Dear friends, this week is an important one for the project. Early this week, we uploaded the last of the titles to our website, YouTube and SoundCloud. Though the writing and editing of the titles had finished in June 2020, it took this time to process them into video, audio and pdf and upload and label them.

You might wonder. who is the person in charge of all this website and online platform work? It is my greatest pleasure to introduce to you our volunteer Ms Manasi Thapa who has handled this operation starting from the first video in June 2020.  

Manasi joined us early and helped us identify story themes that would be of interest to the Non-Chinese Speaking student in Hong Kong. As we understood more about the CC 4.0 License, Manasi prepared the contracts and wrote the CC 4.0 Attribution for each of the titles that we then used online and in print. 

When HBL started, Manasi was in a full-time job in New Delhi, India. In that most difficult period for us when everything was new, Manasi very generously found us the time to get the project going. Initially, we did not have the video generator built that now allows us to automate the creation of the videos from the images and panels.  Manasi had to learn how to use video editing software and painstakingly assembled each title into a video.  

We released titles at the rate of 2 stories a week in addition to lessons and outreach activities. A remarkable effort was put in initially by Eunice and then by Joanne to coordinate diverse parties in creating these resources. Throughout the project’s lifetime, Manasi helped finish up and bring the materials to the users. 

Manasi is not a Cantonese speaker or learner. She accepted to help me when I reached out to her and helped conclude this phase of the project. This is in my opinion a laudable level of service and dedication shown by a non-Chinese towards the project. 

It has been such a privilege for me to play a role in delivering to the public at large a comprehensive collection of Cantonese learning resources. What I deeply cherish are the friendships and associations that I formed during this time and how they have helped me deeply appreciate and personally grow the “can do” spirit that our volunteer friends so generously demonstrated.

By Viveik Saigal