The foundation was started in 1990 when our founding trustees launched a volunteering scheme of visits to local secondary schools to provide students with extra opportunities to practise their English.
Realising a far larger scheme was needed, the trustees formed the Chatteris Educational Foundation and started raising funds to bring English tutors to Hong Kong to be placed in schools. Although a lot has changed in this time, we have always remained true to the lessons learnt by our founding trustees when volunteering all those years ago. Offering students opportunities for authentic, relaxed, and communicative use of English transforms their views of the language, especially for those from challenging socio-economic backgrounds, and our enthusiastic and committed tutors continue to provide such opportunities to this day.
Today, Chatteris places a team of over 60 English tutors full time in 33 partner schools across three different age groups: primary, secondary and post-secondary. We also run short courses for schools, experiential learning opportunities for students, and deliver multiple community outreach initiatives to serve less privileged groups in Hong Kong society.
Compassion
Commitment
Cultural Exchange
Collaboration
Creativity
Talking to different people is one of my interests and being able to speak English in the school makes me more confident to speak. It helps me enhance my English speaking skills, and my family only speaks Cantonese at home, so it is a great opportunity to prepare for the future.”
Offering them
an authentic and
engaging English
environment in
their school
Collaborating with
other charities across
Hong Kong to offer
beneficiaries English
learning opportunities
Linking local businesses and
organisations with schools to
grant students a chance to
overcome the growing
inequality gap
Professionally developing
our team of tutors to
give them skills for life
in education or
other sectors
Chatteris Graduate Development Programme
Ben began working for Chatteris in 2006 as an English tutor, and has held various positions within Chatteris since this time across all areas of the foundation, becoming Chief Executive Officer in July 2018.
Margaret began working for Chatteris in 2006 and has held various leadership positions during this time. Margaret now oversees our English Development Programme for schools and Graduate Development Programme for our tutors, and has a particular interest in increasing the use of technology in English language education.
Mariana joined Chatteris in January 2021. She is in charge of the management and development of school programmes at primary and secondary levels, including planning, design, implementation and evaluation.
George has worked for Chatteris since 2015 and oversees the Community Outreach programmes as well as fundraising and communications for the organisations. Under his guidance, the flagship ‘One for One, Adopt a School’ project of sponsored schools has been expanded from four to eight partner school beneficiaries.
Chatteris is overseen by an experienced and active board of trustees with backgrounds in education, law, finance, and human resources