In 2020 the Neighbourhood Kitchen in the Shek Tong Tsui district of Hong Kong became much more than a place for local residents living in cramped sub-divided flats to cook and bond over food.

The Neighbourhood Kitchen in Hong Kong remains Grosvenor Asia Pacific’s flagship community and social venture project. Members of the Neighbourhood Kitchen live in very low-income, subdivided units (SDUs) – substandard housing in the city often with only 10-20 sq m of living space per unit. Working with our partner Caritas, we expanded the offerings to the Kitchen’s members in 2020, focusing on health and wellbeing, and supplemental education for the members’ children. We extended our support during the most acute periods of Covid-19 to ensure that families had access to PPE and technology not normally available to SDU residents. Our Hong Kong team dedicated their time and volunteered many hours of in-person and online tutoring. We also launched an interim initiative called ’Project Social Food’ to prepare and distribute hot meals to members in need.

We plan to scale up the current Neighbourhood Kitchen offering to include a school lunch programme and additional extra-curricular activities, eventually developing similar offerings in other lowincome neighbourhoods of Hong Kong. Our vision is for the Neighbourhood Kitchen and other future initiatives to become self-sustaining social ventures that foster job opportunities at the grassroots level, promoting social mobility, employability, and longterm health benefits in underserved communities.