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The Deputy Director of Social Welfare (Services), Mr Fung Pak-yan, announced today (January 18) the launch of the fourth round of applications for the Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged. He also introduced new criteria to facilitate the formation of more partnerships among the welfare sector, the business community and the government.
Mr Fung made the announcement at a sharing and briefing session on the Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged.
The Social Welfare Department established the fund to encourage non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the business sector and Government to establish a tripartite partnership in carrying out welfare services to help the disadvantaged and strengthen social cohesion. The Government will provide a dollar-to-dollar matching grant to encourage welfare NGOs to expand their network in seeking and securing corporate participation, and to encourage the business sector to take up more responsibility in creating a cohesive, harmonious and caring society.
Having gained experience from the first three rounds, the fund has modified the application criteria and funding arrangements in the fourth round so as to better achieve the objectives of the fund and to benefit more disadvantaged groups. These modifications are:
(1) To allow applicant NGOs to implement larger scale and more comprehensive projects for more disadvantaged groups, the maximum amount of the matching grant is increased from $1 million to $2 million. Together with the contributions from business partners, proposal projects may expand to $4 million.
(2) To encourage NGOs to cooperate with more business corporations to deliver different welfare services, NGO applicants may submit a maximum of 10 applications in the fourth round. NGOs which submitted applications in the first three rounds, whether successfully or not, may submit applications in the fourth round.
NGOs may submit applications for the fourth round from today (January 18) to June 30. Details of the scheme can be downloaded from the Social Welfare Departmentˇ¦s webpage at www.swd.gov.hk/doc/partnership/appgenground4.pdf.
Since the creation of the fund in 2005, more than $29.4 million in matching grants have been approved in the first three rounds of applications to 70 NGOs to implement 97 welfare projects, in which more than 200 business corporations helped to provide various kinds of welfare services to about 380,000 disadvantaged people. Major service users include survivors of domestic violence, low income families, youth, people with disabilities, ex-offenders and families, children under residential care and elders under residential care without social support. Many of the business partners also participate as volunteers in the services for the target disadvantaged groups.
The briefing session was held today in the Caritas Second Hand Recycling Shop, one of the programmes supported by the fund, in Tsuen Wan. Representatives of the business partner and volunteers in the programme talked about their participation. Two service users also shared their feelings with the media.
Two members of the Advisory Committee on Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged, Dr Yue Kwok-to and Mr Robert Tai Yiu-wah, shared their experiences of vetting the applications and visiting the projects.
Ends/Friday, January 18, 2008
Issued at HKT 18:01
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