Hong Kong FAB Meetup vol.02 Report

FabCafe Hong Kong hosted the second FAB Meetup “Ageing population in Hong Kong” on 26 Mar. We invited two speakers to share their business stories on how they support the ageing population in Hong Kong and their sharings were very inspiring and insightful. This was also our first time to do a YouTube live stream for FAB Meetup and we are planning to do more live streams for our future events.

FAB Meetup vol.02 Theme: Ageing Population in Hong Kong

According to the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, the number of elderly people in Hong Kong with the age 65 or older will reach 2.58 million by 2064, which will be around 36 percent of the total population. With the rapid increase of ageing population, there are great demands for social security, healthcare and elderly services. There is a stronger need to enhance the quality of life for the elderly.

For our second FAB Meetup at FabCafe Hong Kong, we invited Emily Tang from Studio Doozy to share how they provide better living quality for elderly in Hong Kong, and Zip Cheung from OHH Dear Communications to share how the senior model agency could promote active ageing. 

Harvey also presented the research project “Transformation: A Foundational Study on Ageing in Japan and China” that Loftwork conducted in 2016. It was a field research project about ageing population held in Tokyo, Yoshino and Chengdu. In the project, Loftwork interviewed 170 participants from age 54 to 101 in Japan and China, aiming to explore the lifestyles and attitudes of ageing for those interviewees.

They collected a lot of qualitative data from the participants such as their feelings towards death or relationships in their age. Harvey believed that both quantitative and qualitative data are important and valuable to any innovative projects.

Emily then introduced what Studio Doozy is doing to support ageing population. Studio Doozy has three main initiatives, which include running a design consultancy, designing healthcare products for their own product line and to do volunteering works in Hong Kong.

Studio Doozy was started as a design consultancy and they are hosting different design workshops like user engagement workshops for entities and organizations, which they focus on elderly’s health care and lifestyle. As a product design studio, Studio Doozy has designed 3 bathroom products in order to provide a safer environment for the elderly. Volunteering is also a big part of Studio Doozy, as they collaborate with organizations to join volunteering events and hang out with the elderly.

Emily emphasized that in order to provide a high quality life for the elderly, it is important for them to find the purpose of life. Providing more time and attention to the eldery could help them to find their purposes in life, and this is always the mission of Studio Doozy.

Zip founded OHH Dear Communications in 2016, which is a modeling and marketing agency with senior models and talents. Inspired by a photographer who took snapshots of the elderly, Zip was looking for the opportunity to bring “silver-aged” models to Hong Kong, and at the same time to promote active ageing by forming a social enterprise.

OHH Dear Communications has already participated in more than 200 advertising campaigns, in which their senior models are not volunteering but they are working as freelance models of photos or TV commercials shooting. Zip said that the models did not have any modeling experience before. Being a senior model has been a very new and exciting experience for them. 

The next step of OHH Dear Communications is to focus on the online platform which provides information like health, lifestyle and inspiring stories that target the elderly.

The last part of the meetup was a 30 minutes Q&A session. Regarding the opportunities of senior models in Hong Kong, Zip shared that more products and brands are looking for senior models in advertisements because of the stronger consuming power of the ageing population. The elderly market is actually really big and worth exploring. In terms of the government support in Hong Kong, both Zip and Emily believed there are more funding provided for startups and the design industry. But in order to support the ageing population, long term plannings and subsidies are needed for the future decades. 

FabCafe Hong Kong was honored to have both Emily and Zip to share their inspiring stories. We are going to host more FAB Meetups to discuss different social issues in the future and we will do online live streams as well. Stay tuned for our next meetup!

Click here to watch the full recording of the meetup on Youtube. And here for the photo highlights of the meetup.