The Herricks Chinese Association Story...
Herricks Chinese Association (HCA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that formed in March 2020. Although HCA was just formed its roots have run deep in the Herricks community for the past 25 years. In 1995, a group of devoted Chinese parents desired to have their children embrace our Chinese traditions and values, and to introduce Chinese culture to our Herricks School District. These pioneering parents met on a monthly basis to discuss parenting, cultural, and educational topics and often invited school administration to speak. Meetings took places at members’ homes and everyone brought a delicious dish to share. This is how the Herricks Chinese Breakfast Club began.
For the past 25 years, the Herricks School District has maintained a wonderful and respectful relationship with the Breakfast Club welcoming open lines of communication between the two. Thanks to the tremendous efforts of the Breakfast Club, the school district has embraced Chinese yoyo, Chinese Sing Along, Lion Dance, and traditional Chinese dance classes, as well as our annual Lunar New Year Celebration which over 1,000 people attended last year.
The Breakfast Club has over 300 members and the leaders decided the Breakfast Club was ready to do more for the community. In order to be more proactive and a recognized organization in the community, we needed to incorporate and file for nonprofit status. In doing so, the leaders changed the Breakfast Club name to the “Herricks Chinese Association.” In March 2020, the IRS and NYS officially recognized the Herricks Chinese Association as an official 501(c)(3).
HCA will continue to have its monthly topical meetings with a breakfast potluck of course, as well as coordinate the Herricks Lunar New Year Celebration and Saturday Recreation classes. Additionally, it would like to offer scholarships to Herricks high school students, support our Herricks boosters and Community Fund, and create more community events and activities. Recently with the Covid-19 outbreak, HCA was quickly able to fundraise and donate over 11,500 masks to local hospitals in need. We are off to a superb start and look forward to serving and leading the Chinese community in exciting endeavors ahead!
The Herricks Chinese Association Founders and Board Members
The founders of HCA are Sue Huang, Sheree Liu, Amanda Li, Christine Liu, and Cindy Zeng. We currently have 11 Board members in total. Our Board Please see the complete list below.
Co-President: Kevin Quan
Treasurer: Amanda Li
Secretary: May Lee
Directors: Sheree Liu, Megan Chang, Wei Chi, Jia Jia, Anny Ko, Christine Lee, Christine Liu, Anna Ng, Letty Wei, Renee Wu, Julie Yang,
Advisors: Sue Huang, Cindy Zeng, Ling Ling Xie