Child Development Matching Fund

Description

The Child Development Matching Fund ( CDMF ) was founded to address the issue of intergenerational poverty in Hong Kong and to support and complement the Child Development Fund ( CDF ) of the HKSAR Government. In 2009, the HKSAR Government established CDF for youth development with a view to alleviating intergenerational poverty. Hong Kong is a world leading financial centre. Yet, behind its affluence, the city scores 0.539 in the Gini coefficient, a measure of disparity of wealth, indicating that Hong Kong is one of the places with the biggest wealth gap. Based on a research in 2018, there are about 180,000 children, or every 1 in 5 children, under the age of 18 lives in poverty. “Inter-generational poverty” has been a deep-rooted societal issue impacting on the sustainable development of Hong Kong. It is against this background that the Government has introduced a policy through the Child Development Fund (CDF) to resolve inter-generational poverty by operating the scientific evidence-based youth development model of asset building. A group of warm-hearted community leaders responded positively to the CDF by establishing the Child Development Matching Fund ("CDMF"). CDMF is a community based charity. It encourages the society at large to actively invest time, manpower, and financial resources to enrich our next generation. It helps its beneficiary youths to build tangible and intangible assets needed for their upward mobility, hence come out of poverty.