We are proud to announce that Youth4AM’s sixth annual Opening Ceremony was a great success. Our leadership and marketing team worked hard to invite all parents and students to get together and cultivate the next generation of Chinese students and leaders. Throughout the seminar, participants got to learn about the mission of Youth4AM, its goals, projects, as well as diverse opportunities available to prospective teacher assistants accepted into our Leadership Program, and the experiences of leaders in each of our departments: Academics, Administration, Business Development, IT, and Marketing. This year’s Opening Ceremony also featured the following: We welcomed over 100 attendees and numerous esteemed guests who spoke on the topic of equal educational opportunities.
Angela Hu - Co-Founder of New York Residents Alliance and Youth4AM
Angela Hu is one of the founders of the New York Residents Alliance 501(c)(3) and Youth4AM. Angela Hu is an advocate for the Chinese American community, supporting students in becoming future leaders beyond just academic success. She hopes to prepare students for forward-looking careers while building valuable skills. Her mission is to foster future Chinese American leaders. Tonight she spoke about Youth4AM’s mission and the purpose behind starting the organization.
“What [does] the New York Residents work for? It’s an organization to work for Chinese Americans equal rights, education, and safety.” She also gave insights on the meaning behind Youth4AM: raising youth for (4) America’s future. “Regardless [of] color skin, if you need to be successful, hardworking is an essential part. It’s a foundation. … We believe particularly in education, no politics should be involved, instead it should be merit based.” Lastly, Angela highlighted the many similar programs beyond the Youth4AM SHSAT bootcamp such as leadership, SUBP, and GENuine Connections™. She spoke about the responsibilities teacher assistants, as well as leadership members, should uphold. “When running this camp, you are learning from an actual experience to learn the project management skill.” This year, SUBP has been “expanded nationwide. The mission about this program [is to] prepare yourself with professional work…and enhance the competitiveness of ourselves, and learning from excellence regardless of origin.”
The Administration Department
As a member of Administration and the current manager in training, Andre Wang presented an overview of his department. The other member of this department, Erica Liu, is the TA Director, who has previously been in Academics and Marketing. Responsibilities within Administration include recruiting TAs and students, keeping track of finances, managing SYEP, and awarding the Senator’s Certificates and the Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA). Skills that are gained through working in this department include using effective spreadsheet formulas, managing financial aspects, and coordinating the rest of the program.
The Academics Department
The leaders of this department are Wendy Wang, Jeremy Shiu, Vicky Lin, and Yvonne Fong, all of whom have worked closely with this program for 3-4 years. Tonight, they presented their roles, responsibilities, and skills gained from their work. Members of Academics have the tasks to manage evaluations for TAs, TA leaders, and students, create midterm exams, send out report cards, track a weekly report, and produce classwork+homework materials. Skills that can be learned from this experience include utilizing google sheets, data analysis and interpretation, teamwork, and problem solving.
The IT Department
The IT Department is presented by Jennifer Chen, a current TA director and member of IT since 2022. Responsibilities within the IT department include maintaining all of Youth4AM’s internet dependencies, such as zowom meetings, sending out emails, managing the NYRA official website, keeping files in google drives organized, dealing with google form submissions, and troubleshooting technical issues. As a result, the team was able to integrate applications and forms into readable summarized data. Skills that one can gain from this department are organization, communication, maintenance, and troubleshooting. Future projects include planning to provide materials for members on the inner workings of Excel.
The Marketing Department
Pwesented again by Andre Wang, this final presentation showcases the aspects of Marketing. The main responsibilities include working with elected officials, setting up events such as orientation and the SHS seminar, and content creation for announcements and advertisement. As a result, the team is able to increase outreach and awareness in the community, gain comprehensive skills for future success, and help the program gain the recognition it deserves. Members are able to learn a diverse array of soft skills (ex. communication, teamwork, adaptability, problem solving, time management), and hard skills (ex. data analytics, graphic design, brand development, digital advertising, project management). Future goals of this department include marketing on media such as TV or newspapers, increasing social media engagement, writing community newsletters, and expanding the program’s influence.
The Business Development Department is fairly small and generally not open to TAs in Youth4AM, so there was no presentation. The Business Development focuses on developing and improving our program based on reports and statistics. It also works to seek out opportunities that will benefit Youth4AM.
Finally, participants got to hear invaluable advice and testimonials from each department’s director and our guest speakers. These guest speakers are officials who have been striving to further Asian American rights in public policy.
Yiatin Chu - President of Asian Wave Alliance; Co-Founder of PLACE NYC, Co-President
As the former Co-President and the Co-Founder of PLACE (Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education) NYC, she has helped open up numerous opportunities for the students of New York. She advocates for challenging academic courses for all students and believes all students, no matter their background, can succeed.
“I started with Youth4AM in its summer of 2019, I had just started at education advocate in March 2019 when I learned of former mayor de Blasio trying to eliminate the specialized high school test. I am an alum of Bronx High School of Science, and when i heard about this, you know, I obviously had to speak up and advocate for keeping the test and not let any policy hurt the opportunities, especially opportunities for all children, but certainly opportunities that would’ve really negatively affected a lot of the asian students in New York City. So I started in the summer of 2019 getting involved with Youth4AM because I thought it was a great cause. We are helping ourselves, help[ing] each other. …It was a fantastic experience….Beyond that, I am actually running for office now, I made the decision to go beyond being an advocate and actually have hopefully a power to make decisions about policies that affects so many lives of New Yorkers. I’m running for State Senate in my district in …Eastern…Queens.”
Donghui Zang - Co-Founder of New York Residents Alliance and Youth4AM
As one of the co-founders of the New York Residents Alliance and Youth4AM, Donghui Zhang believes strongly in the importance of education. Donghui Zhang has personally experienced the power of education, which through perseverance, he used to lift himself out of poverty. In return, he has become an advocate for education following his belief that everyone should have the same opportunities to live safely and thrive.
“As Yiatin just said, in the year 2018, the mayor de Blasio wanted to eliminate the test and [replace it with] … [the] top 7% students from the 8th grade automatically [to] get into [the] specialized high schools. …That’s just not going to work, and that’s not fair. So that’s not only hurting asian[s]…, but that’s also going to be passing a very wrong message to all the high school students thats working hard and studying hard…so that’s why many parents,…like myself, …started to protest,…to try to keep the SHSAT test. [The year] 2019 and 2020 was really very important years to keep the test so each of these two years the state assembly education committee, they actually passed the motion, they voted…the situation was really really dangerous, but because there was hundreds and thousands of parents stood up, speak up, so we got to keep the test. I really want to keep the test, cause the test is fair, is important, and also, not only the test is important, and to be fair, and to bring value, to the city, …but the test, I truly …[am] glad that this summer program, that this Youth4AM SHSAT summer program has 1 to 1 tutoring… so I really encourage the students of the SHSAT program to take advantage [of this] opportunity.”
Thank you so much to the speakers, students, parents, and TAs for making this event possible. We hope to see further growth in our leadership team and are optimistic that our continuing expansion will help to improve the quality of the program and train high school students in tutoring and management more cohesively. Youth4AM sincerely invites all parents to come out and cultivate the next generation of Chinese-American leaders. Thank you again to everyone who came! We hope that you have been inspired by the words of our many presenters and speakers today and that it encourages you to work hard towards success as well.
