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AI: Now, you explained earlier how you worked with Atlantic Street Center to focus very carefully the services of Atlantic Street Center. But at the same time, you recognized that there were many other services and needs that were not being met...

TI: Yeah.

AI: ...and in fact, a great many needs in the Asian community. Can you tell me a little bit about the organizations you helped start up that, to meet some of these needs?

TI: Well, helping in a way of providing facilities was for the Filipino youth activities. And they were still quite young in development. But they had their drill team and needed space. So we had a little playfield they could use and had their meetings at the center. (For two years) we had about eight Asian American social workers who were concerned about getting some kind of counseling services available to Asian Americans. And for two years we talked and talked and talked. And then fortunately, there was enough of a momentum (in) developing a volunteer-based counseling service at Blaine Memorial Methodist Church came to be.

And with the help of Dr. Masuda's class at the University of Washington, they were able to devise an intake data-collecting system and analyze who came, type of problems, what was done. All that was done in a very professional way. And as a result, the first year when they applied to the United Way, they surprised United Way with such a fine document, and it's a volunteer effort. And so they quickly were accepted as part of the United Way family.

AI: And this organization became known as...

TI: The Asian Counseling and Referral Service. And that group has become a huge, couple-million-dollar-or-so operation today, and doing an excellent piece of work.

AI: But at that time, which was the early 1970s, again, the situation was quite different from now, where it, my understanding is that people outside of the white mainstream often did not seek services, health or mental health services, and if they did seek help, often couldn't receive it.

TI: You're right.

AI: Can you tell a little bit more about why that was?

TI: Well that was part of the discussion. There weren't very many Asian American providers. It was primarily Caucasian. The ability or inability of other folks to be more sensitive and supportive of persons from Asian American communities was an issue we addressed. But at that time, there were practically no other Asian American social service programs. When you look at year 2000, we have a powerful Asian Counseling and Referral Service, as I mentioned over $2 million dollar budget. We have a International District Health Clinic, we have International District Housing Alliance, we have, you name it. We've been very fortunate to build community issues that needed to be addressed and becoming more politically involved. We were able to establish credibility with the city level and the county or the state, and in some cases, national. More and more doors were opened. We found out that by pulling ourselves together into a coalition, much more could be done (rather than) individual agency (effort).

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.