The Seal of Love director on the life changes that led her to dedicate herself to educating disadvantaged children, empowering women and promoting mental health
In the What Matters To Me series, a Generation T honouree describes what they do, why they do it, and why it matters.
Former New York investment banker Dee Dee Chan’s entire outlook changed after the 2008 financial crisis. “I saw how the web we wove as an industry brought down the global economy,” Chan says. “It made me think, ‘Is this what I want to be doing forever?’” Chan worked in finance for six years, but her family’s roots are in the hotel industry: her grandfather Chan Chak-fu built one of the first five-star hotels in Hong Kong—the now-closed Ambassador—as well as The Park Lane Hong Kong in Causeway Bay.
However, the financial crash sparked an internal reckoning for the family. “Is [our focus] just to keep making money?” Chan recalls asking. That’s when Seal of Love was born, founded by Chan and her father Lawrence Chan. The foundation, which has been running for 12 years, supports underprivileged people in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, with a focus on education.
We wanted Seal of Love to focus on education, which is the great equaliser. You can be born into challenging circumstances but with education you can still lift up yourself, your family and your entire village. We give degree scholarships to people in developing countries, so they can earn multiples of what they otherwise would. We partnered with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to create a global health programme. Undergraduate students think of solutions using tech and design to solve health problems around the world, such as ways to sanitise rainwater cheaply in places without running water.
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Covid-19 threw a wrench into everyone’s plans—including ours, because a lot of our outreach relies on travelling with volunteers and in-person contact. So it was initially hard to figure out how to help. In the end, we focused on immediate relief, such as food packs, sanitisers, Sim cards and used iPads for kids studying at home.