Article provided by  Adam Smith of Sampan. 

When Elaine Ng was a young girl in the mid-1970s, she would look out the window of her family's apartment in Chinatown and watch the trucks and hardhats as they constructed the new Josiah Quincy School building.

As she observed the progress, she would grow more and more excited about the new community center that would house not only a school, but a swimming pool, gymnasium, and the Quincy School Community Council, a community group that would later evolve into a social-service nonprofit. The building would replace the historic, but small and aging, Josiah Quincy School at 90 Tyler St., where Ng received her primary education.

"It was so cool because you could see this huge building and hear all these rumors that there would be three swimming pools and five playgrounds," recalled Ng.

But just months away from the school's scheduled opening, her parents broke some bad news. "We're moving," they told her. "I think I cried," she said.

But Ng would be back -- in more important roles than she could have ever imagined.

Her first visit was after her family's move to their new home in Roslindale. Ng would hang out at the Quincy School's new gym. Later, she volunteered at Chinatown nonprofits, and during her senior year at the University of Massachusetts, where she had studied English and Asian American studies, she began working at the Quincy School Community Council, now known as the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. She was charged with forming the council's youth center.

She ended up staying with the agency for 13 years. Last month, Ng was named the nonprofit's executive director.

The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center traces its roots back to 1969 when local activists and residents first founded the Quincy School Community Council to influence the design of the new Quincy School building, which was designed to serve Chinatown, Bay Village and parts of the South End. But over the last few decades, the community council's role changed and grew, adding programs that serve preschoolers, teens, and adult immigrants in need of English education. It also began providing recreational activities and summer programs. On a total operating budget of $3.9 million, the neighborhood center annually employs a staff of 100, enlists the help of about 150 volunteers, and serves more than 4,000 people, including many Chinese immigrants and their children.

Ng's appointment comes during a time of expansion and change for the 37-year-old Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. The agency moved into its new building at the Metropolitan just about a year-and-a-half ago, consolidating programs and classes from six locations to two: the five-story tower on Ash Street and the Josiah Quincy School. Around the same time, it completed a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign for its new headquarters, and in 2006 it embarked on a five-year strategic plan. The latter is where Ng will focus her attention in the coming years.

The neighborhood center's strategic plan aims to make the agency's services more complete, holistic, and "relevant" to new and old generations of Asian Americans in Massachusetts. The agency no longer wants to serve its clients on a case-by-case basis or limit its programming to only "core services" such as English as a Second Language and childcare.

"Now that we are done with getting the community center open, we can focus on listening to what the community needs and trying to fill the service gaps," said board vice president Annie Chin Louie.

One of the newest additions to the neighborhood center is the Family Services program, which helps coordinate all programs at the agency -- for example, to ensure that teachers and directors know that a parent who is taking ESL also has a child in the after-school program. The network also offers counseling and preventive and mental health services, parent workshops, family support, referral and advocacy services, and assists staff members who are working with families facing crisis.

Last year, the program hosted a forum for Chinese Americans with disabilities, which Chin Louie said helped shed light on "so-called taboo issues that the community has not been paying attention to." The event, said Chin Louie, helped establish a support network for those families.

The other new addition is Sunshine Saturdays, which will begin on January 20 to fulfill the cultural component of the strategic plan. Led in part by local spoken-word artist Giles Li, the new Saturday program will consist of courses in arts and culture, such as ballroom dancing, jewelry making, Chinese calligraphy, lion dance, intensive Mandarin classes for beginners, and more.

"It's going to be a brand new idea for BCNC," said Li. "We just want to provide something new to the people that have used [our] services, and to draw in people who are like me, who are not from Chinatown necessarily, but still want to have the connection to the community."

Ng points out that the 292,000-person Asian American population in Massachusetts is not only growing but "evolving," and that many people have no need for English education but do desire some connection to their heritage.

"The idea is to remain solid in our core services, but still remain relevant to the changing needs of the community," said Ng. "You don't want to lose sight of the people you already serve. So you grow with them."

In many ways, Ng herself reflects the changing population. Her parents are both immigrants from China, and she is part of a generation of parents who were born here, grew up in Chinatown, and want to keep hold of their Chinese heritage.

She remembers her family's first apartment on Beach Street, her father's Chinatown fish shop, having to go to New York City for dim sum, and the many row houses that once lined the neighborhood. She can even list off old Chinatown buildings -- some no longer in existence -- that were supposedly haunted. She also recalls being one of the few Chinese Americans in Roslindale when her family first moved there, and that a majority of Chinese Americans in Boston used to speak Toisanese; few spoke English as a first language.

Now, she said, "there're people who are native English speakers everywhere and who have grown up in this culture -- people like myself."

She said that the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, with its new programs, can better draw people into Chinatown, a place where most of the state's Asian Americans do not live but might still feel a strong connection to.

"Like many Asians and Chinese Americans, even though we physically didn't live in Chinatown, Chinatown was still our neighborhood," she said.

"We don't want to lose that cultural piece to the community. As the demographics change, there's a risk that [Chinatown] becomes basically just a place for shopping, a merchant's district. But Boston's Chinatown has a rich history. And we want to be able to retain that and pass it on to future generations -- our children and our children's children. It's part of our history. A good way to do that is through cultural programming and things that tie it back to today."

David Moy, Ng's predecessor who hired her to lead the agency's youth program 13 years ago, said he is "delighted" that Ng is now leading the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center.

"What has always struck me was her commitment to the community, youth and families. When she was hired as a youth director, she showed incredible commitment, energy and an open, innovative look at how youth can be served in the community," said Moy, who directed the agency for 16 years before stepping down last year. "I am totally convinced that she is just going to take the agency on to the next level."