Ng Wei Chit

KELY Social Circus Trainer

"You have to persist and keep working hard. If not for KELY, I wouldn't have been able to work with so many young people and discover the career path I'm on today."

I was a pretty quiet kid. I didn't have a lot of friends and I was kind of a loner. I didn't do very well in school. In hindsight, I think I had dyslexia, but we didn't really know anything about it back then, so people just thought I was lazy. By Form 4, I had dropped out of school. Since I had decided school wasn't for me, the school social worker helped me find a job. My parents and teachers were all of the mindset that if school wasn't for me, then I didn't need to waste time and money on education while I could be out earning a living.

Without a proper education, I could only get low-skilled jobs, working in restaurants and the like.

When I was 17, I applied for a job as a programe assistant at KELY as a social circus trainer. The job was offered as part of the Labour Department's youth employment programme, where they would fund 50% of my salary for the first three months to incentivise employers to provide on-the-job training to young people like me. Back then, my salary was only HK$5,000! That was a long time ago.

I had never heard of KELY before applying, I just needed a job, and I picked up circus skills pretty quickly. I went to secondary schools all over Hong Kong assisting my supervisor in teaching young people circus skills like juggling and plate spinning. In some workshops, the students were my age or older, which felt kind of awkward at first, but my supervisor taught me how to own my role as the trainer. After a few months, I was able to lead some classes on my own.

It's pretty amazing to see how someone like me, who was doing these unskilled jobs, could eventually become a trainer. My confidence really grew during my time with KELY. I discovered that I had skills and that I could use those skills to earn an income. Besides leading circus workshops, I also run a business selling various props and I teach leatherwork. I like to be creative. I'm thankful for that supervisor who hired me and gave me the opportunity to become who I am today.