Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Donor Appreciation Photos




These photos are also from last Wednesday's donor thank you event. The food was a big hit, as was the CISC trivia Bingo board.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Family Caregiver Ad

Video featured on Komo 4 TV this summer.

Family Caregivers

November is National Family Caregiver Month, honoring the meaningful and selfless act of taking care of our loved ones.

Did you know that there are over 650,000 caregivers in Washington state alone? And 92% of them receive no pay.

Washington has a 20 year history of national leadership in supporting unpaid family caregivers. At CISC, each family we support costs around $2,000. But it saves the system up to $52,000 compared to nursing homes.

Now, that's an investment we can bank on!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Donor Appreciation

CISC appreciates its donors and held an event to thank them Wednesday evening. It was a chance to get to know each other better, learn more about the agency, and (0f course) enjoy some nice food together.

A huge thanks to our hosts Bill & Agnes Kwan and all our supporters for helping CISC create opportunities for Asian immigrants and their families to succeed!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Complete Count Committee Convening

We spent last Friday in Spokane participating in the Seattle Region's Complete Count Committee Convening for the 2010 Census. Representatives from WA, OR, ID, Northern CA and AK gathered to learn about the census and how to make sure everyone is counted.

CISC's contribution was to share our efforts on how we have tried to encourage our traditionally undercounted communities to participate. From T-shirts to chopsticks to fortune cookies to presentations at the international conference of Chinese Immigrant Service Agencies, we continue to try to let people know why it is important to be counted:
  1. For every person not counted, our community loses $1,400 in federal dollars each year.
  2. We need to count all residents - citizens and non, documented and not - so we can have adequate representation in government, and services for our community.
  3. The census is safe - personal information cannot be shared with immigration, police, housing authorities, or the IRS.
For more information on why it's important to be counted, go to http://2010.census.gov/2010census/why/index.php

Friday, November 13, 2009

Providing a Voice for Immigrant Youth


CISC just received a generous $10,000 donation from Qwest for the Youth Voices Project. This is a project that aims to integrate middle and high school-aged immigrant youth into the wider community, improve their English language skills, and help them acquire needed technical and life skills. 30 students will engage in media production training over 12 months, and in the process create video documentaries on the early immigrant experiences of Chinese seniors in the community. The bilingual and bicultural education provided will help these students better acculturate into the American education system, and the Chinese immigrants interviewed will have an opportunity to uphold their rich cultural heritage.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

CISANI 2009

Just back from the 30th annual conference of the Chinese Immigrant Service Agency Network-International hosted by the Chinese-American Planning Council in NYC.

Two very full days of meetings, site visits, discussions and sharing. This year's focus was on Service and Advocacy in Changing Times. And what times they are!

We heard about significant challenges for some of our California partners and what steps they have taken to meet them - furloughs, layoffs, dealing with state-issued IOU's.



We learned about the importance of advocacy and working together, especially now when resources are tight and ever shrinking.

Also had a chance to sit down with New York's only Asian American Assemblyperson, Grace Meng representing the incredibly diverse community in Flushing. Rich discussion amongst the partners about how to empower and mobilize the community to benefit all our members.

Workforce development, access to resources, civic engagement. These are issues common to all our communities across the US, Canada and overseas. Thank goodness there are organizations like CISC that help people around the world adjust to their new life and help create opportunities for success!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A Matter of Balance

2 CISC staff and 2 volunteers graduated last week from a 12 hour training course provided by Senior Services, a non-profit serving older adults and caregivers in King County. The training was for a fall-prevention course known as A Matter of Balance.

CISC will begin providing this 16 hour course for seniors in Issaquah every Monday and Wednesday from 12:30pm to 2:30pm starting on November 16th. It will also be provided in Chinatown every Monday and Tuesday from 1pm to 3pm starting on December 1st. The cost is $15 for each senior.




Friday, November 06, 2009

Hypertension and Osteoporosis Workshop

CISC's Family Caregiver Support Program recently held a Hypertension and Osteoporosis Workshop, with two pharmacists on hand to give presentations and teach CISC seniors about these two conditions. Individual consultations followed, and we received a lot of positive feedback from the seniors about the event.




Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Open House



CISC recently had an open house to celebrate the new office space for the Eastside Cultural Navigator Program at the Family Recourse Center in Redmond. Thanks to new funding from the Seattle Foundation, there will now be more Spanish and Russian Cultural Navigators at CISC.

And what better way to celebrate this expanded cultural assistance than through food! The 60 or so community leaders who attended were treated to Russian piroshky, Indian samosas, Chinese egg tarts, and tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Happy 50th!

Long time CISC supporter Frank Chow celebrated the 50th anniversary of his arrival in the United States last night with friends, family, and CISC!

Wonderful food, warm companionship and much merriment were followed by an eloquent speech by Frank's wife Katty, a former CISC board member.



Katty explained how since retirement, she has been coming to CISC every week to volunteer in the SHIBA program and how spending more time in the office has given her a better understanding of the workings and goings on within CISC.

She and Frank reconfirmed their commitment to the community and acknowledged their own success by making a generous contribution to CISC and also to Kin On.

As Katty said, we all started from humble beginnings and needed the help that CISC offers, and all are moving closer to the time when we may need the help offered by Kin On too!

Thank you Frank and Katty for your fine example and continued support!

Halloween 2009

As promised, some photos of the pre-K kids trick-or-treating. First a walk through all of CISC's offices, then story time and more goodies at the ID/Chinatown library.