By T’Neil Gooden
The Brooklyn College Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANAPISI) Project (BCAP) and the Brooklyn College Central Asians Association (BCCA) held a grocery bag decorating event for the non-profit organization Heart of Dinner on Oct. 31. The Heart of Dinner addresses food insecurity and loneliness in Asian American elderly by providing free food, artwork, and communication to under-resourced Asian senior communities.
BC students were able to offer their support to the non-profit by decorating the grocery bags that will be dispersed to underinvested Asian elderly communities.
“[Heart of Dinner] create care packages with nutritious foods, with things like groceries,” Megan Go, the program coordinator for BCAP, told the audience. “Part of their project is to have volunteers and create these [grocery bags designs], they don’t want to just deliver food in brown bags, they want to make sure that there are vibrant messages on them because it definitely means a lot to Asian elders.”
The founders of Heart Of Dinner, Moonlynn Tsai and Yin Chang, were able to virtually speak with the students at the event about the importance of the designs placed on the bags for the Asian seniors in these underserved environments. The organization was founded in 2020, during the pandemic, as Tsai and Chang wanted to make sure that the elderly could get some care in any capacity.
“We started cooking ourselves in our half-broken kitchen so that the elders would have food to eat, and then we would write love letters on each of these to-go containers in the elder’s native languages,” Chang said.
Tsai and Chang would use Google Translate to write these messages in different Asian heritage languages, such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Tagalog, Cantonese, and more from the Asian diaspora.
“We wanted [seniors] to feel and hear from us as a community to say that we love you, we see you, we hope you enjoy this meal, and to know that you are loved–know that we are all thinking of you in our hearts,” Chang said.
The founders not only gave to the community, but they were able to get feedback from the people that they had served in these unattended neighborhoods.
“These seniors actually save the decorated bags, they save it and they collect it,” Chang told the audience. “They look at them when their spirits may need a little bit of uplifting.”
Tsai and Chang have over 700 seniors within the tri-state area who receive groceries and cooked meals in decorated grocery bags. Most of these individuals are only getting visits from volunteers who go door to door to give these seniors their weekly meals.
“There’s a high amount of folks who are living with depression, living with sadness, and also there are studies that show that immigrant communities, especially elders, suffer with high thoughts of suicide,” Chang said. “It’s not only providing a lifeline of food that actually gives them their weekly nourishment, sustenance, and nutrition, but it also addresses the uplifting of emotional and mental well-being.”
The collaboration between Heart of Dinner, BCAP, and BCCA allowed students of all backgrounds to help make a difference in the lives of these seniors. Even though there are language barriers between the seniors, students, and volunteers, the message transcended these barriers.
“I think that amongst the Central Asian community, amongst just Asian communities overall, language barriers and cultural barriers are a really big deal,” Alexia Bakyt, president of BCCA said. “We are trying to lessen the gap and just help out as much as we can.”
To those who worked and made the bags, its impact has made a difference in the life of the elderly, and is only the beginning of their efforts.
“Our mission is to actively reduce the isolation and loneliness alongside food insecurity within these seniors,” Chang said. “The work that you’ll continue to do really does make a difference.”
Interested students can go to room 2153 in Boylan to decorate grocery bags for the elderly. Students who want to volunteer with Heart of Dinner can contact them on their website.