Lexington Observer talks with Hua Wang, Co-President of Chinese American Association of Lexington (CAAL)
LO: How and why did CAAL get started?
HW: CAAL was founded in 1983. It started as an affinity group, whose members were many of the Chinese American families that lived in Lexington at that time. Something I find very interesting about CAAL is that, even from the beginning, it was very focused on reaching outward and organizing events that brought the community together by welcoming everyone.
In its early days, CAAL focused on two main events — the Lunar New Year Celebration (then called the “Chinese New Year Celebration”) and the Lexington Candidates Forum. To this day, those continue to be CAAL’s signature events.
CAAL officially registered as a nonprofit in 2013 and has grown significantly in the past twelve years. We have thousands of members connected via our mailing lists and social media platforms, and hundreds of volunteers throughout the year. However, that core philosophy of welcome and inclusivity has not changed. If anything, we are even more involved in the community today than ever before.
To be clear, we do not charge for membership. You can just join our list, participate in events, and be a member – there’s no need to pay. We don’t want to exclude anyone, and finances can sometimes be a barrier.
LO: You mentioned the Lunar New Year celebration. Can you share more?
HW: This is a good example of what I mean when I talk about how important it is for CAAL to welcome everyone. Our Lunar New Year celebration is a big event — the hottest ticket in town, so to speak. Our biggest event every year, in fact. There is delicious food, performances, and beautiful decorations. But it can be really difficult to get tickets, especially for those who are not on our mailing list and social media platforms.
We decided early on to set aside a block of tickets for non-members, so that we could celebrate with people who might not be involved in day-to-day work of CAAL, but are still part of our cherished Lexington community and would like to attend — and we would like them to attend!
So, we are very intentional about building an organization that is truly for the community.
The other CAAL signature event is the candidate forum, which we co-host with CAAL PAC (a separate political action committee) now. We invite all the people running for Lexington town-wide positions to come meet the CAAL community and engage in Q&A. After the meeting, CAAL PAC endorses its choice of candidates and shares that news with the CAAL and Lexington communities.
Including our signature events, CAAL runs over 20 projects per year – from those events that require multiple months of planning, such as the Lunar New Year Celebration, to our ongoing language exchange and Mahjong games, in smaller groups with both older and younger community members. This year, many members signed up to volunteer for the Lex250 events.
LO: How many volunteers do you have?
HW: Last year alone, we had 2,000 volunteer appearances, representing more than 15,000 volunteer hours from hundreds of volunteers who really give so much of their time to the Lexington community.
And in addition to our volunteers, the CAAL community is amazing at mobilizing to make the world a better place. For example, during the pandemic, CAAL called on the community members to help not only our immediate community, but people in need all around America. The generous community members and organizations contributed over $280,000, which we used to send money and personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals all over New England, Colorado, Florida, Alabama — from police and fire stations to locations in other countries. In the end, we donated over half a million pieces of PPE.
And of course, we made a significant impact in Lexington. CAAL also provided over $40,000 COVID relief grants to more than ten local community organizations, such as Lexington Symphony, LexArt, LEF, Munroe Center for the Arts, LexFarm, Lexington Historical Society, and others, including $5,000 to the Lexington Food Pantry.
That was such a successful initiative that we have continued grantmaking today. And it was all made possible because of how generous and supportive our community is.
LO: What would you say is the key to CAAL’s success?
HW: We have very dedicated volunteers, a very strong community. Also, our model has been successful because it is so inclusive, welcoming everyone in, and community-focused, reaching out and participating in Lexington life.
We really pride ourselves on our close relationships with other town organizations. We work closely with many other nonprofits, such as the Lexington Symphony, which you may have seen in our previous events, as well as Cary Library, the Historical Society, now the Lexington History Museums — really, most organizations in town we have worked with, and are glad to do so. We also encourage and support our community members to participate in town governance to help make Lexington a better place.
I truly believe that CAAL is a big part of many of the community-building initiatives in Lexington. And we create many of them, too. For example, we started the Lexington AAPI 5K Run & Walk with Hey Runners in May 2022 in response to the rise of Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to do something good to celebrate diversity, to organize a fun event in the community. This year, the event will be on May 25, 2025. We are proud to be partnering with LexZeroWaste Collaborative, the LPS Green Teams, and LexCAN to support another cause we really care about, which is sustainability. Our title sponsor, Schneider, has a strong commitment to sustainability, and we are excited that the theme really came together on every level this year. Even the T-shirt is even going to be green!
LO: What is next for CAAL, and how can Lexingtonians help?
HW: Two years ago, we received a generous capacity-building grant from the Community Endowment of Lexington. We wanted to know how to take CAAL to the next level because — as you can probably see — we do a lot, and we need to figure out how to sustain all of our work.
We learned so much from the consultants who helped us through that grant. One of the things we realized is that, to help sustain not only our work today but also our continued growth in the future, we need to build a CAAL Endowment Fund.
We are fundraising right now to meet our initial goal of $250,000 to establish the endowment, and we will continue to grow it from there. We want to be in a strong position to continue helping other organizations in the community flourish, and the endowment will play an important role in making that possible.
To help us reach our goal, we would greatly appreciate donations toward the endowment. We’ve realized that having reached the scale we have, it’s difficult to sustain ourselves with support from only our community, so we really hope that other groups and individuals in town will support our effort by donating.
LO: Anything else you would like to add?
HW: This past winter, I spoke at the Voices on the Green event. The theme was “Better Together.” CAAL has focused, since its inception, on making that theme a core part of its mission, which is what makes it such a special organization. I know through my experience that this is true even beyond CAAL. We are better together and we need organizations like CAAL, which puts this philosophy into practice every day, now more than ever.