Chinese Newcomers Service Center Fall 2014

The University of San Francisco’s Public Service Internship Program provides a great opportunity to students, who want to be a volunteer and a helper for all different cultural community. This Fall 2014, they again opens an internship for all students, who are willing to devote their time and skills to the Chinese Newcomers Service Center. This internship will allow me not only to help the Chinese community with my skills learned from the school, but also allow me to improve my abilities with the experience from the nonprofit organization.

My name is Zhenhua Wang and I am a senior student majoring marketing. My major goal of this internship is to implement the knowledge and skills that I learned from the past years at USF to help the community. I believe the PSIP program could help me to do so by allowing me to get involve with the real world, and encourage me to contribute my skills to help more people in the community. On the other hand, as a Chinese international student, I feel more confident and passion to help the new Chinese immigrants with my language ability, thus I applied this internship.

Chinese Newcomers Service Center (CNSC) was established in the summer of 1969 by the International Institute of San Francisco in collaboration with Chinatown North Beach community leaders. The Chinese Newcomers Service Center (CNSC) is a non-profit organization which provides multilingual services that help Chinese Immigrants adapt to life in the United States.  CNSC serves as a bridge between the two cultures, enhancing the physical, mental, social and economic well-being of immigrants, thus facilitating their efforts to become self-sufficient contributing members of the community.

The main work I will be doing is to assist the organization in some projects, events and activities. The main project I will be assigned was the Stockton Street Sweep – Keep Chinatown Clean. The program funded by City and County of San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, Supervisor David Chiu, Board of Supervisors and Office of Economic and Workforce Development. This project provides temporary jobs and job training opportunities for local residents and a community effort to KEEP CHINATOWN CLEAN, it will lasts from August 2014 through July 2015. The project provides the services of weekly sweeping and pressure washing of Stockton Streets from the tunnel to Broadway. Opt-in monthly window/awning washing of storefront windows at designated times and locations. Streets will be cleaned on Friday evenings, and extra days during Chinese New Year’s period, which will comply with the DPW sidewalk codes.

CNSC Progress Report #1

October 26th, 2014

It’s my seventh week since I worked with the Chinese Newcomers Service Center. Time flies while I was volunteering at the CNSC, I not only helped many new Chinese immigrants, but also I experienced some challenges and triumphs. The most difficult thing that challenge me was the language barrier. Even though I can speak both Mandarin and Cantonese, the most immigrants came from Taishan, a city that has their own dialect. Thus, the dialect limits corresponding communication between the dialect speakers and I. In addition, many people came to CNSC for various request and helps such as letter reading, asking which bus route they should take, filling out all different forms, phone bill problems etc. The various requests indeed challenged my ability of  multitasks.The most important thing is to know how to communicate well with people especially some of them were impatient and stubborn. However, as what I learned from my marketing classes I should treat them as my customers, also listening what they really need.

A Monday morning, a old lady came to us and asked for help of replacing her lost senior Clipper. So, I helped her to call the customer service and asked the representative to replace a new Clipper. Although this was a small easy thing to do, the old lady was so happy , and she appreciated my help. At that moment, I really felt pleased that I could help a non-profit organization especially for the Chinese new immigrants and the elderly people. The CNSC held the 22nd annual Emperor and Empress Charity Gala on October 24th. I was assigned to help to set up the event at the Empress of China in Chinatown. I was working with the staffs and other volunteers. It was my first time to organize a such big public event, and it required a lot of teamworks. Thus, I recalled some concepts and skills that I learned from my Management and Organizational Dynamics class. When I was doing the packaging bags giving out to the guests, there were some group-thinks occurred that eventually ignored some other important aspects. So, I thought was a good idea that ask the volunteers to provide their own suggestions in order to improve the efficiency of packaging. The result eventually turned out to be more efficient and better. The Charity Gala was a great night, and I was happy to learn more skills and build up my social networks while I was helping to organize the event.