Final year students at Hong Kong's City University embrace Animals Asia programme
A group of students at Hong Kong's City University Community College chose Animals Asia's Moon Bear Rescue programme as the theme for their final year project.
The project, named “Be Rare, Be Aware”, involved presentations to inform fellow students of the plight of moon bears on Chinese bear farms, and a T-shirt design workshop in which students had the opportunity to express their feelings on the subject through graphic design.
The project was organised by students Bennett Chan, Hidy Chan, Karen Choi and Scarlett Cheung, final year students on the Associate of Arts in English for Professional Communication course at the Division of Language Studies. As an introduction, Animals Asia's animal welfare director, Mark Jones, gave a presentation on the Moon Bear Rescue to around 20 invited students in early January. The T-shirt design workshops followed at the studio of Mark Tin Kit in Hong Kong. The event culminated in an exhibition of the designs at the City University campus on 20 February 2009, at which Jill Robinson, founder and CEO of Animals Asia, gave a presentation.
The project proved to be very successful, and although the number of students who participated was limited, those that did learned a great deal about the plight of farmed moon bears, and the workshop resulted in a collection of original, funky T-shirt designs – all with a serious message.
“We would like to thank all the artists who have participated in the T-shirt design workshop. We were overwhelmed by the efforts they put into their work. It was an honour to collaborate with each and every one of them,” said Heidi Chan.
One of the participating designers, 21-year-old student Leung Ka Hei, said Animals Asia was right to take a stand against bear farming. “We should help them to fight back, even though it is a hard struggle. That’s why I joined in,” he said.
Animals Asia was really pleased that the four students chose the Moon Bear Rescue as the theme for the "Be Rare, Be Aware" project, giving us the opportunity to spread our message to other City University students. The project and the exhibition was well organised and the response of the participating students was heartwarming. We hope that this, along with the recent Dog-Tor event represents the start of many collaborations between Animals Asia and students at Hong Kong's universities.
