Youth summit focuses on opportunities for HK ethnic minority youth

More than 300 ethnically diverse people aged 18 to 30 gathered on Saturday at a youth leadership Summit, which centred on prospective opportunities and challenges for ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong.

The Ethnically Diverse Youth Leadership Summit 2026 was the second edition of the summit held by the Zubin Foundation in Ngau Tau Kok.

The summit aimed to focus more on job opportunities, although much of the discussion about diverse ethnic communities centers on the negative barriers and challenges, said Shalini Mahtani, Founder and CEO of the foundation.

“We're not downplaying them, but we also wanted to focus on something like your aspirations, leadership, and future in Hong Kong,” she said.

Delivering his opening remarks as a guest speaker, Chris Sun Yuk-han, Secretary for the Labor and Welfare Bureau, said that as a policymaker, he is keen to listen to the group’s passion and concern.

Sun encouraged young minorities to overcome difficulties in their work and said it was a great opportunity for him to hear the participants' thoughts.

The summit revolves around the challenges and opportunities of the ethnically diverse community and features a debate titled “Are you optimistic or pessimistic about your future in Hong Kong?”

Arvind Singh Dhaliwal, 23, an engineering student at the University of Hong Kong, is of Indian descent and grew up in Hong Kong. He speaks some everyday Cantonese and English, and represented the opposition side in debate.

“A lot of engineering companies prefer people who can speak Mandarin, since many firms and departments are moving head to the mainland,” said Dhaliwal. “For Cantonese, I can speak enough to get by, but it is too stressful for me to speak Mandarin.”

Subha Abedin, 21, a member of the Foundation for Youth Development—a youth-led non-governmental organisation—who graduated this year, said “Language can be very important, but there are ways around it.”

“There are so many systems in Hong Kong that continue to help the ethnically diverse community,” she said. “I hope that most people see it as optimism.”

The government provides education services for non-Chinese-speaking students and integration programmes for ethnic minorities. Some NGOs also set up support service centers for them.

The Equal Opportunities Commission has issued the “Code of Practice on Employment Under the Race Discrimination Ordinance”, which helps employers eliminate racial discrimination in the workplace.

“In general, we can still address the challenges but get opportunities in correlation to those challenges,” said Dhaliwal.