Service
From music to community.
For Richard, service has grown from a simple question: how can something you love become useful to someone else?
Music offered one answer. What began as a shared interest among young musicians gradually became a way to bring people together—first through performances, then through fundraising, hospital partnerships, and a growing community of young people willing to contribute their time and talents to others.
That journey became Firefly Youth Network.
Young people. Shared talents. A larger purpose.
Firefly Youth Network
Richard joined Firefly Youth Network in July 2022 as one of its founding members, when the organization consisted of fewer than ten young people. Since then, he has helped grow Firefly into a network of more than 100 members, bringing together young musicians, organizers, and volunteers through music, service, and community engagement.
Rather than treating service as something separate from their interests, Firefly encourages young people to begin with what they already care about—music, creativity, leadership, or community—and ask how those interests might be shared in ways that matter to others.
For Richard, that idea has remained at the center of Firefly: young people do not have to wait until adulthood to contribute meaningfully to their communities.
Turning performance into purpose.
Light of Hope
One of Firefly’s signature initiatives is the Light of Hope charity concert series, which brings young musicians and performers together in support of hospitals and community causes.
Behind each concert is a much larger youth effort: recruiting performers, coordinating volunteers, developing programs, working with community partners, promoting the event, fundraising, and bringing families and audiences together around a shared cause.
Richard has been involved not only as a performer, but also in the planning and leadership behind these events. Through successive Light of Hope concerts and other Firefly initiatives, the organization has sought to make performance more than an artistic endpoint—it becomes a way of gathering a community around something larger than the stage itself.
Across its charitable initiatives, Firefly has generated more than CAD $70,000 in support for hospitals and community causes, including support connected with Richmond Hospital and BC Children’s Hospital.
100+
Youth Members
👥
$70,000+
Charitable Support Generated
♡
2,000+
Concert Attendees
Richard representing Firefly Youth Network in support of BC Children’s Hospital Foundation · Light of Hope Charity Concert III · March 2026
Richard’s interest in public affairs also extends to environmental and community initiatives. Through leadership roles with LCOY Canada, Human & Nature Youth Club, and the Richmond Lahoo Leo Club, he has explored different forms of youth participation—from climate awareness and sustainability to local volunteer service.
At St. George’s School, Richard served for four consecutive years as an elected Community Engagement Representative in Student Government. In 2025, after several years without a TEDx event at the school, he took the initiative to revive the program, applying for a new TEDx license and leading the event from its earliest planning stages through its realization. Working with students, faculty, and speakers, he helped rebuild a platform for ideas and conversation within the school community. He has also contributed to school life through OPUS Art Journalism and Publication, Yearbook, and other student initiatives.
That same curiosity increasingly found its way onto the page.
Writing has given Richard a different kind of space: one in which questions do not always need immediate answers. His interests increasingly center on philosophy, ethics, politics, literature, and the ways these fields intersect. He has received a Scholastic Gold Key, while pursuing more intensive study through experiences including the Stanford Summer Humanities Institute and the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Through OPUS and his own writing, he has also explored the relationship between art, culture, ideas, and public expression.
Stanford Summer Humanities Institute · August 2025
Firefly Youth Network · Light of Hope III Charity Concert · March 2026
Firefly Youth Network · Light of Hope III Charity Concert · March 2026
Across these experiences, Richard has become especially interested in questions that resist simple resolution: What responsibilities do individuals have toward their communities? How should people with fundamentally different perspectives live together? What can art reveal about another person’s experience that argument cannot? And what does it mean not merely to hold an idea, but to examine why we believe it?
These questions connect areas of Richard’s life that can appear very different on paper. The attentiveness required to interpret a song is not entirely separate from the attentiveness required to understand an opposing delegate. The curiosity behind an essay is related to the curiosity that makes genuine dialogue possible. And the experience of bringing music into a hospital has challenged him to think about what artistic expression can mean when its purpose is no longer applause.
Richard also values parts of life that have no need to become a résumé line. He enjoys reading, exploring new ideas, spending time outdoors, and competitive gaming. In League of Legends, he reached the Masters tier, placing him among approximately the top 0.5% of players in North America.
Richard does not yet know exactly where all of these interests will lead—and he is comfortable with that. What matters more to him is continuing to ask difficult questions, listening closely to people and perspectives different from his own, and finding ways to turn the things he cares about into something useful beyond himself.
Music taught him to listen. Writing taught him to question. Leadership taught him to take responsibility. Service taught him why those things matter.