By Amy Kam
“I felt very grateful and delighted when I saw the new Macao Heritage Ambassadors were awarded on the stage, I hope to have more teenagers to join us and we can better promote Macao cultural heritage,” said Pearl Chau, chairman of Macao Heritage Ambassadors Association (MHAA), who is also one of the founders of MHAA.
Pearl Chau
MHAA, established on August 1, 2004, is a non-profit organization with a mission to “cherish cultural relic, and inherit culture.” MAHH makes an effort to help more young people get the knowledge of cultural heritage, encouraging them to participate in cultural activities in order to promote the development of cultural and creative industries.
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“As a leader, I fully understood that all things had a difficult start,” Chau said. “Because not many people knew MHAA at the beginning so we needed to create more activities in order to promote our association well.” Chau also ex- pressed that preventing the loss of talents is the biggest challenge for them.
“A lot of members of MHAA are students and some of them may go to study abroad or have not much time to participate in our activities, so we hold programs of Macao Heritage Ambassadors each year which can attract more aspiring teenagers,” said Chau. “Fortunately, MHAA has developed successfully so far with all members’ joint efforts because we have a passion for promoting Macao culture.”
Michael Ao
According to Chau, nowadays, more teenagers are interested in the Macao cultural heritage and they have a great ambition in this field. Michael Ao, one of the members of MHAA, is a Year 1 student of Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) majoring in Tourism Business Management. “I joined MHAA when I was in senior one,” said Ao.
Actually, the levels of Macao Heritage Ambassadors are divided into five grades and Ao got the Honor Macao Heritage Ambassadors in 2013, which is the highest grade. “Letting more tourists know the unique Macao heritage is my responsibility,” Ao added.
Young blood
Ao expressed that he has not only deepened his knowledge about Macao, but also obtained more platforms through MHAA and made a continuous progress. In the training courses of Heritage Ambassadors, Ao has now become the leader of one of the teams. Saturn Lao, a Form 4 student in Chan Sui Ki Perpetual Help College, is a member of his team.
Saturn Lao
“I want to become an architect in the future and I can have the first knowledge of Macao historical buildings from this course,” Lao said. “Understanding history through stories is a good way for me and I especially love Macao heritage stories which are very interesting.”
Although there is a time conflict between the heritage training courses and her school courses, Lao said that she will continue it because successes never belong to those people who give up halfway.
Both Ao and Lao are “young blood” of MHAA. “As the development of Macao is over dependent on the gaming industry, there are still lots of young people striving for the future of Macao,” Chau said.