I remember at that time we all felt that we needed to act, that we needed to do something. And in a sense, the community didn't really know what to do. In the first few days after the attack, community members wanted to donate money, to donate emergency supplies, but they didn't know where to go, didn't know what to do, mainly because of language and cultural barriers. They came to our office and called us and encouraged us to take a leadership position.

Also, some of the coverage in the press about Chinatown was really very negative. For example, there was an article in one of the daily papers claiming that Chinatown vendors were taking advantage of the situation, that they were selling pictures of the burning World Trade towers, or selling water to people who were in desperate need of water for five dollars a bottle. We were portrayed as betraying the community, taking advantage of the tragedy, rather than being a victim of it and a participant in the relief effort.

These claims got a lot of the people in the community very, very upset, because the fact was, people were actually trying to donate money and find ways to help. A board member of one of our subsidiary organizations owns a radio station in Chinatown, Sinocast. She mobilized people and eventually they raised over $2 million dollars. And these were $10, $50 donations, from people in the community. There was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy and support. We have about five thousand members and they were all coming and saying, "I want to do something, I want to give and I want to volunteer, what can I do?"

Within a few days, we knew that we had to exert some leadership, and that's when we set up our offices and became the largest relief center for Chinatown. Members of the community started to donate emergency supplies, and so we provided access to the major relief agencies collecting donations like the Red Cross and to local churches in Soho and the Village that were coordinating the flow of supplies to Ground Zero.

We saw ourselves as filling a facilitating role. Also, we saw the need to educate — not only our own community, but also the media. Mind you, at the same time that we were fighting the negative portrayal of the community in the press, the community was suffering economically from the attacks. As you may know, Canal Street became part of the restricted zone, cutting off much of Chinatown from the outside world. Trucks couldn't come in and make deliveries. Patrons couldn't reach restaurants and stores. As a result, large numbers of workers were laid off when factories were forced to shut down. Thousands of people lost jobs, and revenues quickly dropped as restaurants and stores lost their customer base.

If you look back at the events of September 11, the Chinatown community really came out, residents really put aside their own suffering and helped others. So being portrayed in a negative fashion as their own lives were falling apart was really a double tragedy. For us, it was really important to provide immediate relief and resources. But a big part of our job was — and remains — letting the press, funders, and the nation know about the impact on our community.

PND: Let's talk a bit more about the economic impact of 9/11 and how you formulated a response through the Lower Manhattan Small Business & Workforce Retention Project. How did that project come about?

CK: After the first couple of weeks, we saw that the economic impact on Chinatown was much greater than initially thought. As an organization that's been in the community for over twenty-eight years, we had various programs in place, ranging from helping immigrants access social services and advocating for their legal rights to helping small businesses in the community.

We have a subsidiary organization called the Renaissance Economic Development Corporation that has been active for a long time in providing loans to small businesses. Immediately after September 11, we saw that area businesses needed a lot of help, because they were laying off workers and it was obvious that they were not doing the kind of business they normally do.

So we decided we needed an emergency loan fund program and created the Renaissance 9-11 Emergency Loan Program, setting aside $150,000 to get started. A lot of small business people were coming to us and saying, "This is really impacting us, we don't know how long we can survive like this." That was the genesis of our own involvement. You see, there was a lot of confusion during the first month or so. We couldn't just wait until outside help came in, so we relied on ourselves to make it happen.

We knew $150,000 for loans wasn't enough, but it was a start and it also was a model, to let other people know that this is the kind of need we had in the community. We had no choice but to put our money at risk, underwriting businesses in the community.

PND: When did that outside help arrive?

CK: Well, Chinatown was not an immediate priority for FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and other federal government agencies. We're still trying to figure out who decided that Canal Street should be the boundary for federal relief. We disagreed with the official position that to qualify for relief assistance, you had to live or do business south of Canal Street.

