Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung

This award is a very meaningful award. It's an internationally recognised award.

It recognises the perseverance, readiness and courage of the awardees to embrace challenges which is very important for any youth in Hong Kong. The current term Government attaches great importance to nurturing our youngsters, particularly their development.

Youngsters represent our future, our hope, we can't leave anyone behind. That's why the Government has decided to upgrade the Youth Commission to become the Youth Development Commission to be chaired by the Chief Secretary - myself.

We just had our first meeting this afternoon and finished half an hour ago - very useful meeting, very constructive. We will address various issues of concern to young people of Hong Kong and carve out a career path for them and also enable them to seize the opportunities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area development.

So, a lot will be happening in the future – we'll forge collaboration, interaction and innovation with a view to building a better Hong Kong. We engage more gainful and constructive dialogue with our young people regardless of their background and nationalities. Hong Kong is our home, we have to make sure Hong Kong forges ahead as Asia's world city.

Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung gave these remarks at the Hong Kong Award for Young People's 96th Silver Award presentation ceremony on April 24.