Welcome to the eleventh week of our campaign highlighting essential workers. Whether working from home or within our neighborhoods, essential workers are supporting a strong recovery for those who are too often overlooked, underrepresented, or underinvested in.  

Our eleventh essential worker feature focuses on Raihan Mondal, Program Director of CPC Brooklyn Education and Career Services. The following snippet is from a Q&A that took place between Chris Kuo of CPC Leadership Council and Raihan Mondal, Program Director of CPC Brooklyn Education and Career Services. Raihan oversees all of CPC’s Brooklyn-center based youth programs. Throughout the pandemic, he has also supported the Resource Navigators initiative for individuals exposed to COVID-19. 

Chris Kuo, Leadership Council: Is there a memory from your work that you would like to share? 

Raihan Mondal, Brooklyn ECS Program Director: One particular story that I'll always remember is that of a youth participant in our Young Adult Internship Program, later known as Advance and Earn. He was a recent immigrant from China who was still learning English, and every single time he was asked to participate in our class, he would start off with, "I'm really sorry, everyone, but my English is not good." We must have heard him say the same thing at least 200 times by the end of the program. His English was actually not bad, but he was so self-conscious whenever he had to speak. As the program went on, he ended up applying to and attending Berkeley College. A year or two later, I was at a workshop with a group of over 200 youth listening to some guest speakers. One of them was a representative from Berkeley College who mentioned that her school actually had a CPC program alumnus whom she wanted to address the group. As I looked on from the far back of the crowd, I noticed the speaker she introduced looked familiar. It was the young man who was always apologizing for his English! But this time he was speaking at length about all the positive aspects of our program, how it helped him gain confidence in himself, and how he was now interning at Google. It was pretty impressive to hear him speak like that. After his presentation ended, I went over to talk to him. He told me he was doing well in school and that he wanted to become a mentor to our youth. It’s always so inspiring to see individuals like him who want to pay it forward. The fact that he was able to advocate for himself and also encourage other youth to get the most they can out of our programming really moved me. 

Share Raihan's story using #EssentialWorkers and #AlwaysEssential.

Essential Worker Quick Facts

 Black, Latinx, and Asian people make up
more than 70% of the city’s essential workers.

Human services workers are essential workers.

New York City contracts have not set rates that accurately reflect 
human services workers' commitment to essential work.

All of CPC's staff are essential workers. 

Tweets You Can Use To Share #AlwaysEssential Posts:

Help me lift the voices of #EssentialWorkers. Like and share this post to stand in solidarity with human services workers. #AlwaysEssential bit.ly/cpc-always-essential

#EssentialWorkers risk their health and their families’ health to serve others through COVID-19. As New York begins to recover, orgs like @cpc-nyc will be among the ones helping the hardest hit New Yorkers put their lives back together. Support them here: bit.ly/cpc-covid-19-relief-fund #AlwaysEssential

About CPC
The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) is the nation's largest Asian American social services organization. Founded in 1965, CPC aims to promote the social and economic empowerment of Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities of New York City.

華人策劃協會(華策會)是全美國最大的亞裔美國人及太平洋島民社區服務機構.成立於1965年,華策會專門為紐約市的華裔美國人,移民,和低收入民眾提供金融權力和社區服務.