The attainment of a sustainable society can manifest in the social, environment, economy, and governance aspects. The Centre, through our action projects, promotes sustainable development with four core approaches, namely, Social Innovation, Collaboration & Partnership, Engagement & Empowerment and, Reinvention of Community Resources.

PSL aspires to build the social-ecological resilience as a way to enhance the capitals for sustainability. We seek to cultivate a collaborative ecosystem that coalesces community of interest and talents, and pulls together resources from the business, government and non-profit sector across the urban-rural value chains for mainstreaming nature-based solution (NbS), resource circularity and regenerative system thinking.

SECAL strives to understand and foster community-based collective action as a vehicle for utilizing human ingenuity, forging reciprocity, and building social capital. In particular, SECAL seeks to nurture social entrepreneurship and crowdsource ideas with a focus on blending social and economic values through fostering various novel social ventures and commoning endeavors.

NPPL seeks to enhance the resilience, capacity and governance of the nonprofit and philanthropic sector as a means to attain social impact. A broad definition of philanthropy is adopted that concerned about the leveraging of private resources – capital, time, space, idea, expertise and network – for public good.

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Open Employment Challenges for Intellectually-disabled Youth in Hong Kong
2017-2018
Social inclusion is a UN target of a sustainable world; it states that everyone, irrespective of one’s characteristics, such as various forms of disability, should be included as a member of society. Participation in the labor market is an important means through which an adult takes part in society. Despite the Hong Kong government’s efforts in nurturing and educating the intellectually-disabled from an early age, and numerous studies that demonstrated the multiple benefits of open employment to the disabled, businesses, public spending, and social inclusion, the chance of open employment for the intellectually-disabled was still rather slim. This study is an attempt to discover the hindering factors behind open employment for the intellectually-disabled, highlighting potential policy and service gaps, and put forward recommendations to improve the situation. The study is supported by the Faculty of Social Sciences, HKU, and completed in 2018.
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International Civic and Citizenship Education Study in Hong Kong (a joint project with Policy 21 Ltd.)
2016-2018
Twenty-four countries/cities took part in a study to understand lower secondary school students’ knowledge of and attitudes towards civics and citizenship, as well as their participation in related activities within and outside the school. The study was commissioned the Education Bureau, HKSAR in 2016. As a member of the international research consortium, the study followed the research design and instruments of the International Assocaition for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The aim of the research is to find out the ways in which young people were prepared to take up as citizens. Ninety-one secondary schools took part in the research. The report was submitted to IEA and the Educational Bureau in 2018.
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ExCEL3 (Excellence in Capacity-building on Entrepreneurship and Leadership for the Third-sector)
This inter-disciplinary ExCEL3 project aims to build the capacity of NGOs and empower civil society in Hong Kong, as well as build research and teaching capacity in the study of civil society within the University. Through training, sharing, and research, the project seeks to nurture innovation and entrepreneurship, strengthen the leadership, management, governance and organisational capacity of the third sector; and build a platform that brings together philanthropists, foundations, and institutional investors with NGOs, as well as the academic community.