Providing opportunities to young people and nurturing future generations
Fresh graduates and career starters face many challenges nowadays, particularly in the face of economic downturns resulting from the pandemic. Across its business areas, CLP Power is keeping up its efforts to address the needs of local youth and give support in collaboration with various partners.
In Hong Kong, Vocational and Professional Education and Training (VPET) plays a vital role in broadening the learning opportunities of school leavers and in-service personnel. In collaboration with the Vocational Training Council CLP Power launched the CLP Award for VPET Students in 2020. The award assists VPET-enrolled students with their financial needs to allow them to continue their studies. The VPET programmes offer higher diploma training in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, environmental engineering, computer and electronic engineering, and environmental protection and management.
In 2022, the CLP Community Energy Saving Fund (CESF) has allocated HK$1.5 million to the award, providing a subsidy of HK$20,000 to each eligible student and benefitting a total of 75 students in each cohort. The award not only provides training opportunities to these students in the energy sector, but also helps nurture a new generation of talent for Hong Kong's power engineering industry.
In collaboration with the Correctional Services Department, CLP Power helps young persons in incarceration and those who have been released reintegrate into the society, as well as gain knowledge and skills via career talks and interview skills workshop. Two talks were arranged in Q4 2022 for some 80 young inmates to provide them with information on continuation of study and pathways to engineering.
CLP Power supports the Government’s Strive and Rise Programme by nominating 16 mentors, including graduate trainees, young engineers and other representatives from various business units, to join the one-year mentorship programme. The mentors will be paired with junior form underprivileged students on a one-on-one basis and provide them with advice on life and study via a wide range of activities including visits to CLP facilities.
Furthermore, as part of "The Green Cedar Project", a poverty alleviation and ethnic minorities culture preservation campaign launched by CLP in Guangxi, Mainland China since 2019, CLP published the first Black Miao Dictionary in the region to support the educational development of local students. The dictionary features about 1,500 vocabularies and short sentences using Mandarin homophones and Pinyin, enabling students to learn the Black Miao language with ease and appreciate the beauty of the language, which is ebbing away.
