A sharing session delivered by the current members of Project Mingde (明德工程) was held on March 4, 2015 to promote the Project within the campus and to recruit a new generation of student members in order to ensure the continuity of Project Mingde.
Project Mingde was first initiated by an alumnus of the Department of Civil Engineering, Professor Nicolas S.Y. Yeung and his wife, Lorene, in 2003, trying to help relieve the education problems of ethnic minority children in remote mountainous Guangxi Province and at the same time providing Civil Engineering students a valuable opportunity to work on real-world on-going projects. Deeply moved and impressed by Professor Yeung’s beliefs, a group of dedicated alumni and teaching staff of the Department, especially the Head of the Department then, Professor Peter K.K. Lee, devoted tremendous efforts in making Project Mingde a success.
There were altogether 30 participants from different faculties, including Architecture, Business and Economics, Engineering, Law and Science. More than 45 students registered for membership of Project Mingde within a week after the sharing session!
Project members shared their experience with participants
The session was composed of three parts. In the first part, core members of current undergraduate students, Steve Ho, Martin Wong, Samson Pung, and Bond Chong from Faculty of Architecture, shared the values of Project Mingde and their experience. The spirit of the Project Mingde slogan “We grow as we build” was vividly revealed. Project Mingde not only helps the impoverished children in the mainland, but also inspires our students. They start to realise that they are the lucky ones and they should treasure what they have and help others in need. This is what Samson mentioned in the sharing, “Your light should light up others!”
Dr. Ryan Wong introduced the upcoming projects
The second part was presented by Dr. Ryan Wong, Department of Civil Engineering, introducing the upcoming projects in Sancun Village (三村里), Daping Village (大坪村) and Vietnam. Last but not least, it came the group discussion. Participants were divided into three small groups with three to four current members of Project Mingde so that they could casually raise any questions. All the groups had fruitful discussions and the participants understood more about the mission and vision of Project Mingde, especially what they could do and the associated workload. Participants were touched by what Project Mingde contributed in the past ten years and a lot of them immediately signed up for membership of Project Mingde! The current members said it was a meaningful evening and they all look forward to working with these passionate and enthusiastic new members!
Fruitful group discussion