>> welcome to "beyond the headlines." i'm cheryl jennings. we have a special roundtable in recognition of asian americans

month. in may of 1843 and we're marking the 1869 anniversary of a completion of the transcontinental railroad. chinese immigrants did most of the work laying the tracks. kristen zee is in our bay area asian community. >> here's some data we want to give you from the last u.s. the senses in 2010. asian-americans were the fastest growing racial group in the country with 17.3 million people or 5.6% of the population. here in the bay area the numbers are even higher. about 23.6% of our residents which is 1.7 million people. today we're joined by community advocates who are working really hard to improve the social welfare of our bay area community. we're lucky to have lisa, a social entrepreneur and founder of the executive director of the

nonprofit, help a mother out. david chi is a board member and chair of the speak and lead program. and maralee. intelligent group. >> well of course, we're asian people. >> all right. thank you so much for joining us. lisa, tell us about help a mother out. what does it do? >> it's a bay area nonprofit and our mission is to improve the baby and parent well-being by getting diapers to families in need. >> tell us about that, diapers, how do you recognize there was such a great need for that? >> five years ago is when we started the organization and i was watching an oprah winfrey show about the great recession and about nearly homeless families and decided to help the

bay area. when a friend of mine and i started reaching out to shelters we found out that the number one need was diapers which are not covered by feed stamps or wic. >> so you partner with social service agencies in order to deliver the diapers? >> yes. we don't give diapers out to individuals because if you are a family in need of diapers you're probably in need of other services. so we see our diapers as a gate way to bring hope to the families but also hook them up with existing social service partners. >> tell us about that. sometimes in discovering that they have the poverty issue and they're struggling to receive diapers and meet their baby's needs, you also discovered deeper families sometimes in the home and get service to them that way. tell us about what else you discover in the process of working with them. >> well, it's really interesting because we have 13 bay area organizations in five counties. most of our partners are early

head start programs that do home visitation, parent support programs where they have weekly parent groups that really empower parents to build community within their own peer networks. so we see the diapers as a way to increase enrollment and participation within those programs. >> now, let's talk about the asian american community with regard to the need for diapers or perhaps any cultural obstacles about cloth diapers. what's going on there? >> we partner with two organizations in the bay area that specifically do outreach to apa families. we found that we distribute both disposable and cloth diapers to those families. we found that within apa communities, especially with immigrant families, community is very important, building community within those groups is

really important and so the diapers are used as an insensitive to increase enrollment and participation and get families to come to the center so they can build community and so that the program staff can actually also keep tabs on intake families that may not have that support and that network because they're recent immigrants. >> it's also a way to get them help, whether it's job support, resume seeking and that kind of stuff that they get help with. that's great. is there a cultural reluctance to accept help? do you see that among the asian-americans who are in need of diapers? >> that's a really good question. i think that there is a reluctance to -- joining a new group is really hard for any sort of new comer, but when you have an insensitive like diapers, that builds community and gets families to come and maybe meet other moms that are in the same position as them.

they may be from different towns in the same country but transplanted in california so it sort of builds community and allows the program staff to make interventions if there are any. >> sometimes i think in the bay area there is the perception of asian american wealth because those are the ones who come to light, the successful ones. through your work you've identified a real need there. is it sometimes you see the choice between getting diapers versus getting food on the ta e table? >> oh, absolutely. there's no safety net for diapers. you cannot buy diapers with food stamps or wic so that's really -- it's an inequality within the safety net. i think within the asian-american community it's really hard to ask for help and it's hard to build a community when you are isolated. >> how can viewers help? let's say they feel like they

would be part of your effort to raise diapers. what can they do? >> there's three key points in the calendar that we try to get out the word to the general public. mother's day is a big campaign for us, as diaper need awareness week which is the second week in september every year as well as during the holidays. >> i have to say i know about your fundraisers as mc them. we have to take a breaackwhen w discussion with our other guests so please stay with us.

