When tragedy strikes on a large scale, we think of large sources of support. For example when an epic weather event strikes, FEMA responds.
When the Coronavirus pandemic hit, little help was available for Chinatown or was accessible to business owners here. The government was slow to respond and much of the aid available was hard for this immigrant community to access. Language was only part of the problem.
Private benefactors and innovative community partners stepped in to fill the funding void. The Social Equity Access Fund was born to support Chinatown suffering from pandemic losses, racism and xenophobia. It was based on the philanthropic model that Elsa Gomes Bondlow and Luisa Peña Lyons found successful in supporting bodegas when LatinX communities suffered.
Many Chinatown restaurants are founded in a traditional way: families pool money to get an enterprise off the ground. Much of these transactions are conducted, not through banks and loan officers but, through family relations doing what immigrant families have done throughout history. The funds to launch new businesses come from outside the normal banking system.
This worked fine until an unpredictable crisis like a global pandemic hits. Coming from a different system, traditional banks are unaware of these businesses, and family funders still expect to be repaid. Obligations like these can carry burdens more toxic than interest rates, or loan penalties; especially when things go south. Suppliers, landlords, employees–all still must be paid.
Lyons and Bondlow decided to form a 501 (c) (3) in order to support the We Love Boston Chinatown Campaign. They chose to focus on the locally owned family bakeries and restaurants, avoiding the chains with international backing. Local people helping local businesses was at the heart of their model. With the rise of racism and xenophobia, Lyons and Bondlow felt it was important to make a public statement. “Number one, it is important to say we value the AAPI community, we are here in solidarity and this is (current situation) is unacceptable. Number two, we are here to put some real dollars toward supporting this community, we respect them, and we are here to be allies.” said Lyons.
Both Lyons and Bondlow noted that the recent Boston Globe coverage could lead people to believe this support happened as a result of the Atlanta shootings but it’s important to note that it began before that shooting occurred.
In designing this new model, they intentionally linked local activists within the Chinatown community with the Chinatown restaurant owners. The partners noted that in general, funding support can be transactional and cumbersome. They wanted to promote a model of support that was more relational than traditional models, hoping that this might catch on in the philanthropic space. The Social Equity Action Fund also has at its core the notion that AAPI and BIPOC allies can be in the position of funders, not just recipients, of aid. This is a fundamental value of this model.
Angie Liou, Executive Director of Chinatown’s Asian Community Development Corp., said, “I think Luisa (Lyons) and Elsa’s (Bondlow) funding model is great – it is trust-based and relies on relationships with local communities. It’s a model that upends the normal power dynamics between funders and grantees, and places much more autonomy and power with the community organizations by trusting that they know best their community’s needs and the solutions to address them.”
Still, persuading local business owners to participate took someone from the community, with established credibility, Suzanne Lee, to explain how this particular form of aid would happen. Vouchers were printed in $50 and $20 amounts, and community organizations like Asian Community Development Corporation and Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) who had the knowledge of which families were in need, were offered $50 vouchers to use in restaurants and $20 vouchers to use in bakeries. A family of four could get four vouchers.
Every restaurant and bakery approached to participate said yes. Community organizations drew on their knowledge of the families most likely in need. This put food on the table of the families in need, while putting money in the hands of the businesses in need.
All vouchers have been distributed as of press time. As Lee canvassed the neighborhood recently, to ensure all were aware of the mobile vaccine clinic at the Wang Center, every establishment she visited had seen vouchers. Her hope is that these new customer-store relationships enabled by the Social Equity Access Fund have seeded the beginning of new growth for Chinatown’s suffering businesses.
This represents a significant shift in the traditional top-down, outside-in models. Providing direct aid to both families and businesses in the communities in need, building trust in relationships rather than forms and documents; this could be a model whose time has come. At least for now, it seems to be working in Chinatown.
