How might we use housing as a medium for empowerment and what role does design play in enhancing community wellbeing? This fireside chat will take inspiration from the government’s partnership with civic organizations to explore how communities can be transformed through collaborative partnerships.
Learnings
Post-event Actions
Moderator
Francis Ngai
Founder and CEO
Social Ventures Hong Kong
Social Ventures Hong Kong
Founder and CEO
Francis Ngai is the Founder and CEO of Social Ventures Hong Kong. Since 2007, he’s been dedicated to impact design for the future urban city. His social innovation portfolio includes Hong Kong’s first venture philanthropy fund, Community Resilience Fund, Green Monday, Bottless, RunOurCity, LightBe affordable housing, Playtao Education, HATCH women empowerment initiative, COMM-ON co-caring space, Institute of Community Making, and COMSMOS impact consultancy, among others. Through impact strategy consulting and building collective platforms for corporates, family foundations, and government departments—including Airport Authority HK, Urban Renewal Authority HK, Swire Trust, Rosewood Hotel, Cathay Pacific, Standard Chartered, HK Management Association and Energizing Kowloon East Office—SVhk is committed to creating integrated impact solutions across all sectors in the city.
Eric Ho
Co-founder and Director
Co-founder and Director
Architect, entrepreneur, and urban thinker passionate about architecture and urban environments that have a lasting impact on society, Eric Ho is the Co-founder and Director of Architecture Commons, a design agency for urban innovation.
Eric studied architecture at University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he was the recipient of the Faculty Design Award. In addition to his passion in architecture, Eric started a civic start-up MILES: a real estate platform for neighbourhood and community good through activating underused storefront spaces, and Good Goods: a next generation shared economy platform for retail in New York.
Eric is currently a faculty member at Parsons School of Design and teaches design thinking and design strategy. He is also a lecturer at Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture. In 2019, he started “Neighbourhood Innovation Lab” to tackle how we might design human-centred cities, one neighbourhood at a time.
My Sustainability Goals for 2023:
To create and cultivate projects that can promote and cultivate sustainability visions for users and stakeholders of urban spaces. Let’s chat~!
Winnie Ho
Secretary for Housing
Secretary for Housing
Ms Ho is appointed the Secretary for Housing on 1 July 2022. Ms Ho joined the Government as Architect in 1992 and was promoted to Chief Architect in 2009, and to Government Architect in 2012. She was appointed the Director of Architectural Services in 2020. Apart from serving in the Architectural Services Department, Ms Ho had been posted to work as the Deputy Head of Energizing Kowloon East Office under the Development Bureau. During the out-break of COVID-19 in 2020 to 2022, she has actively participated in the construction of quarantine facilities, temporary hospitals and community isolation facilities at Penny’s Bay, Kai Tak and many other locations by adoption of Modular Integrated Construction method.
Ms Ho graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of The University of Hong Kong. She also attended the Advanced Management Program of INSEAD in France. She is a member of the Hong Kong Institute of Architects and a Registered Architect.
Founded in 2007, Social Ventures Hong Kong (SVhk) is an Impact Purpose Organisation that innovates social change by re-imagining the city. We focus on inventing and incubating pioneering sustainable business solutions to urban challenges, and partners with communities and businesses alike to design and build cross-sector partnerships towards realising our dreams for NewUrban in 2030