.

In contrast with Lola, a character from another book series is too earnest about book borrowing. In Alexander Stadler's Beverly Billingsly Borrows a Book, Beverly Billingsly is horrified to learn that the first library book she checks out is two days overdue and imagines terrible consequences for this misdeed.

Debbie Bertram and Susan Bloom's The Best Book to Read is a good introduction for preschoolers who want to learn about the experience of going to the library. For older children, The Shelf Elf Helps Out by Jackie Mims Hopkins explains the Dewey decimal system.

On the Sunday morning that we took my daughter to the Central Public Library in Causeway Bay, I was delighted to see the children's library filled with clusters of families: parents and toddlers, children with their grandparents, older groups of siblings and friends.

The first book that my daughter pulled from the shelves was Jerry Pinkney'sThe Lion and the Mouse. I was impressed with her award-winning choice, and we happily found a spot to cuddle and read together. She liked it so much that she asked us to read it again. I reminded her that this is a library book, so we can check it out of the library and read it many more times at home. Then my husband pointed out that the book came from the "special award winners" shelf and could be enjoyed only at the library. How cruel!

We grudgingly moved on and were careful to guide our daughter to shelves containing books that could be borrowed.

The Central Public Library has a wonderful children's book section, and the government was clever to design a large indoor play gym to encourage toddlers to associate the library with fun and joy.

Our next stop will be the branch library at City Hall in Central, with hopes of visiting a few other branches in the coming months.

Annie Ho is the board chairwoman of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a children's literacy charity bringmeabook.org.hk

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Lessons in shelf awareness

Jon Klassen 2013 Caldecott Winner

Hats off to award-winning illustrator for latest yarns

Tuesday, 26 March, 2013

Annie Holife@scmp.com

Winning one Caldecott award is reason enough to celebrate, but this year Jon Klassen took home two.

His book This Is Not My Hat won the Caldecott Medal, the most prestigious US children’s book award given to illustrators, but he also won a Caldecott Honour – sort of a runner-up award – for illustrating Mac Barnett’s Extra Yarn.

In Extra Yarn, a little girl in a drab, grey town finds a box of multicoloured yarn and begins to knit herself a sweater. She has some extra yarn, and each time she knits something for the people, animals and objects around her, she finds she has extra yarn. The heart-warming story is well-complemented by Klassen’s illustrations, rendered in sombre monochromes with injections of colour and no background detail.

Readers familiar with his style will even recognise that some animal characters that wear sweaters knitted by the little girl are similar to those in I Want My Hat Back, the first book that Klassen wrote and illustrated.

What’s unusual about Klassen is that, one year after publishing this best-selling book, he has created another book, the award-winning This Is Not My Hat, that is also about a search for a lost hat. This story of a little fish that has stolen a hat from a big fish is not a sequel but has a similar premise.
The main difference between the books is the shift in perspective, and change in our sympathies. In the new story, we see the little fish’s point of view as the thief, and in the first book, we see the bear’s point of view as the victim of theft.

This Is Not My Hat is a perfect example of illustrations amplifying the text. In one sequence, the same drawing of a fish fills four consecutive double pages, with the only difference being the change in the fish’s eyes from closed to open to looking up, and finally to narrow slits. When these illustrations are set against the narration by the protagonist, the thieving little fish, the impact is noticeable. The colours are subtle and muted against a black background, the fish in This Is Not My Hat is reminiscent of Leo Lionni’s  colourful Swimmy.

A  Canadian living in Los Angeles,  Klassen has an established career in animation. He created a  trailer for This Is Not My Hat, and was the illustrator behind U2’s animated music video for their song I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight   as well as a promotion for the BBC’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Klassen creates superb works of art as an illustrator, and he continues to collaborate on  other people’s stories. The wide range of his talent can be witnessed in two new releases – House Held Up by Trees   by Ted Kooser,  a former United States poet laureate,  and   The Dark by the prince of twisted humour,  Lemony Snicket.

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation dedicate to improving children’s literacy by reading aloud to them (bringmeabook.org.hk)

Variations on Three Little Pigs

Resolutions can be restarted at Lunar New Year

Sunday, 17 February, 2013, 12:00am

Annie Hofamilypost@scmp.com

When I lamented that January had flown by and I had yet to follow through on my New Year's resolutions, a wise friend told me that those of us who celebrated Lunar New Year could just start our resolutions again.

