Federation News

Volunteer action for WTO

December's meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong may be remembered more for the protests than for the progress towards free and fair trade. Even Federation volunteers were told to leave early on Saturday to avoid getting involved in the demonstrations. Nevertheless they did their part to help make proceedings run smoothly and the meeting achieved more than some expected in the end.

The volunteers helped to welcome trade ministers from 149 nations and representatives from NGOs worldwide. They were on duty at the airport, the Central Library and the Hong Kong Convention Centre to help with registration, to deliver information and to offer back-up for complicated logistics and communications. They told us about their work, their expectations and impressions.

"There were over a dozen of us at the airport," said Kay - a first-year social science undergraduate at Lingnan U. "We welcomed delegates and offered them general information about Hong Kong. Luckily, the Federation's Airport Ambassadors were also on hand to help with directions. Quite a few people asked about shopping and were clearly looking forward to visiting some of Hong Kong's tourist attractions as well as attending the conference."

Vincent, doing a degree in Communications at Baptist U, was stationed at the Convention Centre. "It was so peaceful," said Vincent, "we didn't expect that! We had heard there would be demonstrations and protests in Wanchai but couldn't hear a thing once we were inside the building, even when the Korean farmers jumped into the harbour."

"That's true," said Anna, a Form 6 student at Pui Kiu Middle School, who was based in the press room. "We had to go to every corner of the building each day and apart from the security checks where there were inevitable delays and complaints, everything seemed very orderly and peaceful until Saturday afternoon."

Anna and her classmate, Winsie, worked together, taking thousands of newspapers and magazines to delegates around the building everyday. "We certainly put on some muscle!" said Winsie, "and we learned a lot about how the WTO works. I knew very little about global trade a few months back."

Vincent helped as an usher during the ceremonies and volunteered for overnight duty in the control centre as well. "We were well prepared to do anything from taking newspaper cuttings to contacting the security forces if there was an emergency but the only time it felt really tense was when we went to the Convention Centre on Sunday morning."

"Actually, most the problems we saw were in communications and logistics," said Anna. This would be true of any big conference, "Making sure that the delegates knew where to go and keeping them up to date with changes was a tricky business. Also, the international press could be a bit unpredictable - one of them knocked me right off my feet, he was in such a hurry to take a photograph of Peter Mandelson! He did apologise but it was rather a shock."

Asked about negative impressions, most of our volunteers talked about their sympathy for the Koreans but they all said they thought the police had done their jobs well. When conflicts of interest occurred all three of them took the side of the under-dog, as most concerned young people would.

"We thought the poorer countries were unfairly treated in some ways," said Vincent, "and would have liked to find out more about how priorities were decided."

Overall, the volunteers' impressions were positive. They wished there had been more opportunity to meet overseas delegates but thought the experience of seeing how a big event was managed and organized was invaluable, especially because of the security issues. They said it had been an important consciousness raiser about global trade issues, both for themselves and for Hong Kong people in general.

"This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for us and for Hong Kong," said Anna. "Some progress was made on the trade talks and our home was on show to the world. As Federation volunteers we helped it make a good impression, both as an international conference venue and as a major tourist attraction."

Facts & Figures

All year round Christmas toys

On behalf of a toy shop, the HKU Public Opinion Poll interviewed 500 parents with children under 9 about their toy buying habits during the last 2 years.* It found that 32% spent $100 on toys for each child while 4% spent over $400 each month. 38% of those surveyed planned to spend over $100 on Christmas presents for each of their children. That is a mere nothing compared to the sums rich Americans shopping at a famous New York toy store** are prepared to pay for gifts to children. These can amount to US$6,000 for a hand made rocking horse or US$25,000 for an all night in-store party.

* Hong Kong Economic Times 24 November 2005.
** South China Morning Post 2 December 2005

Over 25% said they illegally downloaded movies or music either a lot of the time or now and then. The same applied to nearly 9% of them who browsed pornographic sites. Most agreed that the Internet was good educationally but 12.7% admitted their written language had deteriorated as a result of so much informal communicating online. 46% said they felt more tired in general as a result of being online but half went on the web at night. 14% said they ate irregularly as a result and 11.8% said they took part in fewer group activities. In the light of the survey the Federation will continue promoting sound attitudes to online use by young people and we urge parents to keep an eye on the amount of time their children spend on the web.
Click here www.hkfyg.org.hk/yrc/chinese/yr-p147c.html for the full report.