Page 16 - Sphere No.28 (Mar 2011)

14 Sphere
feel you are losing sight of your goals or losing
your passion for your project.”
The ideas that Love Ideas, Love HK sparked
are certainly varied and imaginative. The range
is astounding: from providing specially equipped
transport to enable victims of spinocerebellar
ataxia to participate in various activities, through
creating a rock music class to keep
teens creatively occupied, to
DJ Lam’s idea for perform-
ing stand-up comedy in
hospital wards.
Interestingly, the rea-
soning behind his concept
was largely fear.
“I’ve always feared hos-
pitals,” explained DJ Lam.
“But, at least when I visit I
can always leave. However,
there are many patients
who have to stay for long
periods of time. I wanted to overcome my own
fear of hospitals, but I wasn’t sure what I could
bring. Then I thought – I am good at telling jokes,
so why not perform stand-up at hospitals?”
Already, the Queen Mary Hospital has con-
tacted him to arrange some performance dates,
and he is spreading the word to other hospitals
which are interested. “I remember watching the
movie Punchline in which Tom Hanks’ character
says something like if you can make a room full
of patients laugh, then you can make anybody
laugh,” said DJ Lam.
One of the most encouraging aspects to emerge
from the wave of social entrepreneurship that
Love Ideas, Love HK set in motion was an abil-
ity to think outside the box and beyond the usual
“causes” and bring to the fore needs that have oth-
erwise gone unnoticed. For instance, for students
at the Fresh Fish Traders School, most of whom
are from low-income families, scraping together
the HKD900 to buy a new uniform can be difficult.
DJ Lam Chiu-wing aims
to cheer up patients
by doing stand-up
comedy in hospitals.