After graduating from Tufts in 1994, Jeremy Liu tried his hand working in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors to find out which was a better fit for him. Fifteen years later, it’s clear that Liu has found fulfillment in the not-for-profit world as the Executive Director of the Asian Community Development Corporation (Asian CDC). “I have spent the last 15 years involved in not-for-profits because I have found them to be among the most effective, innovative and inspiring organizations,” he admitted. “During my time at the Asian Community Development Corporation, I have had an amazing opportunity to apply creativity and innovation to address pressing social justice issues.”
A community-based not-for-profit organization, the Asian CDC helps Asians and Asian Americans improve the quality of life in the communities where they live and work by promoting community leadership capacity, advocating for equality, providing affordable housing, and creating economic growth. Based in Chinatown near Tufts Boston campus, and serving the greater Boston region, the Asian CDC has hosted numerous Tufts students, including Citizenship and Public Service (CPS) Scholars and students from Dr. Jean Wu’s class Active Citizenship in an Urban Community: Race, Culture, Power and Politics.
By acting as a bridge to and for Boston’s Asian and Asian American populations, the Asian CDC places focus on leadership development as an integrated element in all of their projects.
“Our leadership development is integrative, multi-disciplinary, cross-generational, and functional,” Liu said. “We develop the capacity of people to be leaders by focusing on critical and creative thinking that empowers them to analyse and understand issues as well as be compelling communicators of their position.”
Their Asian Voices of Organized Youth for Community Empowerment (A-VOYCE) program, for example, brings youth together with every department of the organization, from community-organizers and -planners to real estate development staffers, to foster young people’s leadership skills. Liu attributes the program’s success to the fact that the young people in the program are more like partners in the expression of their leadership rather than beneficiaries of ACDC’s programs.
“They benefit from our work as much as we are able to provide them with opportunities to lead,” Liu, who majored in Environmental Studies and Biology, explained.
ACDC also offers services that help low and moderate-income families secure quality affordable housing. In addition to helping reclaim lost land from urban renewal projects in Chinatown, ACDC is currently developing the largest residential housing project in downtown Boston that will house 325 families.
According to Liu, Asian Americans represent the fastest growing minority group in the Boston metropolitan region, the majority of whom are moving into Boston’s suburbs. Recognizing this demographic trend, the organization has expanded their reach by growing their programs and affordable housing projects not only in Boston itself, but also throughout the Greater Boston area.
Now in his eleventh year at ACDC, Liu says he has learned to recognize the strengths of a community seeking change.
“While at ACDC, the people I have worked with have helped me to see that a vision for a healthy, vibrant and just community is within our collective reach,” Liu said. “This is the essence of community development--the inspiration of the community enabling individual and collective action to see and be the change we seek.”
He attributes all of ACDC’s numerous accomplishments (including the creation of the Commonwealth's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Celebration) to collaborative partnerships.
“Partnerships represent the potential for incredibly productive and generative energy in the "in between" that exists between disciplines, fields, people, organizations, and communities,” he said. “Focusing on the interstitial space of the partnership and the cross-disciplinary approach is vital for successful community development innovation.”
In 2009, Liu was selected as a Barr Fellow that offered him the opportunity to reflect on the past 15 years. “I realize in the end that it has never really been a question of for-profit or not-for-profit, but rather which organizational vehicle is the most effective for the work I want to do,” Liu says, and adds, “I'm most proud of the work that I've done in the last five years that led to a recent Boston Globe column that called us 'the visionary Asian Community Development Corporation.'"
