Eye-opening visit to Vanuatu

In Erakor village, near Vanuatu's capital of Port Vila, Chan Hoi-kiu, a first-year medical student at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), performed basic health check-ups and advised residents about healthier lifestyles.

Chan was one of 18 secondary school and university students who followed the GX Foundation, a medical humanitarian aid and charitable organization, on a week-long trip to the Pacific Island country in late July. There, the students helped with dengue fever control and disaster preparation projects.

The Hong Kong-based foundation has so far delivered about $1 million worth of life-saving assistance to Vanuatu, including over 79 metric tons of supplies such as 75,000 mosquito nets, 40,000 fly traps, 10,000 rapid dengue test kits, 5,000 disaster preparedness kits, 1,000 mosquito-killing lamps, and various educational materials.

It had organized three groups of students for humanitarian work in Vanuatu, where they also provided training workshops to the local community to raise awareness on mosquito-borne diseases and disaster preparedness.

Chan noted that people-to-people connectivity is crucial for different societies to share their cultures.

"I think that we should really try and reach out more to different communities to not only learn from them, but also hopefully they can learn a little bit from us," she said.

Like many students, Harvey Lee Ho-yin, a first-year law student at the CUHK, made it a point to connect with the locals so he could know their needs and learn from their life experiences.

"We are not here as a savior, but we are here to learn and also to teach them things," said Lee. "I think that is the core value of people-to-people connectivity."

Ernest Yau Sai-kiu, a 12th-grade Hong Kong student from English public school Winchester College, said he found the experience meaningful as some villagers came from far away to participate in the projects.

"I am very glad that I managed to do something tangible," said Yau.

Cherry Choi Uen-yin, a 5th-grade student at the St. Paul's Convent School in Hong Kong, said she believes that people-to-people connectivity is key to enhancing mutual understanding between people of different countries.

During the trip, Choi performed Cantonese opera classics, such as The Legend of Purple Hairpin, for Vanuatu students and officials.

"At first I was wondering if I was making them bored because they wouldn't understand what the lyrics were about," she said. "But they were really engaged in the performances and it really shocked me."

Huang Ting, a globalization and development student at the Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University in South China's Guangdong province, said the trip gave her a lot of ideas for future studies as she plans to focus more on quality field investigations to help those in need.

"I hope this friendship (between China and Vanuatu) can become a long-term one," said Huang.