Meet Angels For Children’s Head Angel, Wendy Cramond

“To the world, you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world,” That’s the motto for Hong Kong-based children’s charity, Angels For Children, who support poverty stricken children across Hong Kong and Asia. 

Founder Helen Whitman first sponsored a child at Sunrise Cambodia, a charity that focuses on Cambodia’s most vulnerable children. This inspired her journey into charity work, hosting ‘Pay For Your Plate’ dinner parties with friends to raise funds for children in need. She started her own philanthropic network, Angels For Children, supporting children across Hong Kong and Asia in 2006, which officially became a registered charity three years later. 

They now work with three more partner charities to help children on the poverty line, including Po Leung Kuk, a residential children’s home in Causeway Bay, Bali Kids, a centre that caters to children living with HIV/AIDS and The Society for Community Organisation. 

Read more: Join us at the Hong Kong Living Christmas Charity Lunch

“Hong Kong, like most major cities, is a place of ‘haves and have nots’ but few places  in the world with such a wide wealth gap,” says Wendy Cramond, Chief Angel at Angels For Children. Since the pandemic, poverty in the city reportedly doubled with the number of families requesting help from Soco almost trebling to 4,000 this year. 

“Children living in low-income households generally face health, social and educational disadvantages. Under-privileged local families will undoubtedly be living in cramped and poor-quality homes, be facing a shortage of healthy meals and will struggle to provide basic school essentials,” she says.

Each Christmas, Angels For Children runs a Secret Santa fundraiser where people across Hong Kong donate presents to the 217 children residing in Po Leung Kuk, along with toys and school supplies for Soco families. Po Leung Kuk children identify the present they would like the most, which supporters can then buy and donate from a list on the Angel’s website. For many of the children, this will be the only present they receive for the year. “We feel this engages our supporters and helps them have important conversations about giving with their own families as well as (very importantly) putting a smile on the faces of the PLK children,” says Cramond. 

People can donate gifts and funds up until December 31 on the charity’s website. 

Over the next year, Angels For Children plans to focus its fundraising efforts on PLK’s extracurricular activities programme and an English booster programme for children attending SOCO’s centres. They also hope to start a Wellness day which will include HIIT, Zumba and Yoga classes and rerun their popular ‘Active Angels Move-A-Thon’ to raise funds.