Impact Lab Course Empowering Hong Kong Youth to Manage Risks and Learn from Failure

Hong Kong has a mental ill-health issue, especially among youth. In the year 2023, 24.4% of children and adolescents in Hong Kong were affected by at least one mental health issue. Of the city’s secondary school students, 20% have symptoms of anxiety and depression. With 1.6% of secondary school students having attempted suicide, Hong Kong has among the highest youth suicide rates in the developed world. 

While there are various causes of mental ill-health, social workers offering mental wellness services to students have found that more than half of the students judge their academic performances harshly. This socially prescribed perfectionism – perceived social pressures and expectations to be perfect – doesn’t just lead to mental ill-health but a fear of failure, which prevents individuals from stepping out of their comfort zone to creatively problem-solve, collaborate with others, and learn through experiments and failures. 

Impact Lab: Learn from Failures in a Safe Environment

Foundation for Shared Impact (FSI)’s Impact Lab Course was founded in 2013 to change that. As a credit-bearing experiential-learning course at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), Impact Lab offers youth a safe environment to fail and learn from their failures, while giving them the opportunity to acquire essential human and workplace skills such as leadership, communication, collaboration, analytical thinking, problem solving etc. 

In addition to a three-month internship placement with social impact organizations in Hong Kong, Impact Lab Course’s student interns also attend in-person seminars designed to equip them with the skills, knowledge, and mentality to become tomorrow’s social impact entrepreneurs or leaders. 

On 21 October, the Fall 2024 cohort gathered again for the second seminar, on Risk Management and Learning from Failure. 

The 101 on Risk Management

The seminar was started by Lucia Loposova, FSI’s Education Manager and Impact Lab Course’s Teaching Assistant, who invited students to share what they thought were the main causes of startup failures. She then shared the actual reasons that startups fail, including founder burnout, disharmony among team members, mistimed products, pricing and cost issues, regulatory and legal challenges, flawed business models, as well as failure to raise capital. 

“In Hong Kong, common reasons for startup failures are high costs, lack of funding, insufficient human capital with relevant expertise, and a cultural resistance to innovation,” said Lucia. 

Adriel Heng, an Impact Lab Course intern working with FSI’s Community Business Support team, agreed: “I had a social enterprise that aimed to minimize food waste by upcycling low-quality fruits to smoothies. But because of high costs, lack of financial support, and lack of human capital, I had to shut down the organization. 

“For example, I had to run the organization with my own savings, which wouldn’t be financially sustainable in the long term. Also, our team was not diverse enough, lacking the relevant skills necessary to run the organization. With most of the team members being between the ages of 14 and 16 years, they found it easier to follow instructions instead of leading initiatives. From this experience, I learned that finding the right people for your team is one of the priorities. You’ll need to have people who are equally motivated and specializing in different skill-sets to really succeed.” 

Brainstorming Risk Management and Mitigation Solutions 

In the next session, David Bishop, instructor of the Impact Lab Course and Associate Professor of Teaching at HKU, shared several case studies of failed businesses involving Evergreen, Social Impact Public Offering, and Polaris Tools – all social impact businesses or projects with a mission to tackle social and environmental issues.  

Based on his experiences in running and supporting multiple social impact businesses, David shared the five steps of risk management: risk identification, analysis, evaluation, mitigation, and monitoring and reporting. 

What followed was a breakout discussion session, where Impact Lab Course interns formed groups to identify the reasons for failure and discuss possible risk management strategies for the social impact businesses mentioned in the case studies. 

“It was a very informational seminar,” said Julie Wang, an exchange student at HKU. “I learned a lot about why and how businesses fail. I can implement the learning to my current activities at the HKU’s Suen Chi Sun Hall, where I am a sustainability intern. My favorite part of the seminar is definitely hearing the whole story of Polaris. It’s just crazy how this project could have potentially impacted  so many people, but because of real-life issues, that didn’t happen.” 

Do you want to work with us to empower today’s youth into tomorrow’s leaders? Reach out to us to discuss further!