THE 2010 APA Heritage Awards Finalists

Harriet Hu is the president of Adopt-An-Alleyway Youth Empowerment Project, a youth-initiated service group that promotes environmental cleanliness and cross-generational connections. Harriet has helped build a program that connects seniors, mainly living in single-room occupancy (SRO) in Chinatown, with the younger generation so that the seniors can experience life beyond language barriers.

A youth leader, Harriet has organized a district-wide youth summit, introducing Asian American issues through inspirational speakers, and performers. The workshops that Harriet facilitated has helped over seventy high school youth to explore issues such as immigration and community stereotypes, inspiring Asian American youth to spearhead change within their community.

In an effort to fight for multi-cultural solidarity, Harriett has also joined the Campaign Academy, a youth-run, youth-led advocacy group which taught her campaign tactics to fight for an Ethnic Studies curriculum in SFUSD.

Thomas Li is the President of the San Francisco State University Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, a national fraternity devoted to community. A native San Franciscan, Thomas has participated in at least two service projects per week since 2007. He is currently a Sophomore student pursuing a degree in marketing.

Thomas has been active in the community at a young age and has volunteered for countless Bay Area nonprofits. Graphic and web design has always been a passion for Thomas. One of his distinguished contributions was his service as Online Chair of the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life for the past 5 years.

In addition, Thomas has volunteered his design skills for countless Bay Area non-profits, building websites for Chinatown Neighborhood Center, North Beach Neighborhood Association, American Orient Performing Arts and Miss Asian America Pageant. Thomas Li is also the Projects Coordinator at Community Youth Center, spearheading the Computer Clubhouse afterschool program to teach Asian youth media arts like graphic and web design twice a week.

Anna Liu is a senior at Galileo High School and a fellowship leader at Cumberland Presbyterian Chinese Church. She and her brother were raised in a single-parent home by her mother who is mentally disabled, and she saw first hand how illnesses, limited education, and limited income affected life outcomes.

Anna joined the Adopt-An-Alleyway Youth Empowerment Project (AAA) in her freshman year of high school. Through this youth-led, youth-run program, she was able to give back to the community through interaction with low income seniors, children, and especially taking care of the alleyways.

In her junior year, Anna also joined Chinatown Alleyway Tours (CATs) and became a tour guide giving her personalized tours around Chinatown and sharing stories with those who will help keep history alive for generations to come.

Jane Xiao is a senior at Abraham Lincoln High School and elected president of the Chinatown Alleyway Tours. This program gives participating youth an opportunity to provide information to tour attendees about the issues and Chinese American history in San Francisco. A program that Jane has joined since the beginning of tenth grade, Jane has demonstrated public speaking and leadership skills in her active involvement through the years.

A youth leader and an advocate for change, Jane recognized the importance of maintaining and working with community ties. She is also an active member of the Community Youth Center’s Dragon Boat Team and SMART (Students Modeling A Research Topic), which gives high school students the opportunity to conduct science research.

Dr. Edward Chow has been an internist in private practice for over 40 years in San Francisco and has been addressing health disparities at both a national and local level.

For over twenty five years, Dr. Chow has worked with Chinese Hospital and the Chinese Community Health Care Association to create the nation’s first and only bilingual and culturally competent health plan, the Chinese Community Health Plan (CCHP.) He also spearheaded the creation of the Chinese Community Health Resource Center, providing Chinese bilingual educational programs, publications, and research nationally. Today, this integrated system serves over 30,000 San Franciscans through CCHP and six other plans including being the only private practice system participating in Healthy San Francisco.

Dr. Chow is currently the Vice President of the San Francisco Health Commission. Having served on the Commission for over 20 years, Dr. Chow continues to advocate for the healthcare needs of the Asian community, including: requiring culturally competent programs to meet our needs, sustaining the Chinatown Public Health Center, rebuilding Laguna Honda and San Francisco General Hospital, and encouraging county support for the Hep B Free Program.

Thuy Ngoc Doan is the Program Director of the Vietnamese Community Center of San Francisco, where he previously served as Executive Director for three years from 2006 to 2009. During his tenure as Executive Director, Thuy Doan created an ESL program that teaches survival English skills to refugees and immigrants, focusing in topics such as health rights, financial literacy, and citizenship. He also helped create the Health Literacy Forum in coordination with UCSF’s Vulnerable Populations and SFSU in June 2007. This program provides an opportunity for dialogue between community-based adult ESL programs, ethnic media journalists, medical researchers, and public health professionals. One of the distinct results of this program is the development of a drug information comprehension study with the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at UCSF, which leads to the development of drug labels in Vietnamese language that can be used in retail pharmacies.

Arriving as a Vietnamese refugee to the United States in 1980, Thuy Doan is a devoted advocate for empowering the disenfranchised through education. His has been actively involved in the community including with the Asian Week Foundation, the Miss National Asia Pageant, San Francisco State University’s English Department/ MA TESOL Program, and the Vietnamese Lunar New Year Tết Committee, to name a few.