>> welcome back to "beyond the headlines." we're having a roundtable discussion about issues relating to our asian communities. thank you for coming in.

now you're in the hot seat. all right, maralee, filipino women's network, we know you have several important issues that you work on in particular, domestic violence and human trafficking, tell us about the extent of those problems. >> in 2000 there was a young woman who was murdered in front of her two young children. that murder wasn't solved for many years, so our organization decided to get behind that. in order to raise awareness about domestic violence at home, we put on the vagina monologue with an all filipino women cast. what we discovered was that there was really a lot of resistance about us talking about domestic violence at home. so for a while they were calling me the vagina lady because i dared to seen get our community to talk about it. it's a lot better now. now human trafficking is on the rise. last year we put on a conference on child sex trafficking. it's really amazing because a

lot of these gangsters i guess or individuals would prefer to not sell guns and drugs because it's easier to have four women that they can traffic. you translate it about ten ti tricks a day at $50 is almost $750,000 a year tax-free. >> in addition to raising awareness, what else can we do to stop it? >> i think it's very important that we take action, that we talk to our neighbors. it's also important to find out what the signs are about domestic violence because there was a program by one school where they said instead of don't be a bystander, be an upstander. many times we feel like we don't want to say anything because they don't know the issues or they're afraid but we need courage in our community to speak up and say, are you going through something, can i talk to

you, and also to find out that there are a lot of resources in the bay area. >> speaking of courage, you were searching for the 100 most influential filipinos in the world. tell us about that. you should be one by the >> i'm tway. >> i'm the founder so i can't. one of the programs that we started is to mentor the next generation of filipino women. we wanted to select who are the accomplished women who can mentor these women. we selected the 100 influential filipino women. so we have a match online program. we're global now so anyone in the world can sign up. it's a six-month partnership where they can actually talk, e-mail, skype, google, hang out,

and they will have to indicate two or three issues that they want help with. >> what an innovative idea who award someone for something they will do in their future. i like that. also your work extends outside of the u.s. there's a conference. >> yes. there's a conference, a first filipino summit. for the first time we're doing it in our home country october 5th to the 8th. we have members from ten countries. that's really exciting because many of our members have not been back to the philippines. our team is actually disrupt so we say be proud, be loud and leave no doubt. so we are ourselvealling oursel filipino disrupters. if you would think about it many filipino women and asian men and women left their home countries to immigrate to another country and disrupted their lives and careers and communities.

they become activists in communities and run for office. we are, i think, disrupters. >> yes, we are. what about the book you're working on? >> the other ambition thing we have, we have now 400 influential filipino women, we decided that a lot of them are leaders in their fields, their professions and industries in many corporations. so we wanted to collect all the leadership skills that they have and that's why we're launching a book in october. we're calling it the filipino leadership book. we don't have a title yet but i like filipino disrupters. >> i think we only have 20 seconds but i wanted you to tell me if you are seeing more asian american civic involvement in the city. having an asian american mayor in san francisco, has that helped people step up? >> definitely. i think seeing mayor lee, people say i can be like him.

yes, i've seen an increase but i think we need more. for example, in my community we only have one elected official so we need to have more filipino women and men appointed to boards and commissions. community service is the first part. >> we're going to take a short break and we'll hear from david chi so please stick around and

>> welcome back to "beyond the

headlines." now we want to talk to david here on the volunteer board of directors of oca in san mateo. that's the organization that chinese americans which i've had the honor of mcing your events as well. tell our audience about it. >> oca is basically a civil rights organization whose purpose is to encourage the participation of asians, encourage them to be into the mainstream and for both economic, political and social reasons. >> do you feel like the work has come to fruition? >> a little bit but i think more needs to be done. >> having the asians not only be part of the role model that maralee addressed also, get them out to do more of the community work. >> to be able to do that, first

of all, they need to be able to speak and lead with pride so to speak. david, that's another one of your programs you're chair of. tell us about that. >> a that's a recognition that oftentimes kids from the asian community are on the humble side or reversed shall we say. so we thought about providing the ability for them to learn public speaking. we discovered that -- it doesn't take much to realize that the only way to do public speaking is to do it. >> let's watch a clip of one of the students, jennifer, her speech. pretty good stuff. >> yeah. >> can everyone see me okay now?