So instead of feeling dejected for abandoning my pledges so early, I embraced this second chance - and my husband left me without any additional excuses by presenting me with a new gym membership on Lunar New Year's Day.

It's been a few years since I have made any resolutions at all, so I welcome the Year of the Snake with some enthusiasm. According to fung shui experts, the coming year is one that is meant for steady progress and attention to detail. You need to have focus and discipline to achieve your goals.

Pigs have a special place in my heart. My elder daughter was born in the Year of the Pig, along with a number of family members and close friends. Unfortunately, this new year may not bode well for pigs due to the premise that snakes and pigs do not get along.

To keep mischance at bay, I plan a steady and disciplined continuation of humour-filled days. We often read or re-enact the story of The Three Little Pigs, always singing "not by the hair of my chinny chin-chin" in a taunting, high-pitched voice. By reading aloud my favourite variations on this classic folk tale, I can surely ratchet up the laughter in our home.

This new year may not bode well for pigs due to the premise that snakes and pigs do not get along

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, written by funnyman Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Caldecott winner Lane Smith, tells the fractured story from the point of view of the wolf: "'There has obviously been some kind of mistake,' writes Alexander T. Wolf from the pig penitentiary where he's doing time for his alleged crimes of 10 years ago."

Another version with a twist is The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. Helen Oxenbury contributes her warm watercolour illustrations to this first English-language picture book by Greek children's author Eugene Trivizas. Mother wolf warns her three children about the big, bad pig before they set off to build their homes. Pig gives up on the huffing and puffing and resorts to using a sledgehammer and other means to break down the wolves' increasingly fortified homes.

In the end, a delightful surprise helps the pig give up his destructive ways and befriend the wolves.

Huff & Puff: Can You Blow Down the Houses of the Three Little Pigs? is an interactive retelling by Claudia Rueda, with the reader playing the role of the wolf.

Preschoolers will especially enjoy huffing and puffing through the picture book's die-cut holes.

David Wiesner's The Three Pigs is an avant-garde version that is well suited for older children. Wiesner cleverly upends the notion of a surprise twist when the pigs unexpectedly escape the wolf by jumping off the storybook page and into other worlds, where they meet the cat and the fiddle and the cow that jumped over the moon.

My elder daughter was born at the tail end of the Year of the Pig, so a friend mistakenly told her that she was born in the Year of the Mouse. She knows the order of the zodiac animals and loves that the mouse places first. She frowns whenever I try to suggest that she is actually the last-placed pig.

So this column is my subtle way of helping my daughter face the cold hard truth: "Dear child, if you were really born in the Year of the Mouse, don't you think mummy would have more books about mice?" 

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them (bringmeabook.org.hk)

SCMP - Famous Illustrators of Classic Stories

From Sunday December 2, 2012 edition of South China Morning Post

Leo Lionni: fables, Little Blue & Little Yellow, Swimmy, Frederick

Lionni's fables show kids how to be themselves

Sunday, 09 September, 2012, 12:00am

Annie Ho

familypost@scmp.com

              

My daughters and I fell in love with Leo Lionni when we spent the summer in Canada. For this, I must thank a reader, who recommended Lionni as one of her children's favourite authors.

We last visited my parents in Canada three years ago. At that time, my elder daughter was 18 months old and starting to become interested in listening to read-alouds. Rather than load our luggage with the books that were in her repertoire of daily reading. I viewed our holiday as an opportunity to introduce her to new titles.

I ordered books from a Canadian online bookstore for delivery to my parents' home. These included boxed sets of Sandra Boynton's silly board books, plus
Polar Bear, Polar Bear and
Panda Bear, Panda Bear, the companion books to Bill Martin Jnr's
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, which my daughter already knew well.

This summer, my online order comprised solely of Leo Lionni stories:
Little Blue and Little Yellow for my younger daughter, and
Frederick and His Friends for my eldest. The latter is a collection of stories that is subtitled
Four Favourite Fables.

