News

The Government announced appointments to the SIE Fund Task Force under the Commission on Poverty for a term of one and a half years from 1 January 2023 to 30 June 2024. Please refer to the press release for more information. Membership list of the SIE Fund Task Force is also available in the "Task Force" section of this website.

The SIE Fund Task Force and the Secretariat paid a visit to the Wong Tai Sin District Health Centre (WTS DHC) on 7 December 2022 to gain a better understanding of the operation of a district health centre and services provided for users of different ages with the adoption of technology. Operated by the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council, the WTS DHC provides health promotion, health risk factors assessment, chronic disease management services and community rehabilitation programmes to the local community.

The visit enabled the Task Force to understand the latest development and needs of district services and facilitated the Fund’s work of fostering innovative ideas, products and services to meet social needs.

Over the years, the SIE Fund has participated in the Social Enterprise Summit, a spectacular event of the social innovation circle. The International Symposium of the 15th Social Enterprise Summit was held from 24 to 27 November 2022. The SIE Fund, as in previous years, hosted the Social Innovation Exhibition at the Symposium’s venue to introduce the Fund’s major works and achievements.

This year, a Youth Summit marked the third day of the International Symposium. Echoing the theme, the SIE Fund held the Young Entrepreneur Showcase on that day to feature 32 funded projects established by young social entrepreneurs. Through this Showcase, the public could understand more about the innovative ideas and aspirations of the project founders whilst the young social entrepreneurs could exchange views among themselves and explore opportunities for collaborations with other parties. The Showcase would also help inspire more young people to become social innovators, fostering the further development of the social innovation ecosystem.

Launched in 2017, SIE Fund’s food support flagship project FOOD-CO has brought significant enhancement to the efficiency of Hong Kong’s food support services through the application of technology and cross-sector collaboration and promoted “save and share” through diverse activities in the community. It has so far facilitated more than 10 000 transactions of food donation, with food weighing over 1 500 tonnes in total.

To honour and recognise the contributions of the partners, the project’s intermediary St. James’ Settlement organised “The Partners’ Recognition Ceremony 2022” on 21 November 2022. Officiating at the ceremony, the Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Professor Sun Dong remarked that he was glad that representatives of donor organisations and FOOD-CO’s partners were getting together to share the delight of the project’s achievements. He added that he would be pleased to see the SIE Fund continuing with its role in fostering social innovation, and creating social value through facilitating cross-sector collaboration, introducing flexible funding models and promoting the use of technology among different sectors (click here for the speech [Chinese version only]). In his speech, the Vice-chairperson of the SIE Fund Task Force Alvin Miu stated the Fund was grateful that in its five years of operation FOOD-CO has proficiently enhanced the overall effectiveness of food support services in Hong Kong, with continuous growth in the number of service points, meals served and people who benefit.