RCHK students making wishes come true

By Harsha Madhu

A team of over thirty Year 10 to Year 13 students from RCHK and KGV have collaborated in a joint effort to start an organisation named Wish Come True. The organisation is dedicated to helping minorities and underprivileged children across the world realise wishes they otherwise would have deemed impossible to achieve. 

Wish Comes True is an initiative built upon the notion of sparking passion and joy in children across the world, and allowing them to experience their dreams and realise their potentials. Their platform connects NGOs to volunteers through their website and creates opportunities for people where there were previously none. 

One of the founders of Wish Come True, Arnav Kithania,  says that this initiative was inspired by a similar organisation in India which he had volunteered for called Gurukool Kids. This organisation asked children to make wishes which volunteers would then aim to fulfill.

Kithania explains, “These wishes were for such little things, which to most people would come across as relatively insignificant or trivial, and were things which we could effortlessly access in abundance. A pen which may hold little to no materialistic value to you may be of immense value to another; illustrating the stark disparity of wealth in our population.”

The wishes being fulfilled not only fulfilled the wishes of children but also brought them hopes and dreams of furthering their passions. Wishes Come True stems from that same desire - to connect that hope to more people. 

Since the organisation in India would not have a substantial impact in Hong Kong, the WCT Team brought this vision here. 

Due to the large scale of this project, the initial planning stages lasted for over eight months. Their team consists of three departments: communications and logistics, coding, and marketing. 

Since the launch of their web-site in November, they have successfully connected various schools in Hong Kong and have been able to bring many wishes to life. Wishes Come True is a project that the team hopes can be sustained through different generations of students. 

Because their vision is on such a large scale, the founders of WCT believed that it was impossible to execute with the support of only one school. This led to the project becoming inter-school, with students' joint efforts from both RCHK and KGV. In the future, the team hopes to spread its organisation and create branches in more schools to expand their reach. Their next steps are to seek funding from different businesses or foundations to make a more considerable impact with more resources.

Even after their launch, Wish Comes True  is still currently in the early starting phases and will require much more time to expand and reach a wider audience. This project has overcome many hurdles to operate, primarily due to communication with the NGOs and ensuring that wishes submitted were feasible and fulfillable by their team. 

The team has received encouragement from several NGO’s. Melody Lam of World Vision responded positively to their proposal : "We can feel your passion for supporting vulnerable groups in Hong Kong. It'd be our pleasure to provide help for your project." 

Joyce Cheng from Feeding HK was equally impressed: "It is amazing and I believe this would make a difference for the minority groups in Hong Kong."

Kithania wishes to inspire others also to start their organisations and act upon their initiatives as well. He says, “Despite having a stacked schedule, creating a project is possible if you have a driving factor. Every individual, provided their passion and will is strong enough, has the potential to instill change in society.”