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MEET the international student at Liverpool Hope University who’s been tasked with really trying to make a difference in her adopted city.
Chloe Wong, originally from Sarawak, a state nestled in the north western corner of the Malaysian island of Borneo, is studying for a combined honours undergraduate degree in Finance & Accounting and Early Childhood at Hope.
But the 23-year-old has also just been handed a ‘Student Services Award’ - alongside a bursary of £1,000 - to assist with an exciting new venture.
The project is to act as an ambassador for ‘’.
It’s an expansion of Hope’s existing BA and MA Social Work degree offerings, where extra spaces have been created exclusively for those from under-represented communities and Global Majority groups who currently live in the Liverpool city region.
The idea is to get more people from those diverse communities employed as social workers.
And as an Ambassador for Bridging the Gap, it’s Chloe’s mission to get the message out through promotion, to work with communities who might benefit from the programme, and to ultimately help boost recruitment.
Chloe brings a wealth of experience to the role, having previously worked for three years as a preschool teacher in Malaysia and who dreams of opening her own kindergarten.
And she explains: “I’m relishing the chance to work as an Ambassador for Bridging the Gap. And I hope I can bring some of my existing skills to the role.
“I have experience of creating events in my professional life, and I want to apply that to Bridging the Gap, using them as a way to create better awareness for the project.
“From my own personal perspective, I’m also driven to want to help people - to work with them to try to improve their lives. I think that’s why I’m passionate about Bridging the Gap, because this too is a project concerned with enriching lives.
“And, in a way, I also have experience of ‘social work’. It’s something I’m involved with through my church back in Malaysia, whether it’s distributing food to homeless people or to poorer families.”
The short-term Ambassador role ends in May and will see Chloe working around seven hours per week on top of her normal degree studies.
Speaking of which, Chloe says the mix of Finance & Accounting and Early Childhood will ultimately help her manage what she hopes will be her own kindergarten business.
And she adds: “The combination of courses might sound unusual, but they actually work really well for me. It’s nice to mix the numeracy of Accounting & Finance with the article reading that comes with studying Early Childhood.”
And what are Chloe’s first impressions of Merseyside, after she first moved here in October last year?
She laughs: “People here are really nice and they’ll always make the effort to ensure I can understand what they’re saying. Being here also gives me a chance to really practice my English, too.
“But when it comes to the weather… I thought I’d be able to adapt to the cold pretty quickly - but it has perhaps taken longer than I expected. When the wind starts I feel like I’m about to blow away!”