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Tailor Maker-Tailor
make your future
The Federation's Jockey
Club Hung Hom Youth S.P.O.T. will co-organize this fashion
designer competition with APART. 30
young people aged 15-30 are invited to enter and be trained
in fashion design for 5 weeks from late July till September.
Other event partners include IDN, Pioneer
Center, Brother's
Band Production, Bio Beauty Culture
and KCP. The winner
will be awarded a one-year contract as a junior fashion
designer with APART. We hope the competition
will give young people an opportunity to express their
creativity, heighten their sense of fashion and build
upon tailoring and communication skills. Click here or
call us at 2774 5300 for more details.
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HKFYG 2007 Divac Youth Basketball
Camp: 16-19 July
We are delighted that
camp participants will benefit from the generous sponsorship
of Nike for T-shirts and basketballs,
and Bonaqua for
bottled water and BonActive drinks. The Divac
Children's Foundation (DCF) invited the Federation
to co-present Divac Youth Basketball Camp for youth
in Hong Kong this July. The four-day camp with 100
12-17 year-olds will be followed by 2-hour intensive
clinics enabling 20 talented young players and 20 local
coaches to hone their skills. Former NBA All-Star, Vlade
Divac, current
NBA Los Angeles Lakers player Vladimir
Radmanovic,
current NBA New Orleans Hornets player Peja
Stojakovic and current
NBA Detroit Pistons assistant coach Igor
Kokoskov will participate For more information,
please phone 3579 4560.
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OXTUTE Summer Tuition Project
OXTUTE,
a group of Hong Kong students from the University of
Oxford, has invited HKFYG to co-organize quality, affordable,
small group summer tutorials for young people from
low-income families. The tutorials will give students
who will be taking the HKCEE examination in 2008 extra
tuition in mathematics, English usage, physics and
chemistry. The aim of the programme is to improve participants'
academic performance with the help of Oxford University
students who want to serve the community.
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「樂無窮．樂容融」 青年共融學習之旅: a programme
sponsored by the Committee on the Promotion of Civic
Education
Sponsored by the Committee
on the Promotion of Civic Education, the HKFYG
Jockey Club Farm Road Youth S.P.O.T is organizing this
programme from June till October. 40 young people aged
15 or above will learn about the needs of the elderly,
the disadvantaged and ethnic minority groups through
workshops, seminars and drama. They will also have
the chance to visit them at home. We hope this will
help the young people build a more harmonious society.
Click here or
tel 2715 0424 for more details.
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"Children's Fun & Games" at
the Airport
The programme has been
a great success in the past, with the Federation's
Youth Volunteer Network (VNET) and the Airport
Authority working together in the Departure Hall. 40 students
in F5 or above are trained to teach children how to
make local handicrafts as souvenirs and play games.
Between Thursday and Sunday from July to August this
year, these volunteers will meet tourists and children
from around the world and make them feel welcome at
the airport. They will give the kids some fun and their
parents some light relief from the stress of travel.
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readers: please send your contact details |
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| Dragon,
drums, music and dance: HKSARG celebrates
10th anniversary |
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We are going to celebrate the creation
of the HKSAR by attempting to break the world record for
the largest drum ensemble ever. On the afternoon of June
30, as all of Hong Kong gathers for celebratory parties,
we will be gathering ten thousand young people together
for a magnificent drum roll. With celebrity pop stars such
as the Twins and Kelly Chen, ten young local piano stars
including Aristo Sham and Rachel Cheung, dancing, mass
choral singing and an impressive dragon dance, they will
put on a splendid show at the Hong Kong Coliseum. |
Youth from over 130 schools and members of musical organizations
such as the Hong Kong Children's Choir, the Hong Kong Dance
Federation, the Hong Kong Percussion Centre and the Hong Kong
Youth Symphony Orchestra will be there. Five hundred of the
drummers are coming from the mainland, Macau and Taiwan and
music has been composed specially. There will be a live broadcast
from the Hong Kong Coliseum by RTHK and TVB. It is definitely
not to be missed.
This is the fifth in a series of dragon-themed
happenings organized by the Federation with the help of the
Home Affairs Bureau, LCSD and the All China Youth Federation.
Find out more by ringing Katherine, tel 2123 9598.
Read about the excited youngsters and group volunteers
in this week's Feature Story. |
| Feature
Story |
10,000-strong
dragon drum rally: youth jamboree celebrations
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Our anniversary celebrations next week
highlight a mass drum rally, youth choirs and a dragon
dance as well as featuring other forms of dance and several
performing pop stars. How do the young performers and
the volunteers who will help to organize them feel?
I'm just so excited, said Kevin. Over 100 from my school
are going and I know there will be lots of music and
dancing as well as the drumming. I've never played a
drum before this but I'm really looking forward to it! |
As well as the world record attempt, several other dragon-theme
acts will be performed on stage. Dragons
awake! an awesome
dragon dance, will begin the programme, with the championship Ha
Kwok Cheung Dragon and Lion Dance Team leading 160
dancers.
I really hope we make a good impression
on Hong Kong people, said Pinky, one of Kevin's
schoolmates, who has played African drum before and will
join the performers.
The dragon dance will herald the arrival on stage
of local celebrity singers including Eason
Chan, Hins Cheng, Gary
Cao and Kelly Chen.
Then the Hong Kong Dance Federation will
lead 500 dancers in choreographed pieces including
traditional, jazz and tap dance.
