"In a society that encourages silence to avoid losing everything, always remember: you are not alone, and there are always more than just two options available to you."
About Hear the Children
The Intiative
Hear the Children aims to develop clear, practical resources for children and teenagers in Hong Kong who may not feel safe at home. We focus on using simple, direct language instead of legal jargon to explain what abuse is, how to recognise it, and what options exist both inside and outside of school.
Youth Guide
An upcoming resource intended to help minors understand what is happening to them and what they can do, without automatically putting their schooling or daily life at risk. The guide will explain how to tell if a situation is serious enough to count as abuse or neglect, and identify who you can safely talk to outside of school, such as NGOs, hotlines, youth‑friendly lawyers, and other confidential services.
Accessibility
All of our materials are designed so that young people themselves can understand their rights, find safe people and services to talk to, and seek help without unnecessarily derailing their education or their daily lives.
Katherine
Wong
17‑year‑old secondary school student studying in Hong Kong
About the Founder
"No child should be placed in the position of assembling an evidentiary dossier about their own abuse and submitting it to their school."
Hear the Children was founded by Katherine Wong, a 17‑year‑old student at The Harbour School in Hong Kong, in direct response to her own experience of abuse and systemic failure. Growing up, Katherine lived in a home where suicide pacts were discussed and contemplated, yet no effective intervention ever materialised.
The institutions that were supposed to protect her and her younger sister; still under sixteen, either minimised or ignored what was happening. Only when Katherine, still a minor, assembled a full, evidence‑based dossier detailing the abuse and its legal implications did schools and other institutions begin to take her situation seriously.
Through her own case, Katherine also saw how little practical knowledge and language children are given to recognise abuse or assert their rights. Child abuse education is nowhere near as visible or inevitable in Hong Kong schools as drug education or sex education, despite its prevalence and severity. Many children do not have the legal literacy or safe, humane reporting pathways they need.
With an already burdened triage system, even well‑intentioned laws like the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance risk driving more cases into structures that are not equipped to respond quickly or safely. Hear the Children exists to confront these realities from a youth‑led, survivor‑informed perspective, focusing on school‑based awareness and more realistic, compassionate reporting options for minors.
Katherine founded Hear the Children on a non‑negotiable premise. No child should have to compile legal evidence of their own abuse to be believed, and no child should be forced to choose between silence and the destruction of their life in order to be protected.