Forum September 2023 (B): Collaboration with local authorities to support HKers activities
We held the forum with the theme "collaboration with local authorities to support Hong Kongers' activities" in response to some welcoming groups’ request. As understood from our stakeholder survey, more than half of the responding welcoming groups have only been established in recent years, typically since the launch of the BN(O) visa scheme in 2021. The forum aims to provide some useful information and advice for the groups to better coordinate and collaborate with local councils, Strategic Migration Partnership (SMP), or other local authorities when organising activities and programmes to support Hong Kongers’ settlement and integration.
Speakers from SMP, federation and welcoming group share valuable information, experiences and insights on the topic. We are honoured to have Ewa Jamroz of Migration Yorkshire, Michelle West of Groundwork Five Counties and Richard Choi of Sutton Hongkongers to speak in the forum.
To kick start the forum, Ewa of Migration Yorkshire spoke about the role of SMP and how they can support the Hong Kong new arrivals. This includes raising awareness of BN(O) visa and needs of Hong Kongers, feeding the local authorities’ concerns to the central government, linking the Hong Kong community with local authorities and allowing Hong Kongers to share their concerns. They organise various activities such as regional local authorities forum, ESOL survey, No Recourse to Public Fund training, adult employment and skills development support and many more. SMPs like Migration Yorkshire have been serving as a bridging role for local authorities, Hong Kong communities, and the government for the success of Hong Kongers’ settlement. You can see the regional migration support on our arrival page.
Our second speaker, Michelle West of Groundwork Five Counties gave advice on working with local authorities. She pointed out that communication is the key to building a great working relationship with local authorities. Establishing conversations from in an early stage of a project/event allows the local authorities to understand your difficulties and how to best support you. It is also a good idea if your events can be held in the local authorities’ office so they can easily engage in the activity, as well as getting the community involved. With the local authorities’ constraint presence from beginning to the project delivery, it would markedly help.
Followed by the sharing from Richard of Sutton Hongkongers, he talked about their organisation’s aim including striving to support the Hong Kong community to support themselves, acting as a bridge between Hong Kongers and Sutton’s local authority and being a melting pot to facilitate social integration. Richard then gave examples on how they collaborate with Sutton’s local authorities including organising various activities with Sutton library like English support class, culture and art activities and Hong Kongers gathering, and establishing conversation with the school admission team. He shared that the difference of British and Hong Kong work culture, budget cuts in local authorities and intervention from Hong Kong politicians are some of the challenges that the welcoming groups are facing. He believed it is vital for welcoming groups to build trust and be supportive to all stakeholders,and appreciate and act on the British values, to overcome the challenges.
The second part of the forum included a discussion and opportunity for the welcoming groups to talk about their recent works. We got some valuable observations in the discussion on how to better collaborate with the stakeholders. It is also lovely to hear from the existing and newly established organisations, including Jobs for Hongkongers and Ednovate, to introduce their upcoming activities.