Social Entrepreneur Series – Silver is the New Black [Job Training and Opportunities]

Social Entrepreneur – Zip Cheung

 

Zip Cheung, the founder of OHH Dear Communications was a journalist who specialised in featuring elderly lifestyle topics. The more she contacted the silver-hair interviewees, the more she was amazed by their vivid lives and energetic minds. "It is inspiring that ageing can be so graceful!" she exclaimed.

"Traditional Chinese are conservative about dressing; some may find wearing lipstick or colourful clothing extravagant." But Zip believes that every elderly has the right to choose and live in his/her own style and that getting well-groomed is a way for the elderly to maintain dignity and mental well-being.

To further explore the beauty of ageing, she founded the silver-hair model agency; it is also the pioneer in the Hong Kong market. She started recruiting mature talents through her network, but surprisingly there were quite a number of self-recommending candidates. "Most of them had no experience in modelling at all, yet were eager to seek new challenges," Zip said.

Zip is offering the elderly not just training and job opportunities but also a chance to build confidence and to live gracefully. Currently, all of the talents in her agency are aged over 50, the oldest being over 94. And many turn out to be great models!

 

Innovative Venture – OHH Dear Communications

The innovative venture mentioned above is funded by the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund and assisted and supported by the Fund’s intermediaries in project implementation.  The details of the innovative venture are as follows:

Name of Organisation: OHH Dear Communications Company Limited

Service nature: Job training and opportunities

Beneficiary group: Elderly

Project type: Scale-up

Intermediary Programme: Impact Incubator

 

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What is Social Entrepreneur Series?

Stories of how other social entrepreneurs aspired to start their own business might facilitate your social innovation and entrepreneurship exploration.

A series of social entrepreneur stories will be featured and categorised into six sub-series: Education and Learning, Job Training and Opportunities, Community Participation, Healthcare, Food and Transport.  What you are going to read are stories of social entrepreneurs taking forward the startup projects that help themselves and others.