Then the private relief agencies and foundations started to come into the community. The September 11 Fund, the Ford Foundation, the New York Times Neediest Fund, Seedco, and others began to put some money into Lower Manhattan through what later became known as the Lower Manhattan Small Business & Workforce Retention Project. But even though they recognized that Chinatown was part of the affected area, the project extended only to Canal Street. We thought, Let's try to work with it. And with some immediate grants, as well as loans and wage subsidies, the program helped qualified businesses retain some of their workers. We thought the project could give some additional hope to the community, and the confidence in our participation reinforced that. So we said, "Yes, we'll be part of it, and be the administrator for the Chinatown portion of the program, since we have the experience and the outreach. We know how the businesses work and we know how to underwrite them."

AAFE's community-outreach initiative and the Renaissance 9-11 Emergency Loan Program really set the tone for including Chinatown in the relief efforts. We also saw that the needs went beyond the Canal Street boundary. Two-thirds of Chinatown is really north of Canal Street, and so we saw the Lower Manhattan Small Business & Workforce Retention Project as a supplement to our emergency-loan program. We targeted our own resources on the area north of Canal Street — the businesses a block away, two blocks away, or further north — knowing that the Lower Manhattan Small Business & Workforce Retention Project funds would be used for affected businesses below Canal.

Again, part of our work has involved advocating on behalf of the community and educating foundations, corporate funders, and relief agencies on the impact of 9/11. And one of the biggest lessons from this experience is that you can't just arbitrarily draw a line in deciding eligibility. You have to look at the overall impact on a community. Thankfully, we've had some success in convincing the stakeholders that this is the case in Chinatown, and the conversation continues, with our involvement.

In the first couple of months we did a hundred and fifty loans. That's a lot of loans. We were told that that's three times the amount of loans that a major bank made. They had many more resources and they only did about a third of the number of loans we did.

PND: I gather from your comments that it has been hard to get people to understand just how far the effects of the attacks extended.

I think Chinatown is very much misunderstood. It's true that, because of language and cultural barriers, sometimes the community can seem insular. And yes, some of the responsibility for perpetuating that notion lies with the community. It's true that the people of Chinatown, like other immigrant communities, are wary of government, and because of the language and cultural barriers they don't really know how to ask for assistance. There's also a cultural aversion to debt or receiving outside help, and people feel that even if they're really desperate they should rely on their own family or some other social network within the community. This mindset feeds the notion of an entirely self-sufficient and prosperous community and is one of the main challenges of getting others to realize that in fact the community is very much in need.

But if you look at the whole picture, not just the physical destruction, Chinatown has been affected both economically and socially. Chinatown has always served as a regional hub for the Chinese-American community and the Asian community throughout the tri-state area and it has always been a center of tourist activity. But the tourism industry was destroyed by 9/11, and that's a very real economic dislocation.

Look at the garment industry, for example. Most of the garment factories in Chinatown, which combined employ about twelve thousand people, are located north of Canal Street. But because of the restricted access that lasted for weeks after September 11, many of the trucks weren't allowed in and so a lot of these factories lost crucial orders. At the same time, when they needed help in terms of underwriting loans, most of the traditional banks refused to lend to them or didn't really know how to underwrite loans. That's where we came in, and where we continue to fill the gap. We were able to show the banks and funders how to underwrite loans to small immigrant-owned business. So, through working with these agencies and organizations, we are able to say that these are viable businesses, these are people who've been in the community for ten, fifteen, twenty years. These are credit-worthy people.

That's part of our contribution, being a community-based organization and understanding these things. This was a disaster affecting an immigrant community in a major metropolitan area, yet people were slow to recognize its effects. A government agency like FEMA or the Small Business Administration isn't familiar with the community. FEMA came in and they didn't even have a Chinese staff member, someone who spoke the language. They didn't ask the community-based organizations and community leadership, "What's happening, how can we help you?" The SBA requirements are that when you apply for a loan, you have to attach your house as collateral. Imagine people already worried about the future of their business. They don't want to endanger their house. So I think that's why during the first couple of months people weren't going to these relief centers.

