Mr Wong Ka-ning, Raymond and Mrs Wong Ho Shuk-ying, Viola turn their grief into power for helping others. The couple’s compassion has helped numerous children of low-income families to receive speech therapy. They also help worried parents to regain hope by walking through difficult days with them.  

Mrs Wong recalled that Benji, their only son, was once very unhappy, being rejected by playmates, due to his speech communications difficulty. Yet, after having received speech therapy, Benji could communicate and make many friends, thus got interested in happenings around him, and became a happier child with confidence. Unfortunately, 12 years ago, Benji died at the young age of 5. Making use of the medical and education funding originally saved for Benji, in 2004, the couple founded the Benji’s Centre — the first and only charity in Hong Kong providing speech therapy to children aged below 16 from low-income families. The couple also set up a social enterprise that sells splendid chocolates and runs restaurants, and put all the earnings into funding the Centre.

Having to wait for 2 to 3 years for receiving government speech therapy, children of deprived families may easily miss the critical period of language learning from the age of 0 to 6. Benji’s Centre thus fills the gap by offering remission or free service to 70% of the over 1,900 children it has served over the past decade. The rest need only to pay less than half of the fees charged by the private sector. Currently, the Shamshuipo and Shatin centres serve over 370 children, with another 150 still on the waiting list.

The Centre puts lots of efforts in supporting the parents. Besides training parents on ways of coaching their children at home, the Centre’s social workers and clinical psychologists provide the parents with counseling and home visits. It also arranges dating gatherings for the parents and various kinds of parent-child interest classes, so as to strengthen their spousal and family relationship. Story-telling competition, choir practices and performances in shopping malls or communities are also organized as means of speech training for the children and for nurturing their self-esteem. The Centre also runs public exhibition from time to time to arouse public awareness towards early detection of children’s speech problems. 

Though busy in running the social enterprise, Mr and Mrs Wong always visit the beneficiary families to share their experiences. “The visits always make us feel deeply touched. The concern and sacrifice of the parents for their kids; the mutual understanding and support between the couples — all make us feel our endeavors have been worthwhile … These kids are all as dear to us as our own children,” said Mr Wong.