Kiwanis’s The Year of The Rat Parade 2020.
Celebrating Lunar New Year has long been a beloved and huge holiday tradition to many cultures specifically Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. The Lunar New Year of 2020 falls on January 25th (Saturday), and the festival will last to February 8th, about 15 days in total. 2020 is a Year of the Rat according to the Chinese zodiac, an animal that symbolizes smart, charming and imaginative. Each year between the eve and Chinese New Year, we gather together with friends and family for a reunion dinner. This is the old family tradition that passes on to the generation.
Flushing, New York, home to 185,000 residents who are mostly Chinese and Korean immigrants, will light firecrackers, beat drums and gongs at the parade on the first day of Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year. The event organized by the Flushing Chamber of Commerce each year draws huge participation from many organizations and local businesses. The event is televised on local and international channels.
This year the Kiwanis Club of Douglaston and Big Apple will be celebrating the festival together. We partnered with a local printing company, Post Heritage to kickstart an outreach program to help raise funds for both clubs. Our committee has spent months working together with the design team from Post Heritage to craft and execute the ideas. “We want to give back to the community, to our beloved Queens. We want to give all the business owners a platform to promote and send the new year message to our citizens yet still can make a donation to our clubs.” Sandy Liew, Lt. Governor of Queen East Division says. As a result, the Post Heritage team has put together a tote bag filled with design items such as Fei Chun (Chinese New Year greetings and decoration), flyers, mugs, pens. Each item offered an ad space to local businesses to promote their brand in the community. Our committees presented the program to the members and encourage them to seek sponsors. All the proceeds will be used to fund our future charity events.
Like many events we organized, we face many obstacles. The biggest challenge we were facing was a lack of labor power to prepare and distribute 1,000 tote bags. With the help from Viktoriya Borisova, Liberty Division Lieutenant Governor, New York of Circle K International, she invited many Circle K and Key Club members to join the event.”Viktoriya has done a phenomenal job to get the team together, her leadership is greatly appreciated.” Anthony Tam, PR Manager from the Club of Douglaston. On the day of the parade, there was a remarkably huge turnout. We had about 64 people on our team. “We wanted them to celebrate and feel the joy with us, our group pledges to spread joy and happiness.” Jonathan Yu, president of the Kiwanis Club of Big Apple says.
Despite the bad weather on the day of the parade, our team was filled with good spirits. “Our purpose is to build Kiwanis brand awareness, we want everyone in the community to know about our projects.” Chung Dick, President-elect, Club of Big Apple. “Chinese New Year Parade in Flushing is the biggest event to the Chinese community in New York, perhaps in the country. This is our first year to march down the street with Big Apple club, we must present the Kiwanis brand professionally.” Hannah Chen, President, Club of Douglaston. Our team worked around the clock to make sure our sponsors and Kiwanis clubs get to maximize the exposure at the parade. When we walking down the route, our team received cheering from the crowd instantly. The rain did not seem to affect attendance at the event, our tote bags sold like hot cakes. Queens residents made their own magic here at home, happy and positive. Kiwanis team strives to build a closer relationship to the community where our friends and family live, we also are looking for a better and prosperous future.
This is the third-year we marched on Chinese New Year. Unlike other years in the past, we are lucky and pleased to share the moment with all the members from Key Club and Circle K. Many of them are coming from different backgrounds and religions, most importantly they came from different parts of the city to join our parade and made us the most diverse team at the parade. As part of the tradition, our club president, Chung Dick hands out red envelopes with lucky money to each participant. We are so grateful to start our new year with the Kiwanis family and we are looking forward to having more events together.