Prologue Journal

The Hong Kong cafe which serves up hope for workers with disabilities

• prologu5
• 09/21/202409/21/2024

Hong Kong Free Press

Chris Brook greets customers with a smile as he takes their coffee and lunch orders. The 22-year-old moves with familiarity behind the counter, compiling receipts and punching the cash register at Museum Cafe 8, above Hong Kong’s Maritime Museum in Central. 

Brook was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was younger. He was recommended to apply for a job at the café by his alma mater, Hong Chi Morninghope School, which caters to students with intellectual disabilities. 

Museum Café 8 is a social enterprise by The Nesbitt Centre, a Hong Kong NGO dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities. The café is one of a handful of Hong Kong establishments that largely employs people diagnosed with learning disabilities, often in front-end roles where they interact with customers. 

Ng, 28, a careers adviser at Hong Chi Morninghope School, described Brook as a detail-oriented person who was always at the “top level” in academic subjects. However, there was a limit to what he could learn at school.

“[Ever since I began working], I’m much more confident,” says Brook. “I feel more independent.” 

Museum Cafe 8 has 42 staff, four of whom are able-bodied. The employees sometimes also work at The Nest, also run by the Nesbitt Centre. 

Surinder Punjya, executive director of The Nesbitt Centre, says that at the café the servers take responsibility for roles ranging from serving and seating customers to preparing coffee and food, and are the ones whom customers get to know.

“Our job is back-end. We wanted to put people with disabilities at the front end,” he says. “I wanted them to have true empowerment and run the social enterprise as much as they could.”

According to a report by the Equal Opportunities Commission, somewhere between 77,000 and 90,000 people in Hong Kong lived with intellectual disabilities in 2020. In the same year, over 80 per cent of all people with disabilities in the city aged above 15 were economically inactive.

That is almost double the percentage of people with disabilities who were out of work in the UK between October and December 2023, where about 43 per cent of those with disabilities aged 16 to 64 were economically inactive. 

Melody De Leon, a manager at Museum Cafe 8, says she puts the employees on a rota to give them regular work while ensuring it is viable as a business. 

Before taking up her current role, De Leon had no experience working with those who were neurodivergent.

“It’s very important [to have inclusive employment] for them to release their full potential,” she says.

Societal barriers and stigma

Faride Shroff, CEO and founder of Hong Kong NGO SENsational Foundation, says there is much stigma attached to disabilities in Hong Kong, which might explain why even those who get a job may not be at the forefront of a business.

“People don’t accept the disability itself. And often even parents hide away their children who have disabilities because they don’t want them to be known,” she says. 

SENsational Foundation focuses on helping businesses in Hong Kong become more inclusive in their employment. According to its website, fewer than 0.02 per cent of registered companies in Hong Kong hire people with disabilities, and fewer than a quarter of Hong Kong companies focus on disability in their inclusivity policy. 

Shroff says those who are neurodivergent also face assumptions from employers as to what they can do. “The barriers are put up by our community,” she says. “We are the ones who are stopping them from being their best selves.” 

Hong Kong’s Disability Discrimination Ordinance outlaws discrimination against people with disabilities in employment or education. Yet a lack of awareness of intellectual disabilities sometimes leads to the mislabelling of children in schools or workplaces.  

This happened to Jeffrey Joubert, now 28, when teachers at a Hong Kong school told his mother that he was lazy. Later, around the age of 10, he was diagnosed in the UK with dyslexia, autism and dyspraxia. 

An avid football enthusiast, Joubert has been working at Museum Cafe 8 since late 2019. During the interview, he had his left wrist in a brace from a sports injury. 

In addition to floor duties like waiting tables, he often talks to customers to try and ensure their comfort. Having worked in a pizzeria in the US, he has noticed that in a fast-paced city like Hong Kong, people often want things done more quickly or to be “served on a silver spoon.” 

“If [the customers] get annoyed, [I] explain to them that people have learning difficulties, help them understand that we’re doing our best, we just have learning difficulties, some more severe than others,” he says.  

Joubert’s mother, Irene Dawson, says she picked up on her son’s neurodivergence early on, when he had delays hitting his growth milestones. As a child, Joubert found it harder to understand things that seemed obvious to other children his age. 

Dawson says working at Museum Café 8 has been “great” for Joubert. 

“I think in life everyone needs to feel productive. You need to feel needed and you need to have colleagues or friends outside of your immediate family,” she says. “Having that is like there’s purpose.” 

Benefits of long-term employment

The café also helps people with disabilities to develop relationships. 

Marco von Siebenthal, who is autistic, says he is very happy in his position at Museum Cafe 8, which he has held for about four years. “I’ve enjoyed working here with some people I’ve been working with for so long,” says the 33-year-old. 

When asked about his neurodivergence, von Siebenthal says he is liked in the workplace for his attributes. “I’ve been more helpful and supportive and mindful to other people, getting a lot of people to work together as a team.”

De Leon agrees on the importance of the social aspect. “We can give [people with disabilities] a chance to interact with the customers, to develop their self-esteem. If they’re only working in the office or cleaning, there’s no interaction.” 

According to Ng from Hong Chi Morninghope School, a major challenge in seeking employment for students is that many job opportunities are offered on a short-term project basis. 

“There is not a sustainable resource that we can really rely on,” she says. “As a career team, we need to find different kinds of resources as maybe every two years all the resources or working programmes have been changed.” 

SENsational Foundation’s Shroff says there is “always more” that the government can do to promote inclusivity of people with disabilities, such as involving them in government decisions. Society, too, needs to change its approach. 

Responding to enquiries from HKFP, the government’s Social Welfare Department (SWD) said it provides one-off grants to NGOs under a scheme to promote the employment of people with disabilities by small businesses. The funding for Museum Café 8 came from a SWD seed fund, comprising HK$1.9 million, according to Punjya.

The SWD also pointed to last year’s policy address, in which Chief Executive John Lee announced a three-year pilot scheme from the third quarter of 2024 that will provide an additional subsidy of HK$500 per month to employed disabled recipients of social security assistance. This would be applicable to about 6,800 people. 

Shroff urges open-mindedness: “We need people to be aware of their abilities and not just focus on the ‘dis’ part of that word.”  

Back at the café, Joubert shakes his head dismissively when asked if his condition ever makes things difficult for him. “I’m very proud to have a disability, because I believe it makes me more unique,” he says, smiling. 

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