Back to School Again: A former District Councilor’s odyssey of knowledge in Public Policy Studies

In the face of ever-changing social challenges, the demand for public policy and public management talents soars.  Many civil servants return to school to learn more about public administration expertise. The Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM) programme at The Education University of Hong Kong provides professional policy analysis and public management training for in-service professionals, policy practitioners, and future public leaders. LO Hiu Fung, elected as a councilor in Hong Kong's Tai Po District in 2016 and has long served in the community, here to share his journey of pursuing excellence in MPPM with us.

Share your experiences of participating in social work

My father served as a District Councilor in 2004.  Under his influence, I had the opportunity to contact and participate in social work at an early age. In the volunteer organization “Tai Po Power”, I served as a volunteer secretary and actively organized various types of volunteer services to support underprivileged groups at the grassroots level.

In 2016, I was elected as the youngest councilor in Tai Po District. During my term of office, I distributed work reports and set up street stations frequently, to ensure my work in the District Council was close to the public sentiment in the community. At the same time, I have also advised on several livelihood projects. After my work as a council member, I continued to serve the community and assist the youth as a district advisor of BPA, vice chairman of the Tai Po South Sub-committee, and vice-chairman of the Tai Po Youth Association, and maintained close contact with the public through mass media. .

During the pandemic of COVID-19, I have mobilized volunteers in Tai Po to assist the government in epidemic prevention and anti-epidemic work, including packaging and distributing anti-epidemic materials; assisting in crowd-control measures on testing stations, etc.

Reasons for choosing MPPM to study further?

By immersing myself in community services, I realized that I need to strengthen my scientific and professional public management capabilities to improve the optimization of community management. Therefore,  I enrolled in the Master of Public Policy and Management at The Education University of Hong Kong at the end of my term, hoping to learn public management knowledge systematically and better equip myself to serve the community in the future.

The MPPM programme fully meets my requirement. The course is designed to cultivate students’ policy analysis skills and public management professional qualities, forge future public sector leaders, and guide me to learn more professional public management skills in policy science, management, and policy analysis. The experiential learning provided by MPPM attracts me the most: teachers lead students to learn outside the classroom, combining theory with practice to study in significant institutions. I believe that I would benefit greatly from them if I could have the opportunity to get in touch with the senior manager in experiential learning.

How does MPPM help in your work?

Currently, I hold management positions in Youth Center and Community Service, focusing on policy research, community services, and youth work.  It was a pity I could not participate in experiential learning when the Covid-19 pandemic was rampant during my studies. However, the MPPM provides a clear and solid academic foundation for policy research, which enables me to analyze its impact and effectiveness more accurately and comprehensively, and put forward feasible suggestions to achieve twice the result with half the effort. I use the solid knowledge framework established in the course to combine with the practical problems encountered at work. And think critically about the pros and cons of each plan so that I can better contribute to the improvement of the community!

Message to prospective students

The curriculum of MPPM can provide you with the best equipment to deal with the problems and challenges of society. However, knowledge must be integrated with practical experience to assure maximum effectiveness. Therefore, I suggest you pay more attention to what is happening in the community, analyzing problems from different angles and perspectives. and polish your own views.  Only in this way, we can genuinely apply what we have learned.