Community Synergy to Prompt Youth Development in Tin Shui Wai

Abstract

Tin Shui Wai (TSW) is one of the most rapidly expanding new towns in Hong Kong. Its first two public housing estates were completed in 1992. By 2007 over 271,000 people have made TSW their home, and nearly 25% of its population is under the age of 15. Different reports have shown that community facilities for the young people there are insufficient and there is a lack of coordination on how public facilities are better used. Even worse is that TSW has always been portrayed by the media as a ‘problem community’ with serious poverty, family violence and youth gang problems. Such a label may have adversely affected the optimal development of young persons there. This paper adopts an ecological systems and strength-based approach to map out how community efforts, grouped as youth initiatives, sector-based efforts and cross-sectoral collaborations, have been made to identify, create and mobilize resources to enhance positive youth development in TSW. Findings show that instead of leaving TSW as an isolated and abandoned community, there is increasing successful community synergy to prompt youth development in TSW.