The government agencies wanted to reach out to affected communities and accurately assess the impact, but their initial conclusions or operating assumptions were wrong. They said, "Oh, well, nobody's coming from the Asian-American community. Chinatown residents aren't coming to these offices to apply for assistance. Therefore, Chinatown's not affected." They didn't realize that their failure to reach out to the community was preventing them from understanding the true impact of the disaster.

For example, they set up a toll-free number for residents to apply for assistance, but it's all in English. Who's going to call from the community? At a certain point, after we'd spent time convincing them of the real impact on the community, they realized that they needed to reach out to the community-based organizations to be truly effective and serve all of the affected populations. So we agreed to work with them. We held a community meeting with FEMA, a town hall meeting in a local school. We worked with the local press, worked with residents, and five hundred people showed up. The media came and covered it. And through that type of activity we were able to explain to the community the eligibility requirements for various programs. We had about a hundred staff people directly working with residents in the community. We were even doing their toll-free calling. After that, they had people lined up outside the building; the relief center was overwhelmed.

What we learned, and I hope what the government agencies learned also, is that we really need to work together and that community-based organizations need to be involved. When I testified at the City Council hearings about the impact of September 11, the analogy I used was that we need to view the community-based organization as another firehouse in the community, a social firehouse, if you will, where people go when there's an emergency. We're here to respond. That might be a good analogy to help people at various levels of government, corporations, and foundations understand that they need to fund and build the capapcity of CBOs so that they're not always struggling. They have important missions and play a critical role in the communities they serve.

When I look back, I'm very proud of our organization. We were able to respond because we had been able to build an organization with a lot of depth and a team of committed staff members. When the emergency hit, we were ready to respond. I think we were fortunate. I think many organizations have been devastated by budget cuts, and they don't have the needed capacity.

At the same time, while we did our best, we were not fully prepared, either. I don't think anybody could have been prepared for something like September 11. So I think one lesson we should learn is to think more about building capacity in organizations that provide valuable community services, to sustain that social firehouse for all communities — through good and bad times. Because without organizations like ours, this community would be even worse off than it is — in terms of hope and in terms of resources available to rebuild. And by capacity, I don't just mean administration. I mean sustaining the organization. People really need to fund organizational development and build the leadership of organizations. Every organization needs a core of talented leaders. It's not about one individual; it's about a team comprised of top management and middle management and people capable of reaching outside the community to advocate and educate the public.

PND: A recent study released by an Asian-American federation estimated that one out of every four workers in Chinatown was laid off after September 11. The report also stated that assistance to date had had limited impact and seemed to place the blame on a lack of resources, strict eligibility requirements, and the short-term nature of some of the assistance. Is that a fair assessment of recovery efforts to date as they apply to Chinatown? And if it is, how much more assistance is required by the Chinatown community and what, if any, are the roadblocks to getting that assistance?

CK: We were major participants in the study. We provided a lot of the data and the profiles of the small businesses and housing conditions. So, yes, I do believe it's an accurate assessment of the state of things.

To give you a better idea, recently [ed. note: in late May] we brought some funders to Chinatown and visited a number of businesses. For example, we met with the owner of a garment factory whose business was still off about thirty percent. She told us that she had had to lay off eight people and that things were very, very tight. These garment factories work with very low margins to begin with, and we're talking about a thirty percent loss of orders. That could put that factory out of business. She also told us that she had lost a lot of clients as a result of the attacks. People in midtown, the jobbers and manufacturers, still have doubts about their ability to deliver on time because of what happened with the so-called frozen zone in the weeks after the attacks. So she's really struggling to keep her head above water. A poultry business owner we saw yesterday said that right after September 11, he lost about forty percent of his business, and he's still operating at a thirty percent reduction. These are the kinds of people we helped with loans and grants and also with wage subsidies. But they're still very discouraged and, like patients in intensive care, still very vulnerable.

