In the final week of the 2025 Summer Impact Fellowship Program, the four fellows, Samara Anand, Scarlett Gannon, Julia Hornmark, and Anaya Dadlani not only learned effective communication and pitching skills, but they were also exposed to the ethnically diverse communities and businesses in Hong Kong through their placement with Foundation for Shared Impact (FSI), and enjoyed an art healing session at Gowld Art Centre.
Read on to learn more about yet another fulfilling week for our Summer Impact Fellows, whose eagerness to apply their learning to socially impactful initiatives never ceases to amaze us!
Connect & Convince: Effective Communication and Pitching for Social Impact
Like in the three previous weeks, the final week of the program kicked off with a workshop. At the “Connect & Convince: Effective Communication and Pitching for Social Impact” workshop, the four fellows learned the principles of effective communication (e.g., active listening, clear articulation, constructive feedback), explored different modes of communication, and learned to develop strategies for effective communication, especially within professional settings.
Amongst the forms of communication shared with the fellows was pitching, which is typically used by entrepreneurs and social impact leaders to effectively convey and sell a message to an audience of prospective clients, funders, or partners.
Equipped with the skills to turn socially impactful ideas into compelling pitches, the fellows reframed the “10 worst ideas ever” they came up with at the previous week’s Design Thinking workshop into viable solutions and crafted a business pitch to present the ideas. They then delivered the pitches and responded to questions from Veleda Tam, FSI’s Youth Empowerment Program Manager, Adnan “Dani” Riaz, FSI’s Community Business Support Assistant, and the other fellows in the Q&A session.
The fellows also learned the skills and mindset required of an effective interviewer, such as active listening, posing open-ended questions, and establishing a respectful engagement with their interviewees. Here, Dani shared his experience in interviewing ethnically diverse entrepreneurs for Project GuideFong’s “Meet the Entrepreneurs” interview series to prepare the fellows for an upcoming activity.
Engaging with HK’s Ethnically Diverse Communities through GuideFong
Through their placement with FSI, the fellows were introduced to FSI’s Project GuideFong, which serves as a bridge between small businesses and the local community, allowing the public to explore and engage with not just the businesses but also the ethnically diverse entrepreneurs behind the scenes.
Joining a GuideFong outreach activity led by Dani, the fellows had the opportunity to engage with Hong Kong’s community of ethnically diverse entrepreneurs and business owners in the Yau Ma Tei and Jordan areas. Having determined each other’s roles as team leader, interviewer, social media lead, and vlogging person, the fellows leveraged their newly gained interviewing skills and the GuideFong “Meet the Entrepreneurs” guidelines to interview some of the entrepreneurs about their personal stories as well as the unique aspects of their businesses. Their experience will be turned into a vlog and published on GuideFong’s Instagram page, so stay tuned!
Back at FSI’s office, Julia led the effort to verify business listings on the GuideFong Directory, Hong Kong’s first-ever online directory dedicated to ethnically diverse businesses, to ensure all the information provided by the business owners and volunteers is correct and up to date.
Said Julia Hornmark: “This week, I learned the importance of communication. When pitching at the workshop, I learned how to communicate in an effective manner and respond to questions, especially under time pressure. At the GuideFong outreach, when we were practising interviewing an ethnically diverse business owner, I realized how important it is to ask the right questions, be patient, and that it is helpful to introduce yourself first when you are asking someone about their background.”
“One significant event that stood out this week was the pitching session on the very first day,” said Anaya Dadlani. “The Q&A part was pretty challenging. At first, I found it difficult to respond on the spot because the questions required quick thinking and a deep understanding of my pitch. However, this experience was invaluable because it pushed me to think on my feet and clarify my ideas under pressure. It highlighted the importance of being well-prepared but also adaptable during presentations.”
Art Healing, Podcasting, Final Project Presentation
On 6 August, the fellows were invited by Gowld Art Centre, placement host organization for the second week of this year’s Summer Impact Fellowship Program, for an Art Healing Workshop. Thoroughly enjoyed by the fellows, the workshop facilitated self-understanding through creative expression, including using coloring to express different emotions and characteristics, and encouraged the fellows to paint the portraits of each other using these colors and symbols.
To capture their fellowship experiences while making real-life applications of their learning from the effective communication workshop, the fellows spent the week researching and developing a fun podcast. On 8 August, they were invited to The Guild Studio, owned and managed by Dani and his friends, to film the podcast.
The week concluded with the fellows presenting their Final Projects, a program initiative designed to help the fellows retain and make practical applications of their knowledge of social impact, shared impact, and the various social issues and interventions they were exposed to throughout the program. For their individual business or social impact project ideas, Julia’s and Anaya’s focused on migrant workers, Samara’s on migration and refugee support, and Scarlett’s explored the development of a tutoring business that could meet the needs of youth like herself.
Support Our Youth Empowerment Work
To quote Veleda Tam, Youth Empowerment Program Manager at FSI, week four was a “last but not least” kind of week.
“The fellows arrived on Monday, cheerful and eager to learn and get into action. They immediately impressed me and Dani during the Effective Communication and Pitching for Social Impact workshop with their ability to craft compelling business pitches from basic ideas in just 45 minutes, despite having no prior experience!”
Veleda was equally impressed by the fellows’ diligent preparation for the GuideFong outreach. “It was particularly rewarding to see the fellows quickly applying the skills they gained from our workshop on Monday in their interviews with ethnically diverse entrepreneurs during the outreach, effortlessly building rapport with warmth and confidence. It was also heartwarming to witness the bonds the fellows had developed with each other throughout these two weeks, evident in their collaborative work dynamic, laughter-filled moments, or deep discussions we shared throughout the week.”
That’s a wrap for our 2025 Summer Impact Fellowship Program! If you would like to sponsor youth for our upcoming Summer Impact Fellowship Program or support our other youth empowerment initiatives, get in touch with us at info@shared-impact.com.
