• Seungjae Lee is a student striving to help refugees in Hong Kong through a tutoring programme.
• Seungjae joined the UNITAR 2024 Youth Ambassador Asia-Pacific Programme themed "Local Solutions for Global Challenges: Youth Empowerment and Community Impact”.
• Through the UNITAR Youth Ambassador Programme, Seungjae learned how to structure his community project and expand it to a higher level and potentially to an international scale.
• Through his projects, Andy supports refugees in tutoring, which aligns with the Sustainable Development Goal 4 Quality Education, he set the goal of establishing a strong programme in Hong Kong that allows refugees to learn without language barriers.

Seungjae says that while the number of refugees in Hong Kong is not so high, they face a big language barrier: apart from a little bit of English, people in Hong Kong mainly speak Cantonese and Mandarin, which can be difficult to learn. It gave him the idea to organize volunteers who speak the refugees’ languages to tutor them. 

Language is a very, very important factor of life nowadays because there’s tons of languages and it’s important to communicate with other people. And so when it comes to refugees, being able to establish the same level of communication and getting rid of this language barrier is very, very important.” – Seungjae Lee, UNITAR Youth Ambassador Asia-Pacific Programme 2024

Seungjae’s interest in refugees was first piqued in one of his classes at school. He found refugees inspiring, but it struck him how demeaning it can be to struggle because of things that are out of their control. It made him want to do something to support refugees in Hong Kong. 

He started his project at his school, which allowed him to gather peers to share ideas and raise awareness about refugees to effect change in Hong Kong society. Every week, his community of volunteer tutors goes to this centre to teach the refugee children music, performing arts, and academic subjects such as writing, English, maths, and science. Being in an international school with a diverse student body, he mobilized classmates who could speak the languages that the refugees also spoke, as he thought that this would help the refugees learn more effectively.

Seungjae ’s next challenge lies in defining the project’s future direction. One of his goals is to advocate with the government in Hong Kong to provide greater support to refugees. But that requires raising significant awareness among and concerted advocacy from students – beyond just those involved in his project – and members of the community. This may be the biggest challenge yet.

He also plans to expand this project to a more professional and international level by promoting refugee support in other countries facing similar issues and working towards improving living conditions for refugees. 

A big part of my purpose is to help others develop self-advocacy, to reveal their voice, and to use it. I realized that in times of struggle, your voice is sometimes all you have. Being able to advocate for yourself is essential — that’s why I love tutoring refugees.” – Seungjae Lee, UNITAR Youth Ambassador Asia-Pacific Programme 2024

He began fundraising at school but now has a system that allows him to generate enough money to rent a room for a few hours at the Refugee Union, a centre for refugees, where the tutoring takes place. He is also trying to expand the number of volunteer tutors. 

Andy hopes the passion projects of his fellow participants in the programme are going well and that they are implementing what they have learned to reach their goals. For those considering the UNITAR programme, he mentioned that it helped him realise what was realistic and what he needed to do to accomplish his project while being ambitious and striving for the highest that he could achieve.