Mai Mai Ho is the former Executive Director of the APA Family Support Services (APA.) The mission of this San Francisco nonprofit organization is to promote healthy Asian/Pacific Islander children and families by providing family support services to prevent child abuse and domestic violence. During her tenure, Mai Mai Ho was able to bring together 27 public and private organizations to form a unique collaboration, the API Family Resources Network (APIFRN.) This community consortium delivers culturally competent family support services to 8 API groups in 6 San Francisco neighborhoods. It also successfully incubated 3 grassroots South East Asian organizations, which were able to open their offices in the Tenderloin. APIFRN is now in its 11th year of operation and continues to serve the diverse needs of the API communities in San Francisco. Mai Mai Ho’s dedicated leadership and community service have played a distinct role in improving family support services of the Asian Pacific American community.

Founded in 1987 as a grassroots response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the Asian and Pacific Islander community, the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center (APIWC) is a health services, education, research, and policy organization. Its mission is to educate, support, empower and advocate for Asian and Pacific Islander (A&PI) communities, and particularly for those living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS. As the oldest North American nonprofit that focuses on A&PI communities around sexual health and HIV/AIDS services, APIWC has been effective in putting innovative, holistic and effective programs and services in place that benefit all communities of color in San Francisco.

In addition to health and counseling services, the organization has launched numerous innovative initiatives to fight stigma as well as promote generational understanding of issues within Asian Pacific American families.

In 1996, a handful of paddlers came together with the vision to build an organization to foster the growth and development of dragon boating in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each had little experience in starting up a non-profit organization and most were relatively new to the sport themselves. With only commitment and their faith in dragon-boating becoming a great activity for the community, they moved forward to promote a sport most people knew little about and in an area that is already saturated with team sports.

2010 will mark the 5th anniversary of the San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival on Treasure Island. With the continued growth of dragon boating in the Bay Area, the California Dragon Boat Association has been successful in promoting team work and community involvement in all ages, bringing together diverse communities.

Founded in 1972 in the International Hotel, Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) is the oldest APA multidisciplinary arts organization in the nation. The mission of KSW is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities, and to achieve a more just society by connecting APA artists with community members to give voice to our cultural, historical, and contemporary issues.

For the past 38 years, KSW has nurtured the creative spirit of our community, offered an important platform for new voices to be heard, and connected artists with audience members. KSW past programs include the Asian American Jazz Festival (produced for 17 years with the Asian Art Museum), silkscreen posters, visual art exhibits, workshops, and large-scale murals. KSW Press was one of the first outlets for the publication of APA literature. KSW’s current emphasis is on multi-ethnic, intergenerational, innovative and engaging arts programming.

Four words to describe Asian Student Union (ASU) would be leadership, teamwork, awareness, and empowerment. For the past 36 years, ASU has been contributing to the community by providing community service and leadership development opportunities for students.

ASU has an internship program in which members learn more in-depth about the Asian American community and create workshops to educate others on issues. Community service events such as Relay for Life and Tet Festival help ASU members work together to accomplish their goals. The ASU also provides a forum to showcase Asian-American talents through events such as Chicken Soup for the Asian American Soul and API: Movements of Heritage, where proceeds are donated to charitable and community causes including as LiNK (Liberty in North Korea) and Ondoy Relief.

Edwin Lee was sworn in as City Administrator of the City and County of San Francisco in June 2005. Mr. Lee came to this position with a long history and established reputation in city government, having served in various in various capacities under four mayors. In 1989, Mayor Art Agnos appointed Mr. Lee as the Deputy Director of Employee Relations and in 1991, as Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission.

In 1996, Mayor Willie Brown named Mr. Lee the Director of City Purchasing and in 2000, appointed him as the Director of the Department of Public Works.

Among his many accomplishments as the City Administrator, Mr. Lee produced the City’s first 10-year Capital Infrastructure Improvement Plan, created a new General Services Agency as a more efficient structure to administer San Francisco Government, and established a Chief Information Officer structure to govern technology development for the City. Prior to his government service, Mr. Lee is the Managing Attorney for the Asian Law Caucus.

Sandy Ouye Mori is a founding member and immediate past Development Director of Kimochi, Inc., from which she retired in December 2009. Kimochi is a non-profit community-based organization serving Japanese American and Japanese-speaking seniors in Northern California and San Francisco’s Western Addition/Richmond/Sunset districts. Prior to Kimochi, Mrs. Mori was the Executive Secretary to the San Francisco Health Commission, a position she held for 14 years.

Through the years, Mrs. Mori has dedicated much time to serving the community. She made history when the Late Mayor George Moscone appointed her to the Commission on Status of Women and she became the first Asian American woman to chair a City Commission in 1979. Mrs. Mori is currently the Co-Chair of the San Francisco Long Term Care Coordinating Council and Board Chair of the Japantown Task Force. Some of her former board positions include organizations such as SPUR, United Way San Francisco County Leadership Board, Citywide Contract Reform Task Force and Glide Community Housing.

Vicky Wong is President and CEO of DAE Advertising, a full service advertising firm that helps clients to build brand equity in the Asian American market. With over 20 years of experience in advertising, Ms. Wong has been recognized as an expert in providing strategic advice to businesses and organizations whose objectives include the Asian American market.

In addition to being a pioneer and a leader in her profession, Ms. Wong also cares deeply about issues impacting the Asian Pacific American community. She is currently a director on the board of Pacific Asian American Bay Area Coalition (PAAWBAC) as well as the Asian Pacific Fund. Under her stewardship, DAE Advertising has played a pivotal role in promoting public awareness of important causes, including the annual celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, hepatitis B, cancer and diabetes.