克城消息    

愛克隆亞洲行動協會舉辦捐款活動圓滿成功

Greetings

Good Evening. Thank you for choosing to support our fundraiser here tonight and we hope so far you have found the evening enjoyable and interesting. ASIA has been serving the Northeast Ohio area since 1995 with its first office in Akron and in Cleveland since 2001. We held our first Annual Meeting in Cleveland in 2005 and now our first fundraiser in Cuyahoga County here tonight at this truly impressive educational and training institution, the Corporate Center.
ASIA’s efforts in Cleveland have truly been impactful, rewarding and meaningful. Our very first program, CAM, serving Midtown Chinese children and youth from new immigrant families, with the majority constituting the working poor continues, to grow through additional programming serving middle and high school youth and their parents through recent support from Cuyahoga County’s Dept. of Jobs and Family Services.
     Here we want to briefly feature an initiative that reflects and defines well ASIA’s efforts. We are not only concerned about improving our new immigrant youth’s academic performance but also we want to foster life and leadership skills among our participants. For often they remain invisible in their school communities due to lack of proficiency in English, lack of familiarity with mainstream culture and opportunities and lack of mentoring and support in their linguistically isolated families and community. This past summer under the guidance of Kitty Leung, a graduate of MSASS at Case Western University and an intern at ASIA during her graduate studies, a group of ten Chinese youth from 8th to 12th grade conducted a Safety Improvement Project whose purpose is to assess the neighborhood safety needs in the Chinatown area in Midtown. The project participants conducted door to door surveys with 70 residents and 30 business owners. The results from the survey were analyzed and incorporated into a power point presentation. The youth were asked to present the project at one of our staff’s meetings. Because the results of the survey were so revealing of a serious problem in the Chinatown area, there are plans to take it to their local councilman Joe Cimperman, write letters to the newspapers, apply for additional support to develop and expand the survey. We truly want to applaud these youth’s great performance in their first community improvement project.
We would also want to mention the youth in ASIA’s programs who are more acculturated and possess a higher level of English proficiency. They are engaged in ASIA’s statewide leadership program, Asian American Youth Against Tobacco which has resulted in national recognition for individual and group advocacy projects. For some their participation has helped them gain entrance to the nation’s most prestigious universities and choosen majors in public health and public policy. For many others we have witnessed personal growth, self confidence, improvement in communication skills and appreciating and valuing public service and volunteerism. We see a significant number of former AAYAT youth return to mentor and volunteer in ASIA’s programs. For our staff and me, we feel deeply rewarded and gratified when we see the seeds planted have reached fruition in the many youths we served.
    We want to also mention the generous support from the Cleveland Foundation for ASIA’s community needs assessment in Cuyahoga County and Golden Bridges, a program of the Successful Aging Initiative. This later program has touched the lives of more than 500 Asian elders in Northeast Ohio. After having identifying many of their cultural, language and professional assets, they were transformed into increditable cultural educators, interpreters, translators, community organizers and yes political activists in Columbus on Medicare reforms. These two initiatives have gathered substantial and significant data on the Asian Pacific Islander communities in Cuyahoga County to facilitate strategic planning for ASIA’s services, collaboration and partnerships in thisregion. Presently we are looking to increase Cuyahoga representation on our ASIA’s board.
The Asian community continues to grow from 40% to 1000%. Yes, areas such as Solon are seeing 1000% increases in Asian population according to the 2000 US Census. ASIA is committed to help achieve quality of life for Asians who have chosen to call Ohio their home. Our agency is grass root and relatively new, compared to existing social service agencies in the area. We face exciting but great challenges in establishing a visible, viable and meaningful presence to compete and gain the necessary funding to support our agency’s work. We are so proud of our dedicated staff and volunteers. They are deeply committed to the agency’s mission and vision and most of all to their clients and the community. We also look to everyone here tonight and others you may know who are not here to help ASIA continue to grow, serve, lead and advocate on behalf of our Asian American communities. So that they can become fully contributing citizens and members of this great community in Northeast Ohio they have chosen to be their home.

Angelin Chang - pianist 鋼琴家張安麟