Welcoming Hong Kong residents to the borough

In 2022 and 2023, we were awarded funding from the Greater London Authority's (GLA) Hong Kong British National Overseas (BNO) fund.

In 2022, we spent the awarded £16,822 on improving access to advice and information for Hongkonger’s (HK) settling in the borough. We developed a digital Welcome to Richmond information pack for new residents from Hong Kong. 

We also engaged with students and their families through primary and secondary schools. We funded Achieving for Children to work with teachers in our primary and secondary schools delivering training workshops to teachers and parents of students.

In 2023 we were awarded £21,205 to help fund the following:

• Further schools work from June to November 2023
• Multicultural Richmond – The local organisation held weekly Community Social events in Ham over 6 months to:
  • Make Hong Kong residents feel welcome, an opportunity to socialise and give them confidence
  • Provide an opportunity for them to get to know the borough through events and trips with friends and family, like trips to Kew Gardens and Frensham Great Ponds
  • Involve Citizens Advice Bureau to offer advice and information
  • Provide English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes for adults 
• A series of events were carried out in the summer of 2023 for young people from the HK community at Ham Youth Centre, partly designed by some of the HK young people to introduce others to what they saw as important parts of their identity.
• Libraries resources - a selection of adult and children’s books in Cantonese and traditional Chinese will be stocked in libraries in areas with the highest number of HK settlers from December 2023.

For more information, visit our Hong Kong pages and the Multicultural Richmond website.