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Grantee Partner Spotlight: Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community

Features
By Mark Hallett, Director of Grants Programs

Read Time 9 minutes
November 18, 2024

Founded in 1998, the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC) unites the resources of member organizations and individual members to empower Chinese American communities in Greater Chicago. It carries out its mission through civic education, issue advocacy, communication with policymakers, and community mobilization.

The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community received an Illinois Humanities Action Grant for a project called “Solidarity in Storytelling,” which builds upon previous work with youth during other Solidarity Projects.

The “Solidarity in Storytelling” project aims to facilitate youth leadership and communications skills, facilitate cross-cultural dialog, build solidarity across racial lines, and help youth reflect upon themselves and their respective cultures through dialogue and storytelling.

In the project, storyteller Ada Cheng worked with 15-20 youths to create their own stories, learn storytelling, and share their stories at a public showcase. The project ran from June through August 2024.

In the following Q&A, read more about this project and the organization.

A Q&A with Elizabeth Eisenlohr and Sarah Tang

The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community's Youth & Volunteer Coordinator and the Assistant Director of Programs

Please describe the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community. What are its mission and major programs?

Sarah Tang: The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC) is a civic education and policy advocacy organization.

Founded in 1998, our mission is to leverage resources available to uplift the Chinese American community in the greater Chicago area.

We have three main areas of programming, Civic Education and Voter Engagement, Civic Leadership, and Community Planning.

In 2015, we completed the Chinatown Vision Plan, and have followed its recommendations since then to advocate for resources for the greater Chinatown community, like advocating for the library and field house, in addition to creative placemaking work.

GS CBCAC Sarah Tang Elizabeth Eisenlohr and Ada Cheng — L-R: Sarah Tang, CBCAC's Assistant Director of Programs; Elizabeth Eisenlohr, CBCAC's Youth and Volunteer Coordinator; and Dr. Ada Cheng, “Solidarity in Storytelling” Project Consultant

Please describe the genesis of the program that Illinois Humanities funded. How did the idea arise? With whom did it aim to engage? What kind of need did you see it filling?

Sarah Tang: The program funded by Illinois Humanities was "Solidarity in Storytelling," in which we had the pleasure of working with Dr. Ada Cheng.

The goal was to bring storytelling to Chinatown’s youth and provide them with a space to tell their stories of identity. We recruited high school youth from Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods like Bridgeport and Pilsen. We provided a three-week program where they could formulate their stories of identity and share them with the community.

Elizabeth Eisenlohr: The program was based on a need we heard from the youth – a desire to express themselves. We have had a large focus on identity discussions within our Origins youth program, in which we have heard a lot of positive feedback from the youth: how it's important to have a safe space where they feel like they can talk about their experiences and watch media that resonates with them. Providing a safe space and relevant content has made a tangible impact. They are working through complicated issues, like “Who am I?” “What is my relationship with my parents like?” “What is my relationship with myself like?” “Who do I want to be?” Realizing the gap in creating this sort of space for youth, in Chinatown specifically, it became our main goal to provide a space for students to do just that.

But, we also knew that getting a larger demographic of youth, not just Chinese American youth, would be helpful because a lot of the youth want to collaborate with other people. So we offered up that safe space not just for one demographic but for multiple, to learn about other cultures that they maybe hadn’t thought about before.

So that’s how this program came to be, with a focus on identity and cultural storytelling, but also being able to hear from other people who aren’t like you, but whose stories have a little bit of you in them.

GS CBCAC Audrey Speaking — Audrey, youth participant

Now that the project has come to fruition, what went the way you expected it to, and what took turns you didn’t anticipate? In other words, what did you learn from carrying out this work?

Elizabeth Eisenlohr: In terms of what the workshops and showcases were like, I would say honestly really emotional. It felt vulnerable. It was an intimate space where students shared some huge feelings; we had students who cried while telling their stories. They talked about deaths in their families and difficult relationships with their parents and with significant others.

