Thanks to Partners

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Free brochures: Summer Youth Programme 2007

HKFYG Summer Youth Programme brochures are now available free for collection at branches of Joint Publishing Co, Cosmos Books Ltd, the Baron School of Music and Super Star restaurants. Many thanks to them all and to MingPao as well as the Baron School of Music , Super Star Group and Yandy Mays Culture Ltd, for sponsoring the programme’s Lucky Draw, encouraging greater participation. The brochure introduces 3,000 varied activities and includes this year’s 3 themed activities: the HKFYG - 2007 Divac Youth Basketball Camp, HKFYG Mission Hills Golf Club Golf Training for young people and the LEAD Project. Programme enrollment begins on Sunday 6 May. Call 35794560 for more information. Free copies are also available at all 21 Youth S.P.O.Ts and the Youth S.P.O.T. Support and Membership Unit, 6/F, Kam Chung Commercial Building, 19-21 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong.


Cathay Pacific International Wilderness Experience 2007

The programme has generous sponsorship from Cathay Pacific Airways and has been a great success since its inception in 1991. This July, over 50 delegates from Hong Kong and 15 countries in the Asia Pacific region will have the valuable chance to go on an educational safari in South Africa, appreciate natural habitats and learn about environmental protection. Participants will also learn something of each others’ cultural traditions. A big thank you to Cathay Pacific for covering most of the costs involved in the trip, including air tickets, course fees, accommodation, meals and ground transport in South Africa. Click here for more info:
http://ye.hkfyg.org.hk/hkfyg_en/
new/new.html

or call Miss Zhawnice Tse, 2561 6149.


Celebration Photo Contest for HKSAR 10th Anniversary

The Federation’s u21 youthnet will organize this photo contest from 16 April till the end of May. The theme is The most representative scene and entrants will be in student and open sections. Each section has 4 topics: social issues, environment and life issues, festivities, and people. Thanks to all prize sponsors including Shun Hing Technology Co Ltd, Microsoft Hong Kong Ltd, Muse Digital Ltd, Chow Tai Fook, Chilli (DIGI magazine), dcfever.com and CHKCI for their support. The competition will be an outlet for creative talent and will enhance skills and interests in photography while stimulating collective memory. Click www.u21.hk for more info or phone 2831 9183.


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Exam anxiety
revision time

This is the crucial period in the run-up to the public HKCEE exams. We all remember pre-exam tension: the apprehension, gnawing worry and stress that come with being tested. It is perfectly natural to feel stressed and can act as a good motivator. Unfortunately, it can also have terribly negative effects on young people who do not know how to deal with stress. Many of them have unrealistically high self-expectations, they are under pressure from school to succeed and fear most of all the idea of letting their parents down.

HKFYG provides stress counselling to counteract these negative effects. Hotline workers and school social workers offer understanding and a calming effect for panicked young callers who are overwrought and unable to concentrate for fear of doing badly.

They reassure and explain how important it is to understand how stress works in order to counteract it. They tell disorganised students how to manage their time for revision, giving practical advice on nutrition, rest and relaxation as well as on the options just in case of failure. Read this week's Feature Story and Facts & Figures for comment and statistics from counsellors, parents, students and researchers on the effects of exam tension.


Feature Story
Time for exams: stress, symptoms and relief

Exam time is a very tense period for many Hong Kong youngsters. They feel that their future depends on the outcome and the most sensitive fear they are in danger of letting themselves or their families down. The depression that follows can paralyse:

‘I feel as if my whole future depends on the results I get in these exams,’ said Kao Lai-ying, a bright Form 6 student we talked to. ‘Exam results lay down the path forward. If they are low-grade, uneven or unbalanced I suspect that will reflect everything that happens to me hereafter.’

symptom of exam stress

 

Federation social workers try to relieve the pressure that leads to thoughts like these by giving sound advice on relaxation techniques for stress relief. They also pass on practical messages about well planned, prioritised revision strategies and the need to recognize personal limits in order to feel well-prepared and satisfied with a personal best.

Phoebe, the hotline counsellor in charge of HKFYG’s Youthline which helps young teens deal with the extra stress and worry commented:

‘The internal and external pressure on students to perform, combined in the run-up to HKCEE or HKALE, exert a terrific stress on them. They lose their appetite, become insomniacs, get moody. In fact they can become quite different from their normal selves.’

 

Many of us can sympathise with these symptoms. Anybody who has experienced a phase of extreme pressure will recognize them instantly. However, as adults most of us have acquired a few tools that help us to cope and, ideally, achieve a productive end-result partially because of stress. It can motivate to higher achievement as well as cause adverse effects. This is the underlying motive for pressure exerted by teachers and parents alike:

‘Teachers keep on reminding you how important exams are,’ complained Lai-ying. ‘They tell you that every bit of work you do at school counts towards your ultimate success or failure, so the tension gets prolonged and becomes a feature of everyday life as exam time gets closer. You just can’t focus on anything else.’

important exams
 
What can be done to help provide more effective coping strategies? It’s not just the exams that make students stressed. It’s their parents and friends too. Parents naturally want the best for their offspring and find it difficult to resist encouraging them to try hard, or harder. Peers don’t always help either. Some take an annoying ‘know-it-all already’ stance which might be make-believe but has the effect of making insecure classmates feel they can’t possibly be so well prepared.

