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The African Community, provides services like supporting members who are finding it difficult
to communicate to local people, like local authorities, UNHCR, the immigration, police.
We do provide interpreters to make them understand with our members. Because as you know, some
people will come here all the way from Africa, they cannot communicate in English, and local
people cannot communicate with them in their local language. So we have people who can
speak French or Arabic, or any other local language spoken in Africa. This is the service
we provide in relation to authorities. Other things we do for our members is to direct
them where they can get early support. Some people arrive here in distress, we direct
them to NGO’s that help them get basic necessities, like food, accommodation and so forth. And
other things we provide is, we give civic education to our members, to avoid getting
them into trouble. And lot of things based on cultural or education that are allowed
back home but not allowed here, we try to make them aware of these kinds of situations.
Our office is open from 9 30 am till 7 30 pm in the evening. We have dedicated volunteers
who are giving these services. And we also, from time to time, organize sports activities,
and we liaise with some schools in Hong Kong. We support the handicapped programs, to raise
funds, we participate in cultural activities, and we try to engage fully with the local
community in whatever they are doing. We want to make people feel a part of the community.
This is what the African Community is doing. We want to expand, but that requires a lot
of time and lot of investment. We are working towards that, to reach some of these goals,
but they are long term goals. We would like for example in the future, to get a medical
team, in the field in Africa to help people with eye sight problem, we would like to help
some villages to get clean water. We would like to do some collection of used items here,
and give those items to vulnerable or unfortunate people who don’t have clothing, who don’t
have shoes, these kind of things. So there are long term goals, but we are preparing
ourselves fully, and we aim to get a level where we can make a difference in someone’s
life.