Homeless Outreach Population Estimation (H.O.P.E.) was launched in 2013 by the City-Youth Empowerment Project (CYEP) in collaboration with three NGOs. The convenor of CYEP, Dr Elaine Au expanded the scope of H.O.P.E. to wide scale; and a joint-university platform of service-learning was formed. This platform aims at uniting the student volunteers from different local universities to serve and learn about homeless.

On 29 October 2015, over 300 volunteers from CityU and three other universities worked in teams in different districts to conduct questionnaires and a head count on the homeless. Each volunteer was provided with special training to engage with the homeless and street-sleepers. The teams also experienced a night homeless down the street. With the assistance of the social workers from the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), volunteers interacted with the homeless and experienced further their living conditions and the barriers that prohibit them to be housed.