Sunshine Garden Seniors in the Lead

Many Chinese seniors around the Puget Sound subscribe to the CISC Elderly Newsletter or read it online. Through this monthly publication, they learn about many community events they would not otherwise know about.

Though some are able to participate with family members or friends, many do not have transportation and cannot go on their own. Thank goodness for Sunshine Garden! CISC staff lead the way and make sure everyone has a good time. Anyone can join the group for a small fee (usually $2) and learn more about their community with friends new and old.

Here they are at recent visits to the Maritime Festival on the Seattle Waterfront, and the 60th Anniversary of the Armed Forces Festival in Bremerton.

Caregiving at Life's End

CISC recently completed a monthlong series of workshops on caring for loved ones at the end of life. This was done in conjunction with Providence Hospice of Seattle.

Despite the taboo of discussing death and dying in our culture, participants received valuable information and resources in their native dialects on this difficult topic.

Having this information better prepares us all for the challenge of dealing with the death of our loved ones.

Tandoori Chicken

On Friday, CISC volunteer Christine Ho came to Sunshine Garden to demonstrate traditional Indian cuisine – tandoori chicken, rice, and raita. A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Christine shares her special talents every month Sunshine Garden seniors.

Now you too can join in on the fun! Christine will be donating a cooking class to CISC’s Friendship Dinner & Auction at the Grand Hyatt on June 7. Your chance to learn from one of the best!

Chinese Paper Cutting

The Bellevue Arts Museum will be hosting Beijing University’s Yao Bingyue on Tuesday, May 27 for a hands-on demonstration of traditional Chinese paper cutting. A researcher in early childhood development, this event is geared for children as well as adults. For more information, contact the museum at 425-890-3184.

Examples of this unique and wonderful craft (also known as 窗花or window flowers) will also be available at CISC’s Friendship Dinner & Auction on June 7 at the Grand Hyatt Seattle.

Northwest Chinese School

Northwest Chinese School 西北中文學校 will be holding a fundraising event this Saturday to benefit victims of this week’s earthquake in China.

NWCS Kirkland campus (at Lake Washington Technical College, 11605 132nd Ave NE) will hold seminars on Health Life, Luxury Life and Model Mother’s Life Story from 10:00 to 2:00 as part of the fund raising activities. Seminar speakers have also pledged to make donations.

Donations can be made in person during the fundraising event,

or by sending a check to Northwest Chinese School, Attn: Sichuan Province Relief Fund, 515 116th Ave NE, Ste 228, Bellevue, WA 98004,

or by wire transfer through Cathay Bank, Payee: NWCS (Sichuan Province Relief Fund), Acct #: 83001530.

For details and more information, please contact Northwest Chinese School directly: http://www.nwchinese.org/

China Earthquake

As more and more news comes out of China, the death toll rises. For those survivors in the area, there is urgent need for basic necessities such as food, water and shelter.

CISC has received a number of inquiries from people who want to help. Here are 3 ways:

• Through World Vision. You can donate online at http://www.worldvision.org/ Right at the top of their home page there’s a box that says “Massive Earthquake Rocks China”. Click on the Donate to Help Survivors link.
  
  
• Through the Chinese Red Cross Society. From their website http://202.108.59.10/english/index.htmit appears that you can’t donate online, but you can send a check to:
  
  China CITIC Bank, Beijing
  Jiuxianqiao Sub-Branch
  C&W Tower. No.14
  Jiuxianqiao Street
  Chaoyang District
  Beijing, China 100016
  
  Account NO.:7112111482600000209
  Swift Code：CIBKCNBJ100
  
  They request your address and phone number too.
  


• Through the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation. Checks, cash or wire transfers are accepted at Cathay Bank and will be deposited into a special account #01-130-005. Cathay Bank has 3 branches in the Seattle area: Chinatown/ID, Kent, and Bellevue. For contact information, go to http://www.cathaybank.com/ and click on locations at the top.

Thank you for your caring and concern. With your help, we hope to minimize the pain and suffering as much as possible.

BCC Comes to CISC

Today a group of students from Bellevue Community College’s program in Digital Video Production came to CISC to begin filming a documentary on the history of the organization.
Jason Lau, initiator of this project, felt strongly that he wanted to tell the story of CISC, the people behind it, and the impact it has had on the community these last 36 years.

Today’s filming included King Lee, Lily Woo, and Daphne Tang, long time supporters for over 30 years. Other interviews will feature key staff and a special appearance by Ron Chew, former Executive Director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, speaking on the history of Chinese in Seattle.

We can’t to see the completed product. We plan to post it on the CISC website later this summer!

Pratt Fine Arts Center

Pratt Fine Arts Center's Youth Art Works program will exhibit drawings, painting, and glass art by students from Washington Middle School and Chinese Information and Service Center at the Seattle Public Library's Douglass-Truth Branch from May 5 to May 29.

This one example is from Connie, a participant in CISC's after school youth program. Come and see all the art at 2300 E Yesler Way (@ 23rd)!

