After HA2001 builds the foundations, self-awareness, teamwork, and negotiation, HA2002 asks Honours Academy (HA) students to apply them where leadership matters most: in real communities, with real stakeholders, and real constraints.

Delivered in partnership with the Hong Kong Children & Youth Services (HKCYS) Jockey Club Heng On Integrated Children & Youth Services Centre, the module develops HA students into service leaders and social innovators through community-based learning.

A key pillar of the course is the service-learning training led by Dr Janice Wong, Associate Head of Honours Academy and Lecturer in the School of Communication. Seasoned in designing and executing service-learning initiatives, Dr Wong equipped students with the practical discipline behind meaningful service: ethical engagement, needs-based design, and deliverable project planning.

Start with people, not assumptions

The module’s starting point is direct engagement with three groups of service users served by HKCYS: children, teenagers, and parents. Meeting these patrons anchors students in lived realities, different pressures, different priorities, and different definitions of “support”. Just as importantly, it trains our HA students to replace assumptions with evidence.

From insight to proposals—and a pathway to implementation

With input on service learning, proposal crafting, and storytelling, interdisciplinary teams develop service proposals that are clear, feasible, and user-centred. Projects that demonstrate strong need alignment, feasibility, and clear value to service users may move forward to implementation in the community. For students, that possibility changes everything: it raises the standard from “sounds good” to “works well”, and from “my idea” to “our responsibility.”

HA2002 is where HA students learn a core truth about leadership: impact is not measured by intention, but by whether the people you aim to serve actually feel served.