Community News

May Chen, of Bath, was honored as a Purpose Prize Fellow for her work with Northeast Ohio’s Asian-American and Pacific Islander populations.

Photo: Kathleen Folkerth

BATH — May Chen has dedicated two decades of her life to helping Ohio’s Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) populations. Now she has received national recognition for her efforts.

Chen, 61, a Bath resident, was named a 2008 Purpose Prize Fellow. National think tank Civic Ventures created the prize program, now in its third year, to honor people older than 60 who are making a difference in society.

Chen is one of the founders of Asian Services in Action (ASIA), an Akron- and Cleveland-based nonprofit that provides social services to AAPI youths, adults and seniors.

“The recognition is secondary,” said Chen on being named one of 50 fellows. “What’s important is how can we do the work that is so much needed in our community?”

Chen was born in Hong Kong and came to the United States at 10. Her parents had previously been in the country for graduate school in the 1930s at Columbia and Cornell universities.

“Their vision was to go back to China and help people reshape education,” she said. “With communism and the persecution of intellectuals, they fled to Hong Kong, where my dad’s father had settled. They became refugees from their own country.”

Her parents’ experience planted a seed in her, Chen said.

“I always had a heart for people who lose their home for political reasons,” she said.

The family lived briefly in San Francisco’s Chinatown before setting up home in San Mateo, Calif. Chen’s father tried to find a teaching job.

“There was still institutional racism,” she said.

Her father eventually did find a position at an African-American college in Texas. The family later returned to California and settled in Palo Alto.

Chen attended college at Southern Methodist University and earned her psychology degree at Vanderbilt University. She married Chun Fu Chen, and he was offered a teaching job at The University of Akron, so they relocated to Ohio. They had three children, and Chen spent her time raising them in North Canton until they moved to Bath in 1989.

Taking advantage of the free tuition offered to family members of UA professors, Chen earned her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, becoming the first to graduate from UA’s program, she said. She began working in social services as a therapist but was disappointed to see a lack of people from her own culture seeking help.

“Because I live in the culture of Asian Americans, I know what’s going on,” she said. “They are human beings and they have problems.”

When Akron’s International Institute had an opening for social services, Chen joined that agency as coordinator of resettlement, which she did for seven years. But she continued to see that there were more needs in the AAPI population.

“There was a focus on service to support those initially coming into the community for about 90 days,” Chen said. “That’s the honeymoon period. I saw a greater need for continued support services and wondered, ‘Can we begin to address that?’”

She and three other professional women pooled their thoughts and created ASIA in 1995.

Chen said the organization has focused on different ages of the AAPI population. One of the most important, she said, was youth.

“When I attended leadership training on the West Coast or East Coast or middle of the country, I never saw our Asian kids there,” she said. “Kids are excited about going to a conference with other kids, but their parents are on the protective side. It’s more meaningful [to the parents] to have academic success.”

But giving Asian teens a chance to learn leadership skills is important, she said.

“As long as we are invisible, we are not included at the decision table,” Chen said. “Things are decided for you. Kids are our future. They need to have exposure to opportunities here and be a presence besides being technologically knowledgeable or economically successful.”

To rally Asian youth, ASIA received grant funding from the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation and created Asian American Youth Against Tobacco, whose efforts received national recognition, Chen said.

For older adults, ASIA sponsors the Lucky Seniors program. It is in its eighth year of providing social opportunities for more than 70 Asian seniors.

ASIA also provides after-school programming for Asian children, translation services and basic courses, such as English as a second language.

As one of the fellows for the Purpose Prize, Chen attended the Encore Careers Summit Dec. 5-7 at Stanford University. The goal of the summit was to launch a movement of those in the second half of life who want to use longer, healthier lives for good, according to organizers.

Chen said it was the best conference she has attended in her lifetime.

“They are creating a movement,” she said. “I’m so excited about it.”

She said she recommends two books, “Encore,” by Marc Freedman, and “The Third Chapter,” by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, for those older adults who are intrigued by the movement.

“There are many people who after 60 are doing fantastic work,” she said. “I want to encourage Asian Americans that they can do the same.”

For more information on ASIA, call (330) 535-3263 or go to www.asiainc-ohio.org.