Participants were making Florida Key Lime Tart.
 

When it’s done, participants were so excited and can’t wait to take a picture with their “master-piece”
 

Other than Florida Lime Tart, one class of participants learned how to make “Warm my Heart with Chocolate Cake”
 

We hope you had a great time in the dessert making class
 

Ah Chung is like a gust of wind; her slightly hoarse voice often precedes her arrival. She is a fast speaker, coming across as straightforward and decisive, like some heroine figure in a story.

Character is inborn and revealed at a very young age. Ah Chung is now 63 years old and has always been very opinionated. She left secondary school after reaching Form 4 and became a nursing assistant in a clinic. Whenever she felt aggrieved at work, she would always complain to her mother about it and threaten to resign the next day. But her mother would always advise her to be tolerant because she was paid for her troubles. On hearing this, Ah Chung would find it hard not to refute it with, "My boss does not give me a wage for nothing. I put in the hard work too in exchange for a just reward. It is a fair deal."

One time, a colleague needed to take sick leave but was asked by the boss to offset it with annual leave. Ah Chung thought it was unfair and used the Employment Ordinance to reason with the employer. When asked how she knew about such arguments, she replied, "I am not good with books but I do like to take different external courses, and my knowledge has accumulated in this way." But knowledge alone does not translate into courage to fight for rights. It seems that Ah Chung has an inborn sensitivity to issues of fairness and justice.

Despite her fortitude, Ah Chung was forced to give up her career to care for her family like many other women in Hong Kong. "At the time, my mother had just passed away, my father was elderly, and my daughter was only three. My husband saw that I was under a lot of work pressure and persuaded me to leave my job. He said he was willing to support the family on his own." And so it was that Ah Chung settled into the role of housewife for 10 years. She had planned to return to work part-time once her daughter entered secondary school but found it difficult to re-enter the job market.

I would get through the interview and even reach agreement on hiring terms, but then the boss would see my age on the application form and change his mind. He would say 'we don't hire people over 40'." At middle age, Ah Chung has qualifications, experience and life exposures, but she has yet to overcome the social barrier of age discrimination in the job market.

Despite the many rejections, Ah Chung did not mind too much. After all, it was not as if she needed the money to feed the family. Hence, she was completely unprepared for her husband's sudden suggestion for a divorce in 2001 when he had previously vowed to be the financial pillar of the family. Close to 60 years old then and worried that she could not afford the huge legal fees, Ah Chung gave up her litigation and her right to seek alimony. She was more concerned about how she and her daughter would survive from then on. "I have never been too concerned with money, but I have never imagined that I would need to worry about money in my old age."
 

Just when she was at a loss on what to do, she took part by chance in a photocopying workshop jointly organized by the Women Workers' Association and the Students Union of the Chinese University. She came across the concept of a "co-operative" for the first time and found its emphasis on fairness, openness and collective decision-making very meaningful. Around that time, the Women Workers' Association was planning to use the co-operative concept to set up a tuck shop in the university. Ah Chung began fundraising with a few sisters and became a core worker in the "Women Workers' Co-operative". After countless rounds of collective planning, discussing, experimenting and implementing, the tuck shop had repaid all its debt after three years of operation and has now become profitable.

The shop opens six days a week from 8 in the morning to 11 at night, providing delicious snacks to students. It not only enables women like Ah Chung, excluded from the mainstream job market, to make a living but more importantly, it helps to consolidate and build the social power of women. For example, the tuck shop displays pamphlets on the status of women as well as women's craftwork put on sale there by community groups. It is hoped that such public education would help raise the awareness of women's issues amongst student and arouse their concerns, and that they would take individual actions to help marginalized groups.

Ah Chung admits candidly that she has mellowed as she matures, and her self-confidence has grown steadily. "This is the biggest change in me since I joined the Women Workers' Cooperative." In reality, Ah Chung is still the same person with her self-confidence and her insistence on fairness and justice. It is just that through the co-operative, she has rediscovered abilities that have lain dormant for many years and is now able to use these to make new openings in her life.

There are 650,000 female home-makers in Hong Kong. Ah Chung was a house-maker before she joined the Women Workers' Co-operative. Home-makers take good care of their family and so family members work to earn their living. Their contribution to the economy is direct and yet not being acknowledged by society. Home-makers are not included in Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes (MPF) and they will not receive any pension after “retirement” or when they become old.

Initiatives like the Women Workers' Co-operative creates opportunity for Ah Chung and other women to earn a living. HER Fund supports and encourages the development of women's groups which share the same vision and value to us. We made grant to Women Workers' Co-operative in 2006/07 and 2007/08 for development, operation and promotion.