hello, everyone, and good afternoon. my name is jennifer and i'm going to be a sophomore at mills high school in california. >> david, tell us what is remarkable about jennifer. >> what's remarkable, as you see in this particular film or video is that she's just a freshman and very short person. what she learned was that you need to be prepared for the occasion that you are in and facility around it. so her father took her in there to take a look at the room where she will be and low and behold, they found out that the podium was above her head. >> i often have that problem. so what did you do? >> what she did was to request a stool be available and obviously you cannot lift a stool over

there so they put it behind the scene there. you notice that when her name was given and she walked up, all the audience noticed how short she was. so she went to the back, picked up the stool and stood up and the first thing she said as you notice was, can you see me now? >> and she got a good laugh out of it, humor, that works great. how do students apply for the program? >> we run once a year generally in the spring time frame. so in the fall time frame we send out a notice to the schools, public school, private school, and asking for whoever would like to attend. the only thing that we indicated is that students of asian heritage. >> and she's a success story. by the way jennifer is at uc

berkeley, right? >> yes, she is. >> i wanted to ask you if you have a website in which you try to compile important information about historical chinese-american figures that people may not know about. tell us about that. >> we have founded about eight years ago a website that's called chinese-american heros.org. very few people including asians themselves know many of the work done that's often forgotten. of course, people know about the nobel prize winners and things of that sort, but others are not as well. >> we encourage folks to check out your website and also you've been researching some bay area city namesakes. very interesting to me having grown up on the peninsula. i did not know about anson burlinggame. what did he do, in 30 seconds?

>> he was appointed by president lincoln to be the envoy to china. what's so amazing was that after six years, he was appointed by china to be the envoy representing china back to the states. and the european countries. >> and built that trust that we're looking to build once again in this area. >> exactly. >> thank you very much, david. we have to take another short break, but we will be right back with more from all our roundtable guests so stay with us.

>> we're back with "beyond the headlines," a special roundtable show for asian pacific american heritage month. i'm kristen zee. we would like to hear from each of you in the studio to see wh to see, what kind of a push in the asian american community. lisa, what do you think? >> i would encourage young

asian-americans to pursue social entrepreneurship and getting back to the community. there's a vibrant community here and then there's always a way to give back. >> in what sense? doing good for others? >> doing good for others. everyone can be a tlan tlopist. you don't have to have millions of dollars. identify needs and solutions. >> david, how about we ask you what would you like to see? >> i'd like to see participation in the mainstream, in particular, voting. we generally think our vote doesn't count. it does. one of the organizations that's doing that is the apia vote. i encourage nations and others to participate in the voting process. >> those numbers aren't coming up from election to election though, right? >> yes. >> and maralee, i know you always have a thought. >> two things. one is i really would like to encourage our apa fellow

community members to get appointed to boards. >> as you are. >> yes, as i am. you can start at the community level, citizens advisory committees in every district and then also run for office. we need to see more asian elected officials in the u.s., not just in california. that's very important. the second thing is to make sure that we give back to our community, help train the next generation leaders. pay it forward. >> i think sometimes people fear it, taking on that mentoring role either because they think they're not qualified or don't have the time. what would you say to them? >> you know what, they really are a lot of information that they can share. don't be afraid. it could be just one information that could actually influence a person's life and many times i thought the same thing, too. and now i hear people say, i saw you, i heard you. i'm like, you did? so it's really important, you

have a lot of information and experience and go for it. help a young person move forward. >> all right. lisa, i want to turn to you for one second -- you have a thought? >> yes. this general excuse, i'm too busy, that just does not work. the more busy you are, the more efficient you become. as a consequence, using that as an excuse, it never works. >> i was going to say sometimes with new immigrants you have the, we want to participate economically and get that settled but then the next step is socially and politically is what i'm hearing from all of you. >> you have to take the opportunity as it comes. don't wait before you jump in. that's the message. >> speak up, volunteer. >> help a mother out, help everybody out, do what you can for the community. that's all the time we have. lisa, maralee and david, thank

you all for being here today and sharing your insights with us. cheryl? >> thank you, kristen. for more information about today's program, go to our website, abc 7 news.com/community. we're on facebook at abc 7 community affairs and follow me on twitter @cherylabc7. i'm cheryl jennings. thanks for joining us. have a great week. we'll see you next time.

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