Supporting Grassroots Businesses with Youth

The ethnically diverse entrepreneurs (ED) and grassroots businesses of Hong Kong make the city truly diverse and vibrant. However, they face diverse challenges in growing and sustaining their businesses. Through direct engagement and market research, FSI learned that they especially need more customized support in reaching out to the wider public audience (local clientele) and enhancing their digital marketing strategies.

Through our Community Business Support (CBS) Program, FSI has been actively supporting the ED entrepreneurs running small, independent shops and stores around Hong Kong to grow and scale. We do this by leveraging our extensive experience in helping 50+ businesses, working with founders and team members on building their capacity and scope, not just as businesses, but as community leaders. 

Since 2014, FSI has been dedicated to empowering Hong Kong’s youths by enhancing their soft skills, business acumen, and employability through experiential learning programs, career training, and exposure to impact entrepreneurship. In 2023, as an extension of our support services to the younger generation of the ED communities, we piloted the Community Business Internship Program (CBI Program) to nurture youths to become community leaders and business consultants to support grassroots businesses in Hong Kong. 

Tess Karl Bua, founder and owner of Ghana Locals (left most); Edasu Guener (middle) and Sarah Ha (right most), Impact Lab interns for FSI's Community Business Support and Communications and Marketing teams respectively.

Program Overview 

Our CBI Program recruits Hong Kong youths aged 16-24 from ED communities to join our team. These youths work alongside with our team to provide support to entrepreneurs and grassroots businesses, working on “micro business challenges” to help entrepreneurs solve their business problems while simultaneously gaining practical insights into the operations and complexities of running a business. 

Program Objectives 

• Educate youths about entrepreneurship and develop their business acumen and transferable hard and soft skills for long-term career growth.

• Help ED-led grassroots businesses overcome challenges and expand their reach to attract customers from all communities in Hong Kong, promoting social inclusion and harmony.

Impact Summary

Through FSI's 2023 CBI Program, five grassroots business, including Al-Baick Fast Food, Al-Baick Bakery, Ghana Locals, Chakwal International Hair Salon, Malik The Tailor, and Paul's Kitchen, were supported with five projects, resulting in tangible deliverables such as various designs for social media posts, logos, menu, price lists, customer order forms, business cards and leaflets, as well as the generation of social media content, and proposals for digital marketing and rebranding.

The youth interns provided 10 hours of direct engagement and consultations along with the CBS team to the businesses through site-visits, and dedicated a total of 120 hours of direct business support from September to October 2023.

The program received positive evaluations from the interns, stakeholders, and the entrepreneurs and business owners we support. 

ED Business Owners/Entrepreneurs:

• 80% expressed satisfaction with the engagement and the output delivered by FSI and the interns.

Youth Interns:

• 82% of the interns rated their internship experience as highly beneficial to gaining new skills and knowledge.

• 86% of the interns found the internship experience to be highly relevant to their career development.

• 96% of the interns believed that their work had a significant impact on the community and social inclusion of ED businesses in Hong Kong.

Read the case stories on Ghana Locals, Chakwal International Hair Salon, Paul's Kitchen, Malik The Tailor, Al-Baick Fast Food and Al-Baick Bakery to learn more about how FSI is empowering Hong Kong youth to support grassroots businesses while equipping themselves with transferable skills!