The Impact Lab Course has recently won the 2023 UGC Teaching Award for exposing students to the intricacies of real-world problems and encouraging them to innovate solutions. The prestigious award couldn’t have come at a better time: On the night before the award presentation, we held a celebration event for Impact Lab’s 10th anniversary, looking back at the remarkable impact of the impact-based experiential learning course, and crowdsourcing ideas on the course’s expansion and future development from our audience of alumni and students, partners and collaborators, and fellow educators.
Read on to see how far we have come!
Around this time more than a decade ago, economies worldwide were still reeling from the repercussions of the financial crisis. Getting a quality internship proved to be difficult for university students looking to apply their knowledge in workplace settings. It soon occurred to David Bishop, Associate Professor of Teaching at The University of Hong Kong, that he had to do something about the situation.
“What I learned was that even if you could get an internship with a really good company, they didn’t trust the students,” recalled David. “Our students would always say that the only thing they’re allowed to do is get coffee and make copies. I realized that if the students were going to have the types of opportunities that I hoped that they would have, I was going to have to make them.”
That led to the founding of Soap Cycling, Asia’s first and largest youth-led soap recycling social impact organization. The establishment of the Impact Lab Course (formerly known as the Social Venture Management Course) would soon follow, as David continued to connect with social impact organizations and businesses that shared the same vision of youth empowerment and the same challenges in human resources.
Fast forward to 10 years later today, the Impact Lab Course has nurtured 1,196 youth by placing them in important positions at 50+ social impact organizations in Hong Kong, contributing 135,840 hours of work to advance the organizations’ respective UN Sustainable Development Goals.
With students coming from 128 universities in 61 countries, Impact Lab offers students the invaluable opportunity to become global citizens, capable of communicating and collaborating with people from diverse racial, cultural, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
From our data, we can see that more than one-third of students had never worked before, and to have 97.2% of students finding themselves more employable after taking the course is a significant indicator of the course’s success.
All Gathered at Impact Lab’s 10th Anniversary Celebration Event
Impact Lab’s first decade of impact in youth empowerment and facilitating shared resources to build capacity for the Hong Kong social impact space was the highlight of the 10th anniversary celebration event on 26 September. Alumni from years past and all over the world gathered at HKU iCube to join the course’s partner companies, current cohort of student interns, and the Foundation for Shared Impact team to witness the sustained, positive impact they have collectively achieved over the years.
“Impact Lab is not your average classroom learning,” said Professor Pauline Chiu, Associate Vice President of Teaching and Learning at HKU, in her toast speech at the celebration event. “Connecting students from various disciplines and facilitating international exchange, Impact Lab allows students to be in contact with the people who are being served by the organizations they work at. I’m in awe of what has been accomplished by the course in cultivating young leaders, and I can’t wait to see what Impact Lab will bring in the future.”
“Impact Lab was not created as a course but more as a creative sandbox for young people to take risks and learn from their failures in a safe space,” said David Bishop. “There were times when some students would make mistakes and the school would need to have a word with me. I remember Ian Holliday (Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Teaching and Learning) asking me, ‘Why are you still here after all the problems you have to face because of the students?’ And here, I would like to quote Lindsay Ernst, my colleague and partner-in-crime: ‘We are not educators in the conventional sense, we are community builders. We help people become a better version of themselves.’”
The mutually beneficial nature of Impact Lab means that students are not the only ones who benefit from it, but everyone involved in the course, including educators and partner companies.
Said Lucia Loposova, Impact Lab Course Teaching Assistant and Executive Director of GREEN Hospitality, one of the course’s partner companies: “I want to thank David for giving me the opportunity to create impact, to empower students and be empowered myself. Since I started working as the Teaching Assistant for the course, we have added a seminar series to explore the different aspects of social entrepreneurship. We have also just started a Mentoring Program, and we added more opportunities for students to stay connected to the course while developing themselves. Many of the course’s partner companies have been working with us from the beginning, and I look forward to seeing them grow and flourish.”
Said Jeff Lam, Impact Lab alumni and former Co-founder of FSI: “Impact Lab is one of the best things that a university can offer its students. The course offers hands-on, sometimes challenging, work experiences that can help students grow and learn the skills and knowledge that they can transfer to the workplace. In fact, that’s what Impact Lab did for me. As an alumni, it’s great to see the amazing, sustained impact it has created over the past 10 years. I look forward to another decade of Impact Lab, its expansion to other universities and countries, hopefully to where I am working now so that I can work with Impact Lab again!”
Said Paras Kalura, social entrepreneur and Operations Manager at Migrasia, an Impact Lab partner company: “Migrasia has been working with Impact Lab from the beginning. It has been a valuable experience, not just for the students, but also for us as a partner organization. We get to interact with the new generation, trying to raise their awareness of the social issues we are addressing and getting their perspectives on our work as well.”
The Future of Youth Empowerment
At the celebration event, we held an open forum to gauge the audience’s thoughts on urgent questions related to youth empowerment and the future of education. For example, how do we integrate human skills into teaching and learning, to ensure youth are AI-proof and capable of creative problem-solving and critical thinking? What human skills should educators focus on? What is important for the future of education?
Paving the path for Impact Lab’s expansion and extended impact, we officially launched the Impact Lab Alumni at the event to invite alumni and others to increase the course’s capacity to empower more youth in the future. Here are the ways to get involved:
- Alumni Network Committee & Course Advisory Board: Join as a committee member and shape our global community and the course.
- Mentoring Program & Development Activities: Become a mentor – the next cohort starts in Spring 2024.
- Volunteering, Fundraising & Broader Impact: Help us fundraise, donate to some of our partner companies, or become a board director.
If you would like to explore other ways to support our work in building young social impact leaders, get in touch with us at impactlab@hku.hk
We would like to thank Siony’s Lutong Bahay, KNEAD, Cheese Club Hong Kong, Institute of Leadership and Management Foundation Limited’s EMC Hub, Amorosso, Hong Kong Beer Co, Al Baick Fast Food, and The Cakery Hong Kong for providing the refreshments for the event. A big shout-out to Circular City for enabling us to lower our carbon footprint with its reusable cups. Finally, the event would not have been possible without the event venue sponsor, HKU iCube.
Our heartfelt gratitude to our volunteer photographers, Erika Makino, Giovanni Ghegin, Anthony Yau, Rayden Wong, Arlen Hung.
