ASHK Members’ Culinary Tour: Dignity Kitchen – A Challenging Culinary Journey
VIEW EVENT DETAILS12:30pm Registration at Dignity Kitchen
12:45pm Start of guided tour of Dignity Kitchen
13:15pm Q&A with Founder of Dignity Kitchen
1:30pm Start of CNY Lo Hei
1:45pm Lunch at Dignity Kitchen (at your own cost)
To restore dignity to the disabled and disadvantaged through vacation with passion
- Business Philosophy of Dignity Kitchen
Started in 2010 in Singapore with the aim to restore dignity to the disabled and disadvantaged by providing them with an employment, Dignity Kitchen (a food court selling Singapore/Malaysia cuisine) open doors in Mong Kok a month ago. The founder, Mr. Koh Seng Choon, believes his success in Singapore of training the unemployed adults with special needs and then followed by getting them jobs in the F&B sector can be replicate in Hong Kong to help this group of underprivileged.
During this tour, you will be guided through the various stalls to demonstrate how the disabled or disadvantaged can prepare the food with the help of the specially designed equipment and training in the kitchen. The food includes claypot rice, chicken rice, laksa, bar chor mee, nasi lemak, coffee and tea, pandan cake, etc.
Seng Choon will be there personally to share with you the problems he faced in setting up this social enterprise during these challenging times. Afterwhich, you can enjoy the Chinese New Year Celebratory dish – Lo Hei, specially prepared by the Dignity Kitchen for our members to have a taste of this unique salad toss from Singapore and Malaysia. Feel free to stay on at Dignity Kitchen to support their philosophy by having your lunch there!
Read more about Dignity Kitchen here.
About Dignity Kitchen
Dignity Kitchen is Singapore’s first hawker training school for disabled and disadvantaged people and also the first food court in the world to attain the ISO 22000 certificate for food safety management. Dignity Kitchen’s mission is to change society’s perceptions towards the less fortunate, and restore dignity to them through vocational training.
After 10 years of operations in Singapore, they have successfully trained and placed over 800 individuals in the F&B and retail sectors. And also provided over 80,000 free lunches to the elderly from the nursing homes.
They hope to achieve the same success in Hong Kong and would need the help of the Hong Kong community to join them in this feat.
About Koh Seng Choon
Seng Choon grew up in Singapore before earning advanced degrees in business and international studies overseas. Despite coming from a humble background, Seng Choon achieved success in Singapore with his own consultancy business in the mid-90s by helping SMEs to break into foreign markets.
At the same time, he gave back to the community by conducting entrepreneurship classes for prison inmates. Seeing the plight of those in abject poverty, he felt there was a more sustainable way to solve this problem besides donating time and money.
A full-fledged foodie (like most Singaporeans), Seng Choondecided to merge his love for food with a poverty-fighting business model. Project Dignity, one of Singapore’s early social enterprises, began operations with its first initiative, Dignity Kitchen™ with only 2 persons.
10 years on, the social enterprise has now grown to a 56-strong team of full time staff in Singapore, 60% of whom are from marginalized communities. And now he brought Dignity Kitchen to Hong Kong.
Event Details
Meeting Point: Dignity Kitchen, 618 Shanghai Street, Level 2, Mong Kok, Kowloon