Judy Kan, executive director of Her Fund, and Patricia Ho, founder of Hong Kong Dignity Institute, both Front & Female Awards Hong Kong 2023 winners, discuss supporting women and girls, philanthropic challenges and opportunities, and how they want to shape the future
Twenty years ago, research by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service on the behaviour of charitable donors found that while most were willing to give to children, education and elderly people, the proportion of donations to human rights and women’s rights was less than five per cent.
It’s a number that Patricia Ho, human rights lawyer, law lecturer and founder of the Hong Kong Dignity Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to restore dignity to and advocate for the rights of Hong Kong’s most vulnerable, doesn’t think will have changed much—or if it did then Covid has set it back again.
Yet it’s a number that hasn’t stopped Her Fund, which was founded 20 years ago, and where Judy Kan is executive director. She has been with the organisation for 16 of those years and she’s proud of the determination and passion that has got Her Fund to where it is today.
“It’s super-difficult to mobilise resources for gender issues,” she says. Yet the past two decades have seen Her Fund make grants to almost 100 organisations supporting underprivileged and marginalised women, for about 70 per cent of which Her Fund is the sole funder. “So they are extremely small; people usually can’t see them,” says Kan.
For Her Fund—and Kan—the work doesn’t stop with funding. Her Fund is dedicated to understanding the challenges of the organisations it supports and seeing how else it can support them. “We can walk further together,” says Kan.
In the past few years, Kan says she has been working hard on mobilising more corporations and local funders by helping them to understand gender issues in a bid to nurture a more favourable philanthropic environment. “We don’t want to be the only funders to fund gender and women and girls,” says Kan, who started working in the sector while studying social work, realising the meaning of empowerment and how important it was to uplift rather than simply offer aid.
"The whole world is talking about meaning in life, and being intentional about what we’re living for and the purpose we serve"
Ho, meanwhile, says she never set out to support women specifically. “It was for people that I felt had no control over themselves,” she says, citing a turning point when she was studying human trafficking issues and found herself in disbelief that people could belong to others and have no autonomy. “I was reading about children having to pole dance when they’d been sold into brothels at a young age, and there was something about that I could never shake off. I couldn’t shake it off then, and I still can’t, some 20 years later. And I decided back then that I have to be there for these types of people— and it turns out that the majority of people I assist are women.”
Human trafficking has been a major focus for Ho ever since, and she has fought landmark cases that have been instrumental in the ongoing process of establishing anti-human trafficking and forced labour laws in Hong Kong—the achievement that makes her proudest.
She is keen to continue shaping Hong Kong, particularly following the turbulence of the last few years. “2024 is quite an important year,” she says. “In 2023, in Hong Kong, everybody was reeling out of Covid and fighting to normalise, and things were pretty intense. In some ways everybody was making up for lost time, with Hong Kong also trying to solidify its position in Asia. We’re now a little more steady and focused on how we are going to build our identity once again. I see a lot of opportunities for us to frame things in the right way, and I’m hoping to play a part in that, in being able to bring attention to the issues that we work with.” As well as her non-profit, she runs law firm Patricia Ho & Associates and sits on a number of boards including Voice for Prisoners. “It’s a time to come forward and put a spotlight on these issues. Alongside Hong Kong recovering economically, it’s setting the right tone.”
Economic recovery is unlikely to be just around the corner and philanthropic funds are tough to come by as a result, particularly from corporations, though Kan has found opportunities in family foundations. “They don’t just have the wealth but also the power and freedom to strategise about how their giving is directing a better world,” she says.
“We’re in a tough spot globally,” adds Ho. “The amount of money going into the philanthropic space is shrinking. If you ask the non-profit field, I’d say everybody has been struggling and going beyond that, businesses have been struggling; but at the same time, when I say it’s an opportunity, it’s because there are recalibrations going on.”
Ho believes that people are considering what they are doing and why and where they should focus.
“The whole world is talking about meaning in life, and being intentional about what we’re living for and the purpose we serve,” she says. “We’re at a point where the questions are not about how much more money you’re accumulating or how many per cent your businesses are growing, but what sort of impact you are leaving as your legacy—and that is a positive way that the world is changing.”