Enhancing youth’s ability to capture opportunities

[Sponsored Article]

"I did not know what choices I had before. Everyone seemed to be studying to get into university, so I thought I should do the same. I tried to get a bachelor’s degree in business administration and become a white collar.” However, Alex didn’t do well in the DSE examination and failed to enter university.

The traditional definition of success is often based on academic qualifications, which for some young people can be very stressful. But in today’s society, is this conventional assessment of abilities still appropriate? Or is it more effective to help young people unleash their full potential?

One of the programmes initiated by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust is CLAP for Youth @ JC (CLAP). Through cross-sectoral collaboration, CLAP aims to build young people’s competence to make informed and meaningful life and career choices in alignment with their values, skills and knowledge. It also aims to broaden society’s definition of “success”, “work” and “talent” to create a more enabling environment. To this end, “CV360®” is a key innovation, facilitating better talent-matching by assessing a person’s core abilities beyond paid work and helping employers evaluate qualities needed.  This widens the talent pool and helps individuals better fulfil their potential. 

CLAP’s social workers learned that Alex likes to play video games and encouraged him to explore his strengths and participate in eSports training activities. Alex gained a deeper understanding of the gaming industry and realised that the eSports universe was much more than video games. CV360® enabled Alex to assess his interests and strengths based on his non-paid experience and he started to think of turning his interest into a career. “I prefer a job related to gaming activities rather than an office job. I started to study for an associate degree in business administration again in the hope of realising my ‘gaming dream’ of combining business with my love of gaming.”