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HP shares good will with Hong Kong's elderly during Chinese New Year
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| As part of its ongoing commitment to supporting local communities, HP and its staff are making life brighter for the senior citizens of Hong Kong. |
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In 2003, HP began a relationship with the Senior Citizen Home Safety Association (SCHSA) — a non-profit social welfare service agency that provides 24 hour emergency support to elderly in Hong Kong who are living alone and those who suffer from chronic illness.
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| Since 2004, HP has provided the SCHSA with a range of technology to power its Personal Emergency Link Call Center — initially donating desktop PCs, notebooks and servers that highly enhanced the performance and efficiency of Call Center service for the elderly. In 2006, 17" LCD monitors were donated, allowing each Personal Emergency Link service operator to work with dual monitors, enabling them to view more "pages" over the computer concurrently to retrieve the information of service users and respond to user's need immediately. Such enhanced functionality is particularly crucial in medical emergency situations.
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The initial technical relationship has since expanded to include support from HP volunteers, keen to assist with their important community work.
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Thirteen employees from HP Hong Kong recently volunteered their time to the SCHSA during the Chinese New Year, to help make the holiday a little brighter for many Hong Kong senior citizens.
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The staff volunteers made telephone calls to the elderly who were living alone, having a brief conversation with them to let them know that there are people in the community caring for them.
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The Chinese New Year telephone campaign came about through HP Hong Kong's newly formed HP Volunteer Team that aims to provide regular community activities for employee volunteering.
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In order to assist with the Chinese New Year telephone campaign, staff members were trained by the SCHSA on scripts and tips for speaking with the elderly. Each employee volunteer then made approximately ten phone calls, much to the delight of local senior citizens.
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Executive Director of the SCHSA, Mr Timothy Ma said "It is wonderful to see a worldwide corporate like HP encourage their staff to volunteer and support the holistic care service provided for the elderly through the latest technology."
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| "It is expected that by making caring calls to the elderly, the corporate volunteers will also be more proactive in recognising the needs of the elderly, especially those in their own family. Our society would be more in harmony and a more caring one if everyone considered one another more."
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| The HP team found the experience with the SCHSA and the elderly citizens both rewarding and enjoyable… |
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May Lo, Marketing, TSG, Hong Kong |
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"I got involved as I wanted to have new experiences, help others and to learn more about our community, but most importantly I wanted to reach out to elderly citizens.
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It is a great outreach program. By chatting with the elderly you can proactively identify their needs. This is really important as many elderly people won't tell you their problems — but if you ask them and show an interest they will eventually tell you their problems which can then be referred to the SCHSA.
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During the course of one conversation for example, I found out that an elderly lady needed to go to hospital but required someone to accompany her. She wouldn't have asked for the help — but through our conversation, I was able to identify this as an issue and refer it to the center.
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The project provided a human voice, when they may not hear from anyone else. Many don't hear from anyone — not even their families — and they are extremely grateful when you call.
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I spoke with one lady for 45 minutes — we talked about everything — her life, her experiences during World War 2 and her family. If it wasn't for my phone call, she may not have heard from anybody for the holiday and she was incredibly appreciative of our conversation.
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As a global company it's important for us to give back to the community and show we care for others around us. It also gives us the opportunity to extend our experiences, giving us a more balanced view of life.
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Many of my colleagues have also expressed interest in helping the elderly and I would love to see the program be expanded so that visits can perhaps be scheduled. It would be a fantastic teambuilding exercise."
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Zoe Kwong, General Manager of Hong Kong PSG |
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"I volunteered for the program as I wanted to do something meaningful during the holidays and make a little contribution to the community.
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The program is particularly important as it conveys to the senior citizens that someone in the society cares about them, making them not so lonely during Chinese New Year.
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The response from those I spoke with was generally welcome, friendly and sincere and they were extremely happy that someone called them to greet and wish them health and wealth at Chinese New Year.
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I think the program was particularly important in making the senior citizens feel that they are part of society. It shows them that the world does care about them and can offer assistance to them when needed.
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I learnt from the exercise as well. After hearing some sad stories from the senior citizens I talked to, I realized how happy, healthy and satisfactory my life is.
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The program really demonstrates that HP is a caring company and is concerned not just for our customers and partners, but also about the broader community. It also shows that we have the resources to support the community's needs on non-profit making projects."
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Twiggy Lau, sales incentive analyst, TSG, End-to-End Sales Incentive Design team |
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"The SCHSA project is a truly meaningful program and a caring phone call to the elderly means a lot to them, especially at Chinese New Year and particularly in Hong Kong, where there's a high number of elderly living alone.
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Some don't have children and some have children who may not be able to take care of them or live with them. Subsequently our phone call demonstrates that the community cares for them and it shows them that they are not abandoned or ignored.
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The people I spoke with were delighted to receive the call and extremely grateful and appreciative that someone had taken the time to greet them during Chinese New Year.
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The program also provides a valuable opportunity for them to tell you any needs they may have, such as extra caring services, house cleaning or any other necessities. It also gives them a platform to share their feelings and really helps to reduce any sadness or anxiety.
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Caring for the community is a core value of HP and this program reinforces HP Hong Kong's commitment to supporting our local community."
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As a result of HP's ongoing support of SCHSA, the Association nominated HP for the Caring Company Logo (a widely accepted symbol of corporate community involvement) in 2004-2005, which is run by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.
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The next step in the HP-SCHSA relationship will be to assign PDA's to case workers who visit senior citizens in their homes. The PDA's will enable case workers to upload data while onsite (in real time) and electronically transfer the data to the main database.
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The PDA's will save case workers time by eliminating the task of manually documenting information and will ensure greater privacy and operational efficiency, allowing case workers to spend more quality time with the elderly.
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| HP's work with the SCHSA is further testament to the dedication of the organisation and its caring staff, to supporting local communities. |
