Dr Yammy Chak (BSW, MEd, PhD, RSW) is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). She obtained her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at PolyU and earned her Master’s degree from the Hong Kong Baptist University.

Before joining the tertiary education field, she has been a registered social worker for more than ten years. Dr Chak had extensive front-line experience in family service, children and youth service. She used to be a school social worker and college counsellor. Her major focus of work was to provide counselling service to individuals and families, especially those with emotional and mental health difficulties, special education needs, relationship problems, as well as family crises. Besides, she was responsible for various leading roles in NGOs in nurturing whole-person development of young people.  Dr Chak is also experienced in running and conducting training programmes for secondary school and college students, parents, social workers, as well as teachers.

To groom university students to become effective self-leaders and responsible global citizens, Dr Chak has taught and led Leadership and Service Learning courses at PolyU for more than ten years, with reference to positive youth development and service leadership theories. Incorporating front-line social work experiences, Dr Chak has contributed to the development of course curriculum and published papers in examining the effectiveness of the courses and the training implemented. Her specialty and research interests cover children and youth development, programme evaluation, positive youth development and service learning. Having served as subject leader of the service learning subjects, in both Hong Kong and Chinese mainland context, Dr Chak has supervised more than 400 PolyU students to provide services supporting underprivileged children, and adolescents with special educational needs in both NGO and school settings. She received the University Grants Committee (UGC) Teaching Award (Team award) in 2018.

Apart from teaching, Dr Chak is also heavily devoted to community service related to children, young people and the community. In particular, she plays the roles as consultant and advisor in different projects of local NGOs over the past years.

• PhD, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• MEd, Hong Kong Baptist University
• BSW, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University