Programs

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Festival
OCA Greater Philadelphia has been an active participant in the Philadelphia Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Festival for many of the past years. The festival is usually held in late May (Asian Pacific American Heritage Month) at the Franklin Square, a park near the Philadelphia Chinatown and Historic Districts. Every year thousands of families and community members come out to enjoy Asian Cultural Performances, Martial Arts Demonstrations, the new to 2010 Health Fair, Childrens Fair, and delicious Asian foods.

For the past several years, OCA-GP has chaired the Children's fair committee bringing together dozens of organizations to provide, arts, crafts, games, and activities geared toward school-aged children.

In addition, starting in 2010, OCA-GP helped to initiate the first health fair at the festival, with volunteers from Jefferson Medical School (and the Chinatown Free Clinic), the University of Pennsylvania Dental School, as well as representatives from the Cammy Lee Leukemia Foundation, and others.

Bone Marrow Drives
In November 2009, OCA-GP partnered with the Cammy Lee Leukemia Foundation, Chinese Christian Church, Chinese Freemasons of Philadelphia, and the National Association of Asian American Professionals to run a bone marrow registration drive. Many Asian-American leukemia patients have a very difficult chance of finding an appropriate bone marrow match, however their chances are ten times better within the Asian American comunity. Registering is easy and painless (fill out a form and provide a mouth swab sample).

OCA is planning to continue to run these donation drives on a yearly basis.

Youth 'Life Skills' Workshops
After the horrific school violence in South Philadelphia High School in December 2009, OCA-GP started a grassroots program to help connect young professionals with the underserved Asian American youth in Philadelphia. By partnering with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation's Teen Club Program (and in the future hopefully other Asian American direct service organizations that work with youth), OCA-GP members have taught workshops on After High School Planning and Applying to Scholarships, with planned workshops on Taking Care of Your Health, and Basic Personal Finances.

OCA-GP is looking for any interested volunteers to spend time working with the youth in our community, many whom were courageous in boycotting their school in order to force the school and school district administrators to do more to ensure their safety.

Race Dialogues
In June of 2010, OCA-GP kicked off the Race Dialogues program. The purpose of the program is to enable parents and children to have positive and affirming conversations on topics of race. The program is geared towards families with school-aged children and takes special consideration for families raising multi-racial or transracial children.

For this first event, two discussions were facilitated by OCA-GP volunteers using the books "American Born Chinese" by Gene Luen Yang and "Let’s Talk about Race" by Julius Lester.

OCA is planning to continue to run these discussions on a quarterly basis, and is looking for more volunteers interested in guiding parents and children exploring the concepts of race and identity.

Mid-Autumn Festival (Autumn Moon)
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese people (albeit in slightly different ways). Also known as the Lantern Festival or the Mooncake Festival. One of the main legends associated with the Mid-Autumn festival is the story of Chang-e / the Rabbit on the Moon. (Next time you look up at a full moon, look for a shape that looks like a rabbit pounding medicine or mochi rice cakes). OCA has participated in this celebration with the Chinese For Families Chinese School as well as the Hometown China boutique in performing traditional style puppet-show explaining this story.