A local charity is hoping to use funds raised from the Operation Santa Claus 2023 campaign to expand their programmes aimed at making yoga and expressive arts therapy more accessible for children with special needs and from disadvantaged backgrounds.

YAMA Foundation is one of the 16 beneficiaries of this year's campaign, and it aims to provide cost-effective and creative therapeutic solutions underprivileged children.

"Our focus is more on looking at what people can do rather than what they cannot do... And even if they can't move independently, this is where we have skilled teachers and therapists to help find movement or creativity or self-expression," co-founder and executive director Hersha Chellaram told RTHK's Cruz Macalligan.

A boy with autism named Marco, for example, learned to manage his angry bouts and violent episodes through the charity’s yoga programme.

"This is the transformative power of the yoga. It's not any magic that we do... Yoga is magic in and of its own, being able to regulate your nervous system, being able to connect with your body in ways that we're always taught to ignore just by modern living," Chellaram said.

"Operation Santa Claus is helping us look at the feasibility on scaling of the yoga therapy intervention. We have a shortage of physiotherapists and occupational therapists in Hong Kong but an abundance of yoga teachers, so we're looking at how we can actually leverage this demographic and close the gap."

To find out more about Operation Santa Claus or to support the campaign, visit the Operation Santa Claus website.