Teaching Global Citizenship in Higher Education: Social Integration with Ethnic Minorities in Hong Kong

This chapter will discuss the experience of conducting a service learningService learningprojectProject aiming at achieving social integrationSocial integrationwith ethnic minoritiesEthnic minorities (EM)in Hong KongHong Kong. The author collaborated with an international non-governmental organizationNon-governmental organizations and implemented a small scale service learningService learningprojectProject to be delivered by a mix-cultural background of university studentsUniversity students for local Hong KongHong Kong Chinese primary school students in 2023. Key concepts and skills such as social integrationSocial integration, second-language acquisition, cultural valuesValues, cross-cultural understanding, and service learningService learning were adopted in this service learningService learningprojectProject. In late July 2023, 28 university studentsUniversity students planned and delivered two 2-h activities for about 21 local primary school students on topics related to exploring different culturesCultures, food, languages, handicraft, lifestyles, customs and traditional costumes, etc. The primary school students have to learn about these topics in EnglishEnglish, which is a second-language for them. Meanwhile, a two-hour training on communicationCommunication and problem solving skills for this group of culturally diverse university studentsUniversity students were provided beforehand. The interview findings revealed that not just the primary school students can be benefited from the activities provided by the university studentsUniversity students, but the inter-group cultural exchange between the university studentsUniversity students themselves also contribute significantly to their mutual understanding and cooperation. It is recommended that service learningService learning can be adopted not just for cross-age service learningService learning participants, but it is also beneficial for cross-cultural understanding of a diversified service delivery group.