May is API Heritage Month

Once again, CISC is a proud sponsor of the Asian Pacific Directors Coalition's Asian Pacific Heritage Month Celebration which was held at Seattle Center yesterday. As chair of the APDC, CISC Executive Director welcomed the crowd and kicked off the event.

Highlighting the great diversity within the API community, this event, now in its sixth year, featured back to back performances from community groups such as the Northern Laotian Community Association, Filipino Youth Activities Drill Team, Apna Bangre Crew, and many, many more!

The API themed art contest for middle and high school students received over 60 entries this year and top entries were on display for the public to enjoy.

One of the highlights of the day was a performance by the grÖÖvaholix, an all female, Asian American dance troupe out of LA. For their latest videos, go to YouTube and search on keyword: groovaholix

This Just In...

In the Committee of 100's most recent newsletter (Spring 2008), they cited an interesting study looking at personal goals of the American and Chinese general public.The top response for both groups was "to have a happy family". But while 72% of Americans chose this option, only 54% of Chinese did.

15% of Americans said that they wanted "to work on behalf of society," while only 10% of Chinese respondants cited this as a goal.

Perhaps most interestingly, 42% of Chinese chose "to get rich" as a personal goal in life, while only 8% of Americans did so!

The full article has not been posted on line yet, you can see the numbers we took from the article here. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

For more information on the Committee of 100, or to check to see if the Spring newsletter has been posted online, click here.

Earth Day 2008

Today is Earth Day, but CISC celebrated last Saturday by putting together another team to participate in the annual ID Spring Clean Up. This year there were over 450 participants who picked up trash, painted over graffiti, and cleared out weeds and other debris.

Despite chilly weather that sometimes included pounding rain and even hail, our team of staff, board, and volunteers put their backs into it and helped to make our neighborhood just a little bit cleaner and nicer for all of us who work, shop and live here.

Check out this picture of Executive Director, Alaric Bien with the mandible of a ...

thing!

36th Annual Friendship Dinner & Auction

It's that time of year again! Time for CISC's annual Friendship Dinner and Auction.

As you can see, we are busily preparing for the big event. Sunshine Garden Seniors are shown here helping to assemble the invitations. Look for yours in the mail later this week.

And don't forget to mark Saturday, June 7 down on your calendar. It's at the Grand Hyatt this year and promises to be a lot of fun. This year we focus on CISC's early learning activities, Play & Learn groups, bilingual pre-K, early literacy and parenting/caregiver training.

For more information, please contact Kevin Chan at kevinc@cisc-seattle.org or 206-624-5633 x 4117. See you on the 7^th!

Legal Clinics Resume at CISC

Responding to community demand, CISC has been working hard for the last several months to resume our legal clinics after Seattle University decided to shift its focus.

We are pleased to announce that the Asian Bar Association of Washington and UW School of Law students have stepped up and begun providing legal workshops for our community on a regular basis. The first one was last Tuesday and focused on (what else?) taxes!

Other workshops will feature speakers on employment law, tenant rights, small claims court and much more. We are so grateful for this partnership with the ABAW and UW School of Law and all the dedicated volunteers who help to make this vital service happen!

Compassion in Seattle

This past weekend, the Dalai Lama was in town talking about compassion. The 5 day event was sponsored by the Seeds of Compassion, a group focused on nurturing and empowering children, families and communities to be compassionate members of society.

One of the key messages from the event was the role of compassion in raising our children. Without instilling social and emotional learning into families, caregivers and schools, our children have not have the all the tools necessary to function and succeed in their community, in society, and in life.

At CISC, we try to weave compassion into all that we do. With our early learning programs, caregiver trainings, youth activities, and more. We know that research has shown the positive beneficial effects of practicing compassion on physical, mental and spiritual health. We know that children cannot only focus on academics, but must also be nurtured in the social and emotional arenas.

Our hope is that all adults who touch the lives of children will have and use the tools to foster kinder and more compassionate children, communities, and society.

So think about it. What have you done today?

Self Defense and Personal Safety

In our continued efforts to meet emerging community needs, CISC last Thursday held a second workshop on self defense and personal safety for our community members.

This is part of the effort we are taking along with the Seattle Police Department and other community groups in response to the ongoing attacks on Asian American women on Beacon Hill.

This last workshop also offered personal safety alarms that can be attached to your keychain for a fast and easy way to alert all those in the vicinity of danger. These alarms also come with a small but powerful flashlight which is also very useful on a day to day basis.

For more information about personal safety or to request an alarm, which we sell at cost ($10), please call CISC Crime Victims Advocate Alan Lai at 206-624-5633 x 4111.

County Budget

Don't know if you caught the article in the Times on Wednesday, but King County is looking at budget of deficit of $20 million this year, and a whopping $60 million next year. Budget Director Bob Cowan's suggestion for addressing this problem was to "phase out" of certain "lines of business" (all health and human services) by 2011.

This so incensed those of us in the human services community who have been working for the past five years with county officials and staff to try to find solutions to this funding crisis.