There are over four thousand businesses in Chinatown, so the need is tremendous. We're still trying to raise money to help these businesses, but unfortunately we haven't received any new funding. So we've stopped conducting outreach, because we can't meet the demand for services and don't want to raise expectations when we know we can't help. And that could cause even more disappointment and despair. We need at least another $10 million, $15 million, and we've only received about $2 million. As time goes by and financing and assistance needs are not met, many of those businesses won't survive.

Even before September 11, Chinatown was fragile. And now the whole cultural and social fabric of the community is in danger. Chinatown is a unique community, with a rich history and cultural offerings that are a reflection of the immigrant communities that make it their home. But Chinatown is also a diverse mix of residential, manufacturing, and commercial interests. So, in many respects, damage in one area can really dislocate the rest, and when the damage is large it holds the potential to destroy the whole community. And that's why we feel that's really important for Chinatown to be included in the recovery-planning process.

The good news is that we're beginning to see a growing awareness of Chinatown's plight on the part of organizations like the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is the main agency overseeing the rebuilding effort in Lower Manhattan. While their initial blueprint made little mention of Chinatown, they have begun to reach out to the community and have started working with many CBOs.

From a fiscal standpoint, most of these monies are coming from the federal government and are being distributed through the Community Development Block Grant program, which targets needy communities — that is, low and moderate-income communities. Chinatown is the only low and moderate-income community in the affected area. We believe that Chinatown must be treated fairly and equitably in the rebuilding effort.

If you look at the recent proposal by the Housing Assistance Program of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, it's basically geared toward retaining residents. Everyone agrees that it's important to retain residents in Lower Manhattan. But in terms of the Chinatown area, the amount of assistance granted is about $1,000 per resident, compared with $6,000 for the City Hall area and $12,000 for Battery Park City. And we don't think that makes sense. It's equally important to retain residents in Chinatown and keep housing affordable and to help the people who stand on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Many Chinatown residents who lost their jobs are low-wage workers and, unlike many of the residents in the other targeted areas, don't have savings accounts or the means to weather the down times. So it's critical that these aid packages and programs help Chinatown residents and that they do so on an equitable basis.

As I said, one of our biggest challenges is to get people to recognize the needs of Chinatown and to involve the community in the process of rebuilding and recovery. So it's important for us to educate people on the impact to our community and to engage the planners so we aren't left isolated. If Chinatown isn't included in the final planning process, then I'm afraid we could end up with a situation where the rebuilding effort of Lower Manhattan might be done in a Robert Moses way — people from the outside coming into a community and dictating what's best for that community.

To avoid that, we're launching a major community-wide effort to develop a Chinatown plan for the recovery and rebuilding. We call it the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative, and part of the effort will be formulated based on input from the community. First, we'll have town hall meetings, focus groups, and household surveys to gather input from the community. We're putting together an advisory board consisting of leaders such as the former superintendent of banks for New York and also bringing in experts from places like the Enterprise Foundation and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Then we'll have meetings with government representatives — from the governor, to the mayor, to the deputy mayor, to the various representatives of different agencies. So we're trying to build momentum for a plan that takes into account the needs of Chinatown, and then we will take that plan and, hopefully, integrate it with the overall plan for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. And that's part of our work for the coming year. At the same time, we will continue the more immediate tasks of providing relief to community businesses and residents because, in the final anlaysis, all of these initiatives are needed to stabilize the community. There's still a tremendous amount of work to be done.

PND: Well, Mr. Kui, thank you very much for sharing your perspective with us.

CK: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Elizabeth Cuccaro, the Foundation Center's September 11 Philanthropic Response Project Coordinator, interviewed Chris Kui for PND in May. To learn more about the Newsmaker series, contact Mitch Nauffts at mfn@fdncenter.org.