MtgNotesNov2208

Meeting notes for meeting on 11/22/08.

Attendees: John Downey, Jimmy Wong, Frank Chan, Betty Yau and Ankur Tandon

Meeting was called to order at 10:15am by co-chairmen, Jimmy Wong & John Downey.

During the meeting, we continued discussing about our advisory role.

Our advices on:

Interpreting Services

1.         If no quality interpretation/ translation can be arranged, message should be kept in English only.

2.         We would like to see each organization to provide own interpretation service for events/ occasions that would be attended by significant number of non-English speaking participants.

3.         We hope to see that the City could coordinate a negotiation of a contract with interpreting service agencies to ensure quality of services and to bargain a good rate for all.

4.         We will research resources for interpretation/ translation services. All research results will be posted on our web: http://www.quincyasian.org

Public Hearings

We agreed that the process to hold public hearing is fair. We are glad that many Asian community members attended and participated in the several recent public hearings. It has been a learning process for the entire community. Our role would be to keep informing community members of happenings in Quincy City and to encourage participation.  

About how we can engage/ empower Chinese-Americans to be more involved in civic matters:

We will continue to stimulate dialogues in the community on challenges facing Quincy residents. We hope to increase interest in issues that are not necessarily about language and cultural differences. Issues we talked about

-          political canvassing

-          recycling awareness

-          pubic safety/ neighborhood crime watch

-          U.S. Census participation

-          At-large community event participation, such as Flag Day parade, Christmas parade, veteran parade … etc.

-          Public meeting/ event norms and manners

-          Media/ community relations (outreach plan to introduce our existence and importance)

Mandarin classes:

We have 4 people signed up for course A and 2 people signed up for course B.

Classes will possibly begin in Feb or Mar of next year in 2009. For more details, please click:

http://www.quincyasian.org

Web site overhaul:

We will sign up a new web host for the new web site designed by Ankur Tandon. Things are moving along. A new web site will soon be in operation.

Next meeting:

Sat., Dec 20, 2008, 10:00am  (Meeting CANCELLED due to SNOW emergency)

at N. Quincy Community Center,

381 Hancock St., N. Quincy

next to the N. Quinc y Thomas Crane Library

Meeting adjourned at 11:30am.

Respectfully submitted,

Betty Yau