‘Unrealistic parental expectations have a lot to answer for,’ said Phoebe, ‘but students set their own targets too high as well, very often under the influence of others in their class. I tell them never to compare themselves with others, always to look at the changes in their own performance instead. That builds self-confidence, as long as there have been signs of improvement. For lower achievers I concentrate on trying to get them to recognize their own limits, and I ask parents to do the same.’

The sad problem for many exam candidates is that they feel the outcome of exams may depend more on chance than on their own innate abilities. If they have an off day or feel frozen by stress into an inertia that prevents any benefit from the techniques we can teach them, the result is quite unpredictable.

In the achievement-oriented society we live in, parents and students can end up chasing an illusion. To counter this situation the Federation provides advice on the options to sixth-form and higher education. If teenagers understand that exam results are not the be-all and end-all, that there are good alternatives to getting top marks, they may begin to relax just enough to perform at their optimum levels.

And this is what we always strive to help them to achieve.
Contact Phoebe or Siu-man at Youthline, tel 2788 3433, for more info on stress for exam anxiety and see Facts & Figures for the latest statistics collated by HKFYG.


Upcoming events

Dragon Foundation Charity Premiere: Spider-Man 3

Date Friday 27 April 2007
Time 7.30pm
Venue Palace IFC, Central
Guest of Honour The Hon Ambrose LEE Siu-kwong, IDSM, JP, Secretary for Security, HKSAR
Aim To raise funds for Dragon Foundation's flagship programmes:
       Global Citizenship Programme, Dragon 100 and Lecture Series for Youth Leaders
Enquiries Dragon Foundation tel 2811 2779
 
A cappella around the world Hong Kong Melody Makers in concert
Date Saturday 28 April 2007
Time 8pm
Venue Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Jockey Club Auditorium
Programme a cappella songs
Guest of Honour The Hon Michael Suen, GBS, JP, Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands, HKSAR
Guest performers Mr Hins Cheung, Mr Peco Chiu, Ms Yuki Ip, Mr Albert Lim and Mr Eric Monson
Ticket reservations and enquiries Maggie Chung (Music Administrator) tel 2395 5759 http://www.youthmatters.hk/Unit_HKMM/leaflet_front.jpg
 
10th Coming of Age Ceremony
Date Friday 4 May 2007
Time 6pm
Venue The Jockey Club Auditorium, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Guests of Honour
Mr Li Gang, Deputy Director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR
Mrs Carrie Lam, Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs
 
Leaders to Leaders Lecture Series 2006/07

Speaker Mr Shih Wing-ching, JP
Chairman, Centaline Group
Topic Visionary Thinking
Date Tuesday 8 May 2007
Time 6pm - 8.30pm
Venue Rayson Huang Theatre, HKU
Participants 300 nominated student leaders and university students
More details at http://www.leadership21.org/courses/ltl/guestinfo.doc
and http://www.u21.org.hk/partnership/issue92_jan2007/images/LTL.jpg


Facts & Figures
Perceptions of stress in exam candidates
sleepless night The Federation runs annual surveys on stress caused by exams and runs extra hotlines to help anxious candidates. From March to April 2007, 1410 students were asked about their perceptions of exam-induced stress. Over 37%, mainly HKCEE candidates, reported feeling high stress levels due to approaching exams. Over 40% felt moderately stressed and 19% considered their stress levels low. Over a quarter attributed the problem to high self-expectations whereas about 15% blamed parental pressure, closely followed by 14.5% who said their anxiety was caused by the anticipated problem of getting into the right school or university.
 

Last year, interviews of 938 students taking HKCEE or A-level exams revealed that over 40% felt highly stressed about it. Another 39% said they were under pressure because of exams. Approximately 25% admitted that their stress came from personal expectations of their own potential performance. 13% said stress was caused by feeling unsure about the future and about 12% said they were worried in case they could not go on to do A-levels or get into university.

According to this year’s survey, the most evident symptom of exam anxiety was insomnia, which was experienced by almost 17%. 11-12% had other physical symptoms, such as headache or digestive trouble and over 10% reported feeling irritable or moody. The most popular ways to relieve stress were listening to music and sleeping (18-19%) 16% of the respondents went online to distract themselves and 8% watched TV. Just over 11% found relief through talking to their friends.

When asked what level of preparation that had done for exams, nearly 20% thought they had done little, but this is a subjective measure only. 23% considered themselves well prepared and over half felt they had done quite a lot of revision. The students were also asked how much they thought their stress levels were affected by the changes in the language syllabus brought in this year. 28% thought the changes had a significant to strong effect and nearly 25% felt unable to cope because of the unfamiliarity.

Between September 2005 and April 2006, there were 538 Federation hotline calls about exam stress. The numbers rose sharply this year when 848 calls were taken from January to April. The reason is that HKFYG now works proactively with a contact list of exam candidates prone to anxiety provided by schools. The aim is to prevent the escalation of exam stress and its sequelae, especially in the light of the changes in the curriculum.


The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, one of Hong Kong's largest youth work agencies, has provided opportunities, facilities and services to youth for over 40 years.