The music extravaganza will continue with ten piano
prodigies, playing a special arrangement by Julie Kuok
of Three Traditional Chinese Folk Tunes. Some
of the well known names are Aristo
Sham, Colleen Lee, Crystal
Lam and Eric Fung. |
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Next on the agenda is the real highlight, the prodigious
drum rally itself. Three Hong Kong percussion bands, Four
Gig Heads, Island Sun Drum and
the Hong Kong Percussion Centre will
be there in support. There will be a dialogue between big
and small drums in a piece called the Dragon Jamboree,
specially arranged by Dr Lung Heung-wing. Five types of small
drum, featuring Chinese rattle drums and tambourines played
with drumsticks, will be among those used. Two Chinese pop
songs will follow, The Red Sun and Descendents
of the Dragon. Hacken Lee,
a great favourite with Hong Kong audiences, will do the vocals
on The Red Sun with lyrics that he wrote himself.
We asked Candy and Mitchell how they imagine keeping in
rhythm:
Playing drums is not so difficult,
said Mitchell. Our music teacher
at HKFYG Lee Shau Kee College is doing rehearsals with
us in school and I'm sure we are going to beat the
record.
It was great to hear them so confident. As Candy said:
I just think it will be fun. Imagine
it, all of us beating our drums together! |
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Organizing this vast group of people is going to be a feat
of logistical co-ordination in itself. There will be about
350 young volunteers from the Federation to meet a fleet
of 130-odd coaches supervised by the police to ensure a smooth
flow of traffic.
Two of the volunteers who will act as group leaders explained:
I'm involved in the logistics side said
Peter, a computer engineering student at City U.
I will meet the drummers as they arrive
and make sure they report for duty on time. Good communications
and close cooperation with the police and each other will
be the key.
Riccarda, who is doing social science at Poly U, will be
in the hall. With the other young volunteers, her job is
to manage the distribution and collection of drums as well
as the drummers:
I've got to maintain discipline and make
sure the drummers follow the leader on stage. It's all about
co-ordination. I think I'm a good organizer but this will
be a real test.
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After the drum rally itself, the Hong
Kong Youth Symphony Orchestra with 860 singers from
three local children's choirs will perform a medley
of traditional songs, with vocalists Joey Yung and
Leo Koo.
This fabulous event, known as the Dragon Jamboree,
will take place in the colossal Hong Kong Coliseum,
at 3pm on 30 June. The final two numbers will be a
rousing chorus of Happy Birthday to the HKSAR,
composed by Joshua Chan followed by Hong Kong's beloved
Alan Tam with Just Because You Are Here. |
We are very grateful to RTHK and TVB for
televising the performance live. Thank you to our partners,
the Home Affairs Bureau, the All-China Youth Federation,
Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Radio and Television
Hong Kong, and to the Hong Kong Police for their assistance. |
| Upcoming
events |
Dragon
Jamboree Youth Concert |
Date 30 June 2007
Time 3-4:30 pm
Venue Hong Kong Coliseum, Hung Hom |
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| Felix
Wong Youth Improvement Awards |
Date 7 July 2007
Time 10:30am-12 noon
Venue Theatre 2, Convention and Exhibition Centre, Wanchai
Twenty local students received the Felix Wong Youth Improvement
Awards
for efforts to overcome hardship. |
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| 「龍情十年」青年交流分享會
Youth Sharing Session |
Date 23 June 2007
Time 3-5pm
Venue Level 5, Pacific Place Conference Centre,
One Pacific Place, Admiralty
Guest of Honour Dr Lee Shau Kee
Guest Speakers Mr Wilfred Wong, Deputy to the Ninth and Tenth National People's Congress of the PRC
Ms
Shelley LEE Lai-kuen, GBS, OBE, JP (Director, The Dragon Foundation)
Audience 200 past participants of HKFYG
youth exchange programmes |
| Facts & Figures |
| Sounding the
drum: passion for music and percussion |
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A recent local
survey* of 300 young Hong Kongers aged 15-34 discovered
some surprising data. Only 27% of those polled said they
were passionate about music compared with 71% in India,
61% in Thailand and 42% on the mainland. Only 2% of our
young people said they would listen to music all day long
if they could whereas the regional average is 12%. The
total number interviewed across the region was 3,857. Singapore
came next to bottom with 38% claiming a passion for music. |
The forthcoming celebratory attempt at a world record for
drumming shows a different attitude in Hong Kong, more in harmony
with traditional rhythmic ceremonial celebrations which have
been used for centuries.
Guinness Book of World Records adjudicators have three criteria
when there is an attempt to beat the world record for the largest
drum ensemble. The number of drummers should be more than the
last record, the drummers have to play for a minimum of five
minutes, and the beat should have synchronised melody.
The existing record for a drum ensemble was made in India
last year with 7,951 drummers in Shillong in the northeastern
state of Meghalaya.** They beat the previous record, also made
in Hong Kong by the Po Leung Kuk with 7,727 drummers in 2005.
The Federation will now attempt to top both records with an
ensemble of 10,000.
Before the record was broken in Hong Kong in 2005, it was
held for a year by 4,374 drummers at the Global Festival for
Peace in Laytonville, California. In 2004 they exceeded an
earlier record by over 1000. The California drum ensemble was
led by Grateful Dead drummer and world music percussionist
Mickey Hart.
*MTV survey conducted by Synovate presented at the Music Matters
Asia-Pacific music forum, 30/5/07, reported in South China
Morning Post 31 May 2007
**http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6090000/newsid_6099400/6099400.stm
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The
Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups provides services
and facilities for the intellectual, physical, emotional
and social development of young people in the hope
that they will lead full and committed lives as responsible,
contributing citizens. It has ten core services focusing
on youth employment, volunteering, youth-at-risk,
counselling, education, parenting, leisure, culture
and sports, youth exchange, leadership training and
e-services.
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