Fables use animals with human qualities to teach a moral lesson. In this collection, two of the stories feature mice, and two of the stories feature fish. The stories are visually captivating for young and old readers, and the moral lessons are about being happy with who you are. They don't focus on the perils of failing to lead a virtuous life, in the way that
Aesop's Fables do.

All four stories were written in the 1960s, and use language so rich that my elder daughter asked about a new word every time we reread a story. In 
Swimmy, Lionni described the eponymous fish as "black as a mussel shell".

I was excited to illustrate this description by showing my daughters some mussels in a cioppino I ordered one night.

In
 Fish Is Fish, the fish was not any old fish, but a minnow. When he tried to visit land, my elder daughter interrupted me to ask, "Why did the minnow go to a bank?"

I happily paused to explain that this was the slope bordering the pond where the minnow lived, and not the financial institution that she was envisioning.

With a long career as art director of
Fortune magazine, Lionni was already established as a graphic art designer when he created a simple story for his grandchildren about a blue dot named Little Blue. The dot's best friend was a yellow dot named Little Yellow.

The story became his first book,
Little Blue and Little Yellow. It
teaches young children about colours much more beautifully than a typical board book.

Lionni was nearly 50 years old when
Little Blue was published. He continued to have a long and fruitful second career writing books for children.

The collection of Lionni fables I have is the 2002 edition, published by Alfred A. Knopf. It contains a note of appreciation by author and illustrator Eric Carle, who is known for
The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I have collected
Caterpillar in seven languages (out of an impressive 50 available languages), so I'm embarrassed to admit that I was unfamiliar with Carle's evident mentor until now.

It turns out that Lionni gave Carle his first job in New York, as a graphic designer at the
New York Times, and spent a lot of effort encouraging him to become a picture book artist, even though Carle was not then interested in illustrating children's books.

Lionni, a four-time Caldecott Honor winner, was the first children's illustrator to use the collage technique that is now usually associated with Carle.

Martin's
Brown Bear, Brown Bear was the first book that Carle illustrated. That started his highly successful career.

I have great hopes that Lionni's books will find renewed popularity among a new generation of children.

Annie Ho is board chairperson of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation devoted to improving children's literacy through reading aloud to them, and providing easy access to the best children's books for underserved communities across Hong Kong.

bringmeabook.org.hk

Maurice Sendak tribute Brundibar Bumble-Ardy

Heartfelt tribute to a wild imagination
BETWEEN THE LINES Annie Ho May 20, 2012
A number of my friends cite Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are as their favourite book as a child. First published in 1963, it went on to sell more than 19 million copies. The first time I read it, I didn't like it. I didn't understand why Max, the main character in the book, would choose lawlessness over the safe confines of home. My reaction to this story reveals more about my own character than the quality of the Sendak's evocative prose and well-crafted illustrations. I grew up as a rule-loving conformist. It's no surprise that I also couldn't relate to the angst-ridden Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Why can't children like Max and Holden just co-operate and make life easier for themselves and their parents, I would wonder. Then one day last summer, while browsing at a bookstore in Taipei for the third consecutive day, I came across Sendak's Outside Over There. I was drawn to it because I am a book lover and appreciate that Sendak is a leading author of children's books. I also took a quick glance and saw that it was a story about a young girl and her baby sister, which would be perfect to read aloud to my elder daughter. I hastily bought the book and went about the rest of the day in Taipei. That night, back at the hotel, my daughter was too tired for a bedtime story and fell fast asleep. I stayed up and began to read Outside Over There. My eyes widened and my jaws dropped as I read this unsettling story about a little girl who was instructed by her father to take care of her little sister. And for the brief moment she took her eyes off her baby sister, the baby was kidnapped by goblins and forced into a wedding as a goblin's bride. I finished the story, paused to take a deep breath, and went on to read it two more times. Thus began my recent love affair with Sendak. Next came In the Night Kitchen, in which three bakers, all in the likeness of rotund Oliver Hardy of the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo, make Mickey cake by mixing a batter containing a little nude boy named Mickey. The laughing faces of the bakers are at once jolly and eerily ominous. Mommy? is the most elaborate and surreal pop-up book I've ever encountered, with magnificent paper engineering. Containing just six pop-up scenes, it follows a little baby through a house of horrors fraught with life-threatening danger as he searches for his mother. The only pop-up book by Sendak, it is reminds me of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. It confounds me that visionaries like Sendak and Burton create in a genre for children, and yet the content of their stories is unsuitable for children. What madness. The only Sendak book I've read aloud to my daughter is Brundibar, which also happens to be my best-loved of his storybooks. Based on a Czech opera that was performed dozens of times by children at a Nazi concentration camp, this picture book is cleverly illustrated by Sendak, and retold with side-splitting humour by Tony Kushner. The best TV mini-series I've ever seen is Kushner's Angels in America, adapted from his brilliant play and starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. I am in awe that a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright such as Kushner would collaborate on a children's picture book. This demonstrates Sendak's appeal. A couple of weeks ago, I spent the evening reading through my entire collection of Sendak's books, ranging from Very Far Away, first published in 1957, to last year's Bumble-Ardy, the first book in 30 years for which he was both author and illustrator. The next day I learned that he had passed away, a coincidence as disquieting and exhilarating as Sendak's oeuvre. With admiration, then, I dedicate this column to Maurice Sendak, who died on May 8 at the age of 83. Annie Ho is a board governor of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong (bringmeabook.org.hk) a non-profit organisation devoted to improving children's literacy

