Rising from the ashes: Hong Kong charity bounces back with support from dozens of companies, donors after fire
- Love 21 Foundation premises, which was devastated by fire in 2023, reopened its doors in mid-October with expanded capacity
- Centre empowers the neurodiverse community through free programmes and hopes to serve even more members
A Hong Kong charity dedicated to the autism and Down’s syndrome communities has bounced back bigger and stronger after a devastating fire last year, thanks to the support of 50 companies and many other donors across the city.
Love 21 Foundation, which empowers the neurodiverse community through sports, art, nutrition and mental health support programmes free of charge, reopened the doors of its home in mid-October with a significantly expanded capacity.
“It’s a truly remarkable story about how the community came together, not just from the crowdfunding that we did, but also through giving their skill sets and knowledge,” chief operating officer Carmel Armstrong said.
“I never realised how small the Hong Kong community was, and you can find your way around town, [if] you don’t know somebody, somebody else does.”
The charity’s 5,000 sq ft old centre, housed in a factory building in San Po Kong, was badly damaged by a fire that broke out in an adjacent electronics goods warehouse in late January 2023.
No one was present at the time, but staff members were in desperate need of finding a new location to get its activities started again, which Armstrong described as a “lifeline” for the more than 350 families it was serving.
Armstrong said the rebuilding of Love 21 was made possible by more than 50 companies coming together to help with property search, rent negotiations, interior design and construction on a pro bono basis.
More than 80 per cent of the furniture and equipment in the centre were repurposed from a bank.
The whole rebuild project was valued at about HK$8 million (US$1 million).
Armstrong also thanked institutions who offered their facilities for the charity to hold classes before they settled into the new site, allowing them to operate at two-thirds capacity.
The brightly lit, spacious new centre, located on the second and eleventh floor of Artisan Lab in San Po Kong and spanning almost 8,000 square feet in total, was filled with hustle and bustle when a Post reporter visited on a late afternoon in May.
As parents took a rest in the common area, dozens of children and young adults were attending a basketball class, dancing to Bollywood music and making Mother’s Day cards in three separate studios.
Upstairs, where nutrition counselling, psychotherapy and personal training sessions would be held, a few new joiners were waiting patiently for their turn to be registered.
Armstrong said they were admitting the more than 170 families on the waiting list and adding more classes to their curriculum, from 360 a month at the old centre to more than 700.
“There’s a very big need for support from the community, and I wouldn’t want to cap the amount of support that we can provide,” she said.
The larger capacity also allowed them to provide two classes for parents each morning to take a break from their caregiving duties, ranging from yoga to tai chi, she added.
Jocelyn Wu, a 29-year-old with developmental delay, has been joining Love 21’s activities three to four times a week for two years.
“My favourite is gymnastics, the teacher is great … I feel happier and more relaxed after the classes,” she said.
Her father George Wu, a 64-year-old retiree, said his daughter felt a sense of achievement from the activities as she learned to do moves he never imagined she was capable of doing, and her senses improved with the help of training.
Fanny Tse Lai-fun, a 62-year-old mother who has regularly taken her 30-year-old daughter Julia Lai Ling-wai with developmental delay to Love 21 since 2017, said Lai’s fitness and confidence improved a lot throughout the years with the help of activities including dance, yoga, soccer and African drumming.
“We come almost every day, but some activities are by drawing lots so we couldn’t join. It would be great if there were even more resources, the classes were truly of great help to our children,” Tse said.
Armstrong said they were looking to expand their team and raise funds for salaries, rent and operations, which she expected to amount to HK$7 million a year.
