By Anissa Gardizy Globe Staff,Updated March 23, 2021, 7:23 p.m.
A new fund has been launched in Chinatown, rooted in community partnerships and trust-based philanthropy, to help local restaurants and residents.
The idea was inspired by Luisa Peña Lyons and Elsa Gomes Bondlow, who run a Massachusetts-based philanthropic group called the Social Equity Access Fund, which focuses on equitable giving through partnerships. Luisa and Elsa, who identify as Latinx and Black women, reached out to Suzanne Lee, a well-known activist in the Asian-American community, and proposed a program that would award money to Chinatown restaurants, while also giving food vouchers to community members in need.
Lee, a former principal of the Josiah Quincy Elementary School and president emeritus of the Chinese Progressive Association, immediately jumped on board. She said she regularly hears from people who want to help Chinatown, but the proposal from Luisa and Elsa came with a significant funding commitment, and the freedom for organizations in the Asian community to determine how to spend it.
“It really showed that nobody wants to see Chinatown disappear,” Lee said. “It is real support, beyond rallying people to go out and eat.”
Lee contacted three community organizations to work out the details: the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, the Asian Community Development Corporation, and the Chinese Progressive Association. Those groups decided that the fund would launch as part of We Love Boston Chinatown, a resiliency fund and campaign which was started last summer to support businesses and residents during the pandemic.
Luisa said she knew the organizations “had the lens and the experience on the ground,” and would know how best to distribute funds. Often times, donations require nonprofits to process applications or report back to a donor, but she said that was not necessary for their donation.
“We are really intentional about power dynamics and making sure that anything we do is led by those that are most impacted,” said Luisa. “We want to support people in the community that are doing the work, without making it cumbersome for them.”
In April, the funds will be distributed to a number of small, family-owned restaurants in Chinatown, and residents in need will receive food vouchers worth $20 or $50 to visit those establishments. The effort is launching with an undisclosed amount of funding from the Social Equity Access Fund, the Shlomo Fund, and the Trefler Foundation.
Ben Hires, chief executive of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, said the groups are not disclosing the number of businesses receiving an award, but said they wanted “the money to be enough to make a difference.”
Since last year, restaurant sales in Chinatown have been down more than 80 percent, Lee said, adding that many owners missed out on government aid opportunities, either because they didn’t qualify or because the application process was inaccessible.
“We don’t know how long people can hang on, and that will forever change the character and the vibrancy of the historic core of Chinatown,” Lee said. “Only a few of them got a rent decrease, but the majority did not.”
Hires said the support, which comes from a diverse set of donors, means a lot to the Asian community.
“The fact that they reached out and wanted to help Chinatown was super amazing in terms multiracial support,” said Hires. “It has been inspirational and uplifting.”
Lee said that when business owners learned who was behind the initiative, “everybody was so thankful. They looked at me like, ‘Really, they are concerned about us?,’ and I said, ‘Yes they are.’”
Elsa said “we cannot ignore what is happening in another community as BIPOC people.”
“Being silent in a time like this is a privilege and it is complicity with hate . . . We are not going to do that,” she said.
Lee said the fund will focus on awarding money to family-owned restaurants, and in turn, giving food vouchers to residents, particularly service workers who remain unemployed.
“We are not so concerned about the big restaurants that might have a lot of capital, or international chains,” Lee said. “The folks who work in service industries, hotels, nail salons, small restaurants . . . that population has been hugely impacted.”
The restaurant initiative will continue to live under the umbrella of We Love Boston Chinatown, a larger effort to funnel support to the area. Additional donations to the restaurant fund can be made by organizations or individuals through the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center.
“We are going to launch a website pretty soon that is focused on Chinatown that will also provide information about the businesses,” Hires said. “A lot of people over the last few months have been asking how they can help Chinatown, but people haven’t been working in the city, so they don’t necessarily know which businesses are open or who is doing takeout.”
Anissa Gardizy can be reached at anissa.gardizy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @anissagardizy8.
