Chinese and Asian Americans in the St. Louis

By Jason Tang, President, OCA-STL

Dear OCA Members & Friends,

Happy New Year!

We are proud to report that we have had another exciting year in promoting the hopes and aspirations of Chinese and Asian Americans in the St. Louis area.

In 2005, OCA, St. Louis made significant impact in the following three areas that we had planned for:

1. Expanded Community Outreach - The third annual joint picnic with the Family with Children from China (FCC) was a success. Seeing so many adopted children from China being loved by their families has inspired us to support the FCC organization wholeheartedly.

2. Enhanced Cross Culture Communication - OCA, with the generous support from Anheuser-Busