What brought you to Hong Kong in the 1970s?

I arrived in 1974. I was travelling through Asia as part of a research trip for my graduate studies and decided last minute to stop in Hong Kong for the weekend. Hong Kong fascinated me because it was my first time being in a city that brought together people from so many different cultures and backgrounds. I instantly fell in love with the diversity. What was meant to be a weekend layover turned into the rest of my life.

What led you to start Mother’s Choice in the 1980s?

At the time, [co-founders Gary and Helen Stephens] and my husband and I were just two young couples with ten children between us when we read a series of articles in the newspaper in 1986 about the alarming number of teen pregnancies in Hong Kong. This really tugged at our hearts, and despite not having much money, time or resources, we asked ourselves: what can we do to help? We opened Mother’s Choice in 1987 to provide loving, non-judgmental support to pregnant teenagers who had no one else to turn to. We then quickly expanded to caring for children without families and vulnerable families in our city.

How is your work a catalyst for positive social change?

Each year there are thousands of teenage girls who face a crisis pregnancy with no support. We know there is no way for a single entity to achieve large- scale change, so Mother’s Choice has engaged more than 9,000 people in our community as volunteers to step into these problems with us. Today, our workforce is more than 80 per cent volunteers. We serve the girls through our Pregnant Girls Service, hostel and comprehensive sexual education programmes. By providing accurate information about their choices and equipping them with life skills and community connections, these girls can be empowered for the future.

Where does your love for people come from? 

From my parents. I grew up in a very poor, mostly indigenous community in Taos, New Mexico. My father was a pastor, and he and my mother focused on helping vulnerable people in our small town. Even though we had very little ourselves, they were always opening our home and sharing our food and clothes. They showed kindness to people without judgment, and that has not only shaped my life, but it has also become my definition of success.

How do you believe you’ve helped destigmatise teen pregnancy in Hong Kong?

There is a lot of judgment. We help people understand how a crisis pregnancy is often the symptom of a more complex issue. The root issue behind both this and the child protection crisis in our city is social isolation. When vulnerable families are isolated and do not have a strong support network, a problem can quickly escalate into a crisis, and it’s these families who are the most at risk of neglecting, abusing or abandoning their children. Many of these children then end up in the residential care system, where they can remain for years without the love and security of a permanent family. Once they age out of the system or return to their struggling families, they are more likely to be incarcerated, have addiction issues, become homeless and, if they are a girl, face a crisis pregnancy in their teenage years. These young girls then become parents who do not have the support to care for their own children, and while our community remains unaware or ill-informed about how to respond, the cycle begins again. Every service at Mother’s Choice exists to break this vicious intergenerational cycle.