We’ve only had two programs, but we’ve seen a lot of growth already in terms of how comfortable the youth are, in feeling safe, expressing themselves, and working through past trauma or experiences. This was really beautiful.

Sarah Tang: I think Liz [Elizabeth Eisenlohr] expressed this really well. And it was special for us to hold this in a public space. We hosted it in a tea café that we support in Chinatown, a small business incubator that the CBCAC supports. People could come in and out – this is one of those things that doesn’t happen a lot in Chinatown, where people can come and listen to each other in public.

How much of this work built on what you were already doing, or already comfortable doing, and how much of it was you taking a step into something brand new? And along those lines, what was it like to work with Dr. Ada Cheng on this?

Elizabeth Eisenlohr: Ada and I had several conversations because the youth were sharing topics that we don’t normally deal with. I work pretty hands-on with the youth, but we don’t generally go into deep topics about relationships with parents, relationships outside of school, things of that nature, and all of a sudden we have a group of youth who are pouring their hearts out. This was more focused and in-depth than the general ‘let’s hang out and share our stories’ and more along the lines of ‘these are things we need to work through.’

We wanted to make sure that we were providing the youth with the best resources possible, which is where Ada comes in. She didn’t need to come in and assist in that sort of way, but she did. She’s a very comforting person. She’s a very easy person to talk to, and that you can open up to. She also cared so greatly about the youth, which was refreshing and made the situations a lot easier to deal with because we were all sort of on the same page.

Sarah Tang: Ada always starts the program talking about her own story, coming to terms with her own identity, and saying that you have to set the course of your life. This is her passion and what drives her so she creates a space that feels vulnerable and safe immediately. In the future, we would think about having trained therapists on call for students who might have experienced something really traumatic. They might have access to some of these resources at school, but if they don’t have access to this kind of emotional vulnerability at school, then they’re not going to access those resources in that space. So yes, it definitely came to light for us that in the next iteration, we would have some additional resources built into the program.

GS CBCAC Maggie Speaking — Maggie, youth participant

Elizabeth Eisenhlohr: And remember that some of what we are talking about is not textbook “traumatizing”, it could simply be something that a 15-year-old doesn’t know how to deal with, or does not have the skill set to deal with. And so this space is a place where – and we discussed this with Ada - they might say ‘This happened, but it is okay’, and we might respond ‘Well, let’s talk about it, because it’s not okay,’ because they are still incidents that might not be the biggest problem in the world, but nonetheless they are a problem, and clearly shaped how the youth think and feel about themselves or their family.

About Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC)

The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community unites the resources of member organizations and individual members to empower Chinese American communities in Greater Chicago. As a coalition of member organizations and individuals, CBCAC carries out its mission through civic education, issue advocacy, communication with policymakers, and community mobilization.

The CBCAC has three areas of focus: Civic Engagement, Community Planning & Development, and Civic Leadership Development. Since 2000, they have worked to register voters and get out the vote in Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods. In 2010 and 2020 they worked to get people to fill out Census information. They also regularly host community meetings and town halls with candidates and elected officials.

The CBCAC completed the award-winning Chinatown Vision Plan with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning in 2015. They are the lead organization for the Chinatown Corridor Ambassadors Program. They host digital literacy and financial literacy workshops. They have done community planning and supported business growth through the Chicago Community Trust's Great Rivers Project. They host a regular youth group called Origins. Origin members identify and implement civic projects and participate in cross-cultural and multi-generational programming that helps them better understand themselves and others.

Follow @CBCAC: Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn

About the Grantee Partner Spotlight Series

Illinois Humanities highlights the work of our Grants partners through our monthly Grantee Partner Spotlight. It shines a light on our grantee partners' work and allows readers to get to know them better through a Q&A with members of the organization. Read more by browsing the "Grantee Partner Spotlight" series here.

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