Wordless Storybooks: Caldecott, Chris Raschka, Peter Spier

Books without words can be perfect for developing storytelling Annie Ho familypost@scmp.com  I recently attended a read-aloud training workshop in a community centre on the other side of town, where the participants were primarily mothers from low-income families. A question came up from a mother regarding her own reading skills.  As she did not have a lot of formal schooling, she worried that when reading aloud to her child, she would come across too many words that she didn't know. One of my immediate reactions was admiration for this mother. She was aware of her own limitations, and yet she was still keen to improve herself and play a role in expanding her child's mind through books. The workshop leader said that reading aloud is not about verbatim reading and perfect pronunciation. It's completely acceptable, and often more enjoyable, to deviate from the text and add your own words. She also had a great tip for all parents reading aloud to children: to be familiar with the book by reading it on your own first. Such familiarity can prevent stumbling across unfamiliar text, and help you ask your child the right questions for a more interactive storytelling session. Wordless picture books are another wonderful alternative for parents who are not proficient readers. These books can capture the attention of impatient toddlers as well as spur the imagination of older children to come up with different storylines at each 'reading'. The Caldecott Medal has been awarded annually since 1938 by the American Library Association for the best illustrations in children's picture books. This year's honour went to a wordless picture book: A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka.  Through simple watercolour illustrations, it tells the story of a little dog who loses her favourite ball when a bigger dog destroys it. Every child who has ever encountered the loss of a cherished item will relate to the little dog Daisy's realisation that something she loves is gone for good. Children will understand the ways she copes with the devastating yearning for her big red ball. One of my favourite wordless picture books is Peter Spier's Rain by Peter Spier, whose illustrations are incredibly rich in detail. Spier has authored a number of children's books with very little or no text, including Noah's Ark, which is also a Caldecott Medal winner. Rain depicts the course of one rainy day. The first pages start with an older sister and a younger brother playing in the backyard, then running into the house as the rain starts to pour down. The illustrations are detailed, and some pages contain half a dozen different scenes on one page. The storytelling possibilities are endless. When my daughter was two years old, our focus was on the colour of the rain boots and pointing to familiar animals like dogs, cats and birds. When she was three, I used the illustrations to introduce new words. Now at age four, my daughter loves to see this visual sequence of a single day, ending with the children getting ready for bed.  Rain resonates with me because it bears a strong resemblance to how I remember my youth. It reminds me of my childhood in Vancouver, and inspires memories of long summer days spent with my brother.  Visual narratives help children to understand and follow a storyline. Even though 'a picture is worth a thousand words', it takes a gifted illustrator to use pictures to tell a story. Would it be too banal to rephrase the adage as, 'A coherent series of pictures is worth a million words'? Annie Ho is a board governor of Bring Me A Book Hong Kong, a non-profit organisation devoted to improving child literacy through reading aloud to them and providing easy access to the best children's books for underserved communities across Hong Kong