Safety Awareness Workshop 2021
ISS and PbP Volunteers with Sokie Lee (safety awareness instructor) and some of the seniors who attended the last session we offered
Happy August! Anti-Asian hate has not subsided. If anything, it’s been getting worse as attacks continue in Chinatown. When we hosted our Protect Our Community event on May 22nd in Columbus Park to pass out free safety resources, we realized that many seniors surprisingly didn’t know why they needed safety alarms. In an effort to continue spreading awareness, we partnered with Immigrant Social Services (ISS) Inc. in July to host a safety awareness workshop for senior residents of Chung Pak LDC/Everlasting Pine HDFC low-income senior housing residence.
10 volunteers from Project by Project NY and ISS NY prepared packages with safety alarms, How to Report a Hate Crime leaflets, How to Stay Safe from Hate booklet from Asian American Federation, Hot Pot soup bases from Bullhead, and herbal teas from Brooklyn Crafted for over 100 households at 96 Baxter Street. In small groups, we went door to door to pass out the goodies to senior residents.
Packing all the goodies!
A flatlay of all the goodies we were able to curate for the seniors at 96 Baxter Street
Going door to door to pass out all the goodies
We also had the opportunity to brush up on our Cantonese, Taishanese, and Mandarin when explaining how to use the alarms and what goodies were in the bag. The seniors were grateful for the safety alarms for themselves and for their home attendants. Many of them were even more excited to be able to speak with our volunteer Jeany, who is multilingual! While passing out the goodies, we also had Sokie Lee, a local self-defense instructor, run two safety awareness workshops in parallel. The event allowed us to help keep our community safe and we are very thankful to ISS and Chung Pak for working with us to put a smile on the seniors’ faces. We had a great time volunteering and look forward to more to come!
Interested in getting involved? Let us know here & follow us on Instagram for more upcoming events!
Note: Photo credit to Andrew Yip