The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) is the nation’s largest Asian American social services organization.
Founded in 1965, CPC promotes the social and economic empowerment of Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities of New York City.
We are guided by our organizational values:
We are our community. We are committed, inclusive, and responsive.
We embrace our community. We are reliable, trusted, and transparent and hold ourselves to the highest quality standards.
We empower our community. We inspire leadership, equity, and progress.
Letter from the Board Chair and CEO
Though much has changed in the last year, CPC is ensuring New Yorkers have the resources they need to not only be safe but also continue to have opportunities to thrive. Whether working from home or out in your neighborhood, CPC is providing immediate relief and advancing a strong recovery for those who are too often underserved, overlooked, or underrepresented.
In this annual report, you will read about challenges facing our community members during the pandemic, including a story of a mother trying to secure food for her newborn and a high school student navigating his parents’ unemployment. Every community member was strengthened with support from a CPC staff member who stayed connected throughout their struggle.
The theme of this year’s annual report, #AlwaysEssential, was chosen to recognize our staff’s efforts as essential workers. On the cover pages, you see their work in action. Taken as a whole, this work shows what can be accomplished when people come together across generations, sectors, and neighborhoods to learn from each other, build collective action, and find hope, strength, and joy.
CPC’s vision for the future is to advance and transform communities.
In addition to expanding our services to address community needs exacerbated by the pandemic, we pursued our vision by defending our communities against harmful policies like Public Charge and the now-removed citizenship question on the Census. We have mobilized our staff, hundreds of human services providers, and thousands of community members to focus on achieving a complete count of our communities so that resources are allocated equitably. We are calling on decisionmakers to fully fund services for our communities, including higher wages for essential workers. We are seeking racial justice in the face of xenophobia, discrimination, and hate.
Your partnership and support have been integral to CPC achieving our mission. Thank you for continuing to make a difference in the lives of Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities of New York City!
OUR IMPACT
1,644 families received afterschool STEAM and literacy programming at 11 underserved elementary schools
451 adult literacy students learned English
250 youth and families participated in our college success program across 15 workshops
100% of Lower East Side Youth Opportunity Hub participants applied for college and will be attending in the fall
12,850 reached via text, phone, in-person, or virtual engagements to ensure a complete count in the Census
6,184 individuals and families aided with housing, food, and health benefits access
200 older adults received wellness and case management services at our subsidiary Hong Ning Housing
2,981 homebound individuals served through our subsidiary Home Attendant Program
707 youth and adults participated in health services, including services for those living with HIV/AIDS
100 families kept safe and together through prevention services
24-hour care provided to 6 individuals with developmental disabilities at the Josephine M. Ho Community Residence for Special Needs
2,494 young people worked summer and school-year jobs through the Summer Youth Employment Program and Work, Learn, and Grow
$11.50 average hourly wage boost for workers placed by our Career Center
100 community members accessed free citizenship classes
151 older adults with low or no income accessed paid on-the-job-training and job placement
162 legislative visits made to city, state, and federal offices by community members and staff
1,188 youth and adults trained at anti-discrimination clinics with Project Reach
2,000 community members and staff attended CPC’s virtual City Advocacy Day and Rally, resulting over $940,000 in discretionary funding and partial restoration of summer youth programming
95,500 wellness calls or remote sessions held to support toddlers, preschoolers, school-age children, youth, adults and their families
108,500 lbs of food (50,700 meals) distributed to families and seniors in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan
$1,250,900 distributed to 1,543 families, including undocumented and mixed-status households
$376,000 in supply grants were disbursed to 628 childcare programs and $275,000 in scholarships were given to essential workers to cover their childcare expenses through New York State’s allocation of the Federal CARES Act
Twice-daily news briefs were shared on 1480AM/1240AM radio in Cantonese and Mandarin, so families had translations of critical information in real time
120 media mentions and quotes on the impacts of the pandemic on our communities, including anti-Asian hate crimes, economic impacts, food insecurity, and human services
We are our community
CPC Learn and Earn, a career exploration and academic support program for high school juniors and seniors, utilized an online platform made popular by gamers to maintain connections when in-person programming was suspended. Jubi, a 17 year-old Learn and Earn participant, said he enjoyed the presentations, chats, and movie nights that were held on the online platform.
“The program shifted very quickly. Despite the fact that there was a pandemic, things were really smooth,” said Jubi. “Learn and Earn workshops focus on the things we don’t learn in school but that you need to be a functioning adult. I found the resume workshops helpful especially because I landed a part-time job.”
We embrace our community
Supporting Essential Working Families in a Pandemic
CPC helped Antasia, a single mother, and her 2-year-old daughter secure a spot in our Regional Enrichment Center (REC) at Little Star of Broome Street Early Childhood Center when it opened in early April 2020, a location two blocks away from her essential work at Trader Joe’s. The REC at Little Star provided care and education for children of essential workers while schools were ordered to close.
“At first it was scary and overwhelming because I had to figure out a way for me to still be able to go to work. I needed the security of my job,” said Antasia.
“CPC teachers were able to answer any questions that I had. They even used Class Dojo to post photos and videos so I would be able to see what she was up to while I was at work,” she said.
We empower our community
Standing with Our Communities in Unprecedented Times
As we adapted services and programming to meet new needs for survival during the pandemic, we witnessed an increase in overt discrimination and injustice towards our Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. In response, CPC’s policy and advocacy work connected the individual safety and well-being of our community members to social, economic, and racial equity.
While conducting daily wellness checks with hundreds of community members and using on-the-ground experience to inform changing city, state, and federal policies, CPC led campaigns to secure personal protective equipment and hazard pay for essential workers, two-thirds of whom are people of color, and to make sure AAPI needs were counted in legislative recovery packages, as many are informal, service, undocumented, or gig workers.
In order to reframe racist, xenophobic, and discriminatory narratives, CPC led media campaigns to highlight AAPI essential workers, including our #AlwaysEssential campaign displayed across the city at more than a dozen locations, including Times Square. We convened town halls to discuss solidarity actions with other communities of color and co-sponsored bystander trainings.
CPC also organized alongside nonprofit human services providers and AAPI-serving organizations to stand as a collective response. CPC’s advocacy resulted in gathering signatures from more than 207 human services organizations and over 1,500 workers to call on the Mayor and the city to prioritize human services that support the neighborhoods and populations who have been most significantly impacted by COVID-19. We centered our communities for recovery by developing an AAPI Neighborhood Recovery Plan. Thirty-two community-based organizations signed on and presented the plan to city and state government officials.
Our deepest gratitude
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Credits:
All photos provided by CPC and its staff with the permission of the subject.