It is nothing new, but yet again we are confronted with this problem that will not affect "lines of business", but real people like you and me, our families, friends, and neighbors.

For some community opinions, (including our Executive Director's personal viewpoint) see today's Time's opinion page. Or click here.

Everyday Hero

You hear about them all the time, doing the ordinary things that people do every day. But yesterday, something truly out of the ordinary happened.

CISC office manager and HR coordinator, Nelson Tang, was out in the neighborhood procuring advertisements for the Friendship Dinner and Auction program book (June 7 - mark your calendars!) when he saw a car speeding down the street.

Moving back to the curb, he suddenly noticed someone pushing a baby in a stroller and tried to get the driver to stop. Well, he didn't until it was too late.

Nelson was knocked to the ground, but saved the baby from being crushed. The stroller was damaged, but fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.

The driver of the car, a 16 year old with no license, was still talking to the police when the car's owner arrived and the ambulance took Nelson to the hospital for evaluation.

Thank goodness for quick reactions and quick thinking. Just remember, the next time it could be you!

Teacher Training

As part of the teacher preparation program redesign, the UW Graduate School of Elementary Education has created the Alliance of Community Teachers (ACT) which will be placing prospective elementary teachers in community-based organizations to complement their school-based field experiences.

CISC has been chosen as one of 3 ethnic minority organizations that the school will work with over the next three years.

The goals of the project are to:

1) Build connections between prospective teachers, community organizations and local schools
2) Give prospective teachers opportunities to develop holistic and assets-based view of children and youth
3) Acknowledge education and learning as a process that occurs in multiple contexts and
4) Place students, families, neighborhoods and communities at the center of the teaching and education.

We are very excited about this new partnership and look forward to the impact it will have on the youth and families we serve!

Belgium - Last Thoughts

After a long set of flights back to the US and waiting nearly 48 hours for the luggage to arrive, some final thoughts on our trip to Belgium last week.

We saw and learned so much about Belgian government(s), society, and issues around immigrant integration in such a short time, it is really very hard to come to any sort of conclusions. But there are a couple of things that did become very clear:

#1 Belgium does have the best chocolate in the world (it wasn't all work and no play...)

#2 Their beer is pretty darn good too. Didn't try all 550 kinds, but the ones we had were quite smakelijk!

More seriously, it seems, from what we could glean in one short week, that some of the issues of integration are linked to a perspective that requires immigrants (and their Belgian born offspring, often 2nd and 3rd generation) to make changes to adapt to mainstream society, sometimes giving up critical parts of their identity, while there are few efforts to change in the receiving society to ensure that immigrants are welcome and treated equitably.

There are many wonderful government sponsored programs in place to help immigrants assimilate into their new community.

But we also heard from some of these 2nd and 3rd generation allochtoonen that despite the fact that they were born in Belgium, speak Flemish, French, English and Arabic fluently, are university educated, and gainfully employed, as seems to be required to be considered "integrated" by Belgian society, they still felt less than welcome, still experienced much discrimination, and were overall treated much like second class citizens in many situations.Perhaps it is because Belgium has only recently been confronted with these immigration, religious, and race issues. They have not experienced hundreds of years of slavery and a civil rights movement that raised these questions in the US over 40 years ago.

Of course, we still deal with these issues every day in the US. But it seems that there is also more willingness to talk about them here, to try to work together to figure out solutions. Perhaps it is just a matter of time before Belgium will have its own movement to raise these issues for discussion on a societal level.

We can only hope that one day, decendants of Moroccan, Turkish, and Congolese immigrants can stand up proudly and declare, "Ik ben allochtoon!" and still be treated with the respect and fairness afforded to the autochtoonen (native born white Belgians).

We are looking forward to the Belgian participants' impressions of the United States as half of them visit New York, Atlanta and Denver in May, while the other half come to Washington DC, Detroit, and Seattle in October.

We're wondering how they will see our efforts at integration and what insights they may have into our own confusing system of immigration and immigrant services...

Liège

Today was spent in the French speaking part of Belgium, in the city of Liège. Did you know that Belgium, with a population of 10 million has a total of 6 different parliaments, 3 national languages, and has been without a functioning government for 8 months?

Part of the problem is with the deep divisions between the Flemish and French speaking regions. Something that became evident today as we discussed immigrant children in the education system and at 28%, an unemployment rate more than twice that in the Flemish speaking region.

One noticable difference was the heavier emphasis on diversity and tolerance, with campaigns to resist the extreme right, and emphasizing the richness in diversity.


At a local public high school, we met students from many countries and talked about their experiences and perceptions of living in Belgian society. Here, two girls from Nigeria are pictured with a program participant who also happened to come from the same country.

After lunch at the school, a visit was made to a holocaust museum where we continued to discuss the importance of education in the integration process as well a programs to improve access to higher education and services to promote retention, increase graduation rates, and facilitate successful entry into the labor market.

We had a sobering, private tour of the museum. The holocaust is something most Belgians never want to forget, a good lesson for us all.