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It Takes a Virtual Village

Many organizations in the Virtual Village program are churches. Here, a Buddhist monk learns how to navigate KCCEB’s Web site that provides bilingual information on health and social issues for Korean Americans. Photo by Joseph Hong

By Joseph Hong

Ms. K (who requested anonymity) is a Korean American senior citizen living in the Concord area. She used to commute all the way to the Korean Community Center of the East Bay (KCCEB) office in Oakland to get documents translated. There is no direct route from her place to KCCEB, so Ms. K had to take two bus lines, then hop on BART just to get there, taking over two hours each way.

“A lot of the time, she just needed simple translation of documentation, but she had to come all the way down here because no one could help her with simple tax and insurance papers where she lived,” said Michael Kim, program manager of the new Virtual Village Program at KCCEB.

The Virtual Village Program will help people such as Ms. K. by expanding the Korean-English bilingual social services that KCCEB already provides. It involves partnership with other Korean community centers throughout the Bay Area, as well as training volunteers at other institutions — mostly Korean churches — that potentially could provide social services to a large number of Korean Americans.

In addition, Asian Health Services (AHS) and UC Berkeley’s Center for Family Health (CFFH), funded in part by grants, will provide computers and Internet services to these institutions. This will help the Korean community throughout the Bay Area access bilingual information on citizenship, health and social services on a Web site that the AHS and CFFH help produced.

“We don’t actually want to start mini-KCCEB sites,” Mike Kim explained. “That’s not the most correct notion of this program … [the participating institutions] are not under KCCEB in any way; we are just building partnerships. We actually want to incubate these sites to be competent in providing social services and health information by itself.”

For the past 23 years, KCCEB had been the only agency in the East Bay providing culturally sensitive services to a Korean immigrant population, mainly from one central location in Oakland.

Now, a more expansive Korean community service program is needed. According to John Kim, executive director of KCCEB, 40 percent of Korean Americans have limited English skills, 46 percent have not had a routine medical check-up for two years or more, and Korean Americans are widely dispersed in over 26 cities throughout the East Bay.

There is a three-step process for an organization to become part of this program, as outlined by Mike Kim. First, the director of the institution must attend a conference with KCCEB. Next, the agency must sign a contract concerning its obligations and commitment to the program. Finally, and what KCCEB believes is most important, the institution needs to send out three to six committed volunteers for training at the KCCEB office in Oakland.

After an institution satisfies all three requirements, KCCEB presents it with computers and helps set them up at the organization’s site. Following training of the volunteers and signing of the contract, KCCEB hosts a kick-off ceremony at the institution. If it is a church, KCCEB would announce the program during services to attract potential participants.

“We tell the congregation what hours their volunteers from that church will be available, so now they can directly go to this more convenient location, and now not have to be inconvenienced and come all the way to Oakland,” said Mike Kim.

Mike Kim believes that eventually these organizations will develop their own expertise that they could share with others in the program.

“At this point, we have eight participating sites,” he concluded. “We anticipate 12 more that will be finalized in March. It takes time to do the computer setup and the kick-off. Since many of these sites are churches, we need to go to these sites on Sundays and therefore we can only do four kick-offs a month.”

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Participants in the Virtual Village Program

• Concord Korean United Methodist
• Concord Korean Baptist
• Richmond Korean Baptist Church
• Northern California First Baptist Church
• Korean First Presbyterian Church of San Francisco
• St. Andrew Kim Korean Catholic Church
• Korean Community Christian Church
• Oakland Korean United Methodist