FUSIA Communications hosted a Kickoff BBQ reception at the Flushing YMCA today (Friday, June 3) from 6pm to 9pm to celebrate the launch of the 2011 Cross Cultural Internship Program (CCIP). Entitled “Saying Hello to New York City”, the event’s primary aim was to introduce the group of interns, who will be the next global generation, to the New York City community.

This is the first time that a Kickoff BBQ Session has been organized since the establishment of CCIP in 2008. While the arrival of CCIP students in New York for the past few years had been unceremonious, this new initiative was pushed through for the 2011 batch to give current students an opportunity to interact with the community. As such, in addition to the interns and CCIP staff, representatives from the host companies where the students are interning at, the CUHK Alumni Association of Greater New York (CUHKAAGNY) as well as the New York Police Department (NYPD) were also present at the event.

The session provided a good forum where students had the opportunity to interact with members of the community and this enabled both parties to learn more about each other’s cultures while sharing their personal experiences. This greatly benefited the students as they were able to build up networks within the community while learning to strike a balance between hard and soft skills. Moreover, students had the rare chance to interact with executives from other host companies and this helped them have a better understanding of other industries in general as well.

In addition, representatives from CUHKAAGNY were also present at the event in a bid to collect donations for “Xiao Bian Dan”, which is dedicated to address educational needs for poverty-stricken areas in China. Having been active in New York for the past few years, the fund aims to amass more donations as $40 is already sufficient to help a rural student in China attend school for a year. All donations made to “Xiao Bian Dan” were then given in entirety to the beneficiaries.

“It was a pleasure meeting the students at the session. They provided great company as they were engaging and very enthusiastic to find out more about living and working in New York. The thing that delighted me the most was that several students talked to me to find out more about “Xiao Bian Dan”. It was really heartwarming to see these young adults showing so much compassion and willingness to help the less fortunate.” said Mr. Raymond Yeung, an Executive Committee Member of CUHKAAGNY.