Volunteering for ACCF 2019

BY Xinmiao

On February 16th, ACAN hosted the Austin Chinese Culture Festival – ACCF. The festival attracted thousands of attendees and the community at large has been abuzz about it since. What is the secret of this relatively young organization’s success in organizing an event of such a scale? It is the volunteers!

The idea about the festival had been brewing for a long time, and the actual operation began right after the successful Mid-Autumn Festival in September 2018. Under the leadership of Peter Chao, CJ Zhao, Darda Chang, Charles Qiu, Angela, and the many key players: Wendy, Debbie, Michelle, Bin, Jean, Zhao Yong, et al., the project quickly got under way. The first planning meeting was held in September 2018 and twelve working groups were established with tasks clearly defined and leaders identified.

Soon after the PR campaign began, ACAN successfully garnered the Cultural Heritage fund from the City of Austin. The festival’s ad was out; promotional videos were posted; and VIP guests invited. ACAN President Peter visited many of the high school principals, discussing ACAN’s heritage mission, asking for their support.

While preparing for the Festival, many volunteers uncovered their hidden creativity genius. They got involved in fields completely new to them: design and build games and come up with humorous and fitting names; design and produce the show tickets and enable the Jotform online ticketing system; go to local radio stations and use Facebook to promote the event; design and edit programs; use signup genius to manage the 240 volunteers, etc. They were all learning while doing it, and enjoying it!

Wendy, who was responsible for food, lead her team to venture to a variety of restaurants to taste and pick the best food for the Festival. Her team also learned to sign contracts, apply for food permits, master food management regulations and operations.

Showcase was an afternoon program designed to demonstrate the many aspects of the rich Chinese Culture. From September 2018 and on, volunteers and experts went to local schools to teach students Tai Chi, ethnic dances, Chinese painting, calligraphy, etc. Many students came to the Festival to show what they have learned.

ACAN volunteers spent countless hours in preparing for the event. The Showcase, the flash mob, and the evening performance all require backstage support. They could not watch the show and they won’t appear in the glamorous photo shoots. Doris was the chief backstage manager. She led more than 30 volunteers working in the background. They were the unsung heroes. The ladies for the VIP Reception met multiple times to finalize and fine tune the details for the invited guests. Members of the ticketing team spent several long nights arranging tickets. On the event day, the ticket office was full of attendees and became a one stop full service station: a box office, an information center, an invoice office, and a custodian hub post the performance, etc.

The selfless dedication of ACAN members and other volunteers is the bedrock to the success of ACCF. It epitomizes the strong bonding among the Austin Chinese community.