The Welcome Party x Halloween Night

About the Event

Written by Michelle CHAN (FS2014-15, The University of Hong Kong)

The Welcome Party x Halloween Night was successfully held on 28 October 2017 (Saturday) from 6:00p.m. to 9:00p.m at a local Pub,Twister. This event is the second ever welcome party organised by the Fung Scholars Hong Kong Chapter and is the first of its kind to incorporate a Halloween theme. The Halloween theme is well-received and we are delighted to hear that the participants enjoyed dressing up and appreciated our efforts put in the Halloween decorations, accessories and ice-breaking games.

The event is the second welcome party Fung Scholars Hong Kong Chapter has ever organised for Fung Scholars who just return from their exchange studies. The first welcome party was held in January this year for Fung Scholars of the year 2016-17 who returned from their fall-semester exchange. But this event is the first of its kind to incorporate a theme.

The Halloween theme is a selling point of this event. We were excited to see that some of the participants put a lot of effort in dressing up. Halloween decorations at the venue and accessories distributed to participants created a festive and fun atmosphere. The temporary tattoo booth also made the event more engaging and memorable. The booth gathered different Fung Scholars together when the Organising Committee members put the temporary tattoo stickers for them. This created an occasion for Fung Scholars to interact with each other.

We were happy to see many new faces at the event. Apart from new Fung Scholars belonging to the years of 2016-17 and 2017-18, a number of attendees were Fung Scholars that have not participated in previous Fung Scholars activities except the pre-departure gathering. We were also delighted to see that participants naturally organised themselves into small groups and talked with each other. We recognised that some new Fung Scholars were quite shy at the beginning. Therefore, the Organising Committee members took the initiative to talk to new comers to make them feel more comfortable. We also introduced them to other groups so as to include them in conversations with existing members.

To allow participants to understand more about the Fung Scholars network, we invited Ms. Tammy Lam, a staff member of the Victor & William Fung Foundation, to conduct a sharing. With the assistance of PowerPoint slides through one of the TVs at the bar, Tammy shared with us the goals and objectives of Fung Scholars, as well as past and upcoming activities. We especially reminded the participants that we would be organising a Christmas Party in mid-December, which is one of the biggest annual events of the Fung Scholars Hong Kong Chapter, and asked them to pencil down on their diary.

However, we had hoped that more Fung Scholars of 2016-17 would join our event as after all our event is a welcome party for them. They only made up of almost a quarter of the participants. Overall, we believe we have attained the objectives of our event. We are confident that our event has made the participants realise the vast possibilities of this great network and the participants will continue to participate in future Fung Scholars events.