future
plans
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Ancient
Wisdom Project
Charity Cultural Services Center
(CCSC) began the Families In Transition (FIT) program in 1993 to support
these vulnerable youth. The ‘Ancient Wisdom’ project will fall
under the FIT program category. Since its inception, FIT has
consistently met or exceeded program goals, within funding parameters, as
evidenced by reports submitted to funders and the Mayor’s office of San
Francisco. Mayor Willie Brown writes: “…(the) FIT program is a model
in helping over 500 youths and parents to achieve in school and
successfully adjust to a new way of life here. We owe you… an enormous
debt for your great service.” Achievements include increasing youth's
success and/or abilities in the following areas: Grade Point Average,
communication skills, self-esteem and self-competence, decrease in
potential for violence, and increase in perceptions of a positive future.
CCSC's experience, knowledge, and understanding of the socio-cultural,
linguistic, and educational barriers Asians encounter when adjusting to a
new culture successfully moves Asian youth from a place of isolation to
full participation in American schools and society. All facilities
(schools, CCSC, etc.) are wheelchair accessible and comply with Americans
with Disabilities Act requirements.
Target Populations
The ‘Ancient Wisdom’ project will
serve the needs of the 1) direct participants: FIT youth and community
senior citizens, who are already within the scope of CCSC’s benevolent
program influence, and 2) consumer participants: other targeted Asian
youth and senior organizations across the state of California.
FIT youth and seniors from community
centers are both male and female, unbiased as to sexual orientation,
limited English proficient, recent and one-time immigrant, inner city,
Asian Americans from low-income backgrounds. The targeted consumer
participants will be of a similar orientation, although of a diverse
statewide localization. Although persons with physical disabilities will
not be specifically targeted, they will be mindfully and specifically
provided for.
Assets, Needs, Benefits and Challenges
According
to the 1999 and 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, “Asian Americans remain the
fastest growing racial/ethnic population in the U.S…. 80% of Asian
Americans reside in ten states [of which California is one]…35% of Asian
Americans live in linguistically isolated households, where no one aged 14
or older speaks English ‘very well’”.
Limited
English proficient, recent immigrant Asian youth in the San Francisco High
School system, isolated by language and cultural barriers, and raised in
low-income households, stand on the wrong side of the digital divide.
These children are growing up computer illiterate because they are
struggling just to become English language and American culture
proficient. Like all youth,
these children desperately desire to ‘fit in’. Without proper care
their potential for frustration and isolation is high, making them targets
of and at “high risk” for gangs and other street predators. The more
time they spend without culturally specific computer tutoring, the wider
the divide becomes, and the higher the chances that it will become an
insurmountable barrier in the way of success.
Furthermore, in their desire to fit in,
these youth are forced to leave their heritage and traditions behind.
American culture does not provide a reference or a record of the
significance of Asian American heritage. According to the recently
released, President’s Advisory Commission Interim Report, “Asian
Americans have been ‘MIH’- ‘Missing in History’ as taught in
classrooms, as reflected in the media and the arts and as understood by
government policy makers and program planners. In much of the data used by
the federal government, Asian Americans… are invisible, relegated to a
residual category of ‘Other’. Asian Americans… are challenged to
reclaim and re-insert their history, their stories, their faces, their
voices and their lives, into American history and America’s future.” The
electronic publishing of ‘Ancient Wisdom’, the ‘missing history’
of which the Report speaks, a readily available but unused asset of the
Asian elders in local senior centers, by FIT youth, will not only serve to
provide this ‘missing history’ on an immediate and visceral level, but
will contribute to the well-being of California society as a whole because
sympathetic organizations statewide will be notified and subsequently
enriched.
The senior citizens at On-Lok and Self
Help for the Elderly are all low-income and limited English proficient,
once-immigrant, Asian Americans. Age and cultural barriers isolate these
people, and an incentive to join the digital population, online, would
benefit them profoundly. According to Senior Net, “For many older
people, computers allow them to feel as if their world is still
expanding…to form new friendships and become more intellectually mobile.”
In order to connect someone to something they don’t know, you have to
give them something they do know. These seniors are most comfortable with
their own microcosmic historical tales. Publish those stories on the
Internet, and these people have a reason to log on. Everyone appreciates
his or her own ’15 minutes’ of fame.
According
to Tech Week, “the digital divide could well contribute to the rift
between rich and poor in America.” According to a federal study
released this summer, “Households with incomes of $75,000 and higher
are more than 20 times more likely to have access to the Internet than
those at the lowest income levels.” And according to the Economic
Policy Institute, “ the top 1 percent of the population saw its share
of the nation’s wealth rise from 33.8 percent in 1983 to 39.1 percent in
1997, while the bottom 95 percent experienced flat or falling growth in
wealth.” In other words, the poor will only become poorer, and never
bridge the divide, unless someone steps in.
CCSC has the resources in place to reach
these vulnerable San Franciscans. CCSC’s FIT program staff has the
skills necessary to surmount cultural and language barriers, and is
situated in a position of trust, by the target population, and armed with
the empathy necessary to guide this population towards new knowledge.
Program Approach
FIT’s
‘Ancient Wisdom’ project will serve the underserved limited English
proficient, recent and one-time immigrant, inner city, Asian American
youth and Seniors from low-income backgrounds by narrowing the digital
divide with an education and exposure process, and preserving and
promoting the ‘missing history’ of the Asian American through creation
and promotion of the ‘Ancient
Wisdom’ website.
Language
and cultural barriers will be removed by the use of language and
culturally specific personnel. Barriers to technology access will be
overcome with the provision of a computer lab in the safe and culturally
formulated surroundings of the CCSC building which FIT youth are already
familiar with. Because FIT youth are already offered high school credit
(2.5 per semester) for participation in the FIT program, participation in
‘Ancient Wisdom’ will be conducted with a curriculum, much like any
High School class.
Although Chinese Newcomer Services (no
relation to Newcomer High) offers computer literacy courses to families
and adults, currently, there is no program providing the ‘Ancient
Wisdom’ services to the students of Lincoln, Galileo, and Newcomer High
Schools in conjunction with On-Lok and Self Help for the Elderly senior
centers for the benefit of the greater California area. CCSC’s FIT
program already produces an annual FIT yearbook, and has demonstrated its
ability to self generate a website. The knowledge, personnel, space and
target population are already in place. With additional funding from the
Community Technology Foundation of California, ‘Ancient Wisdom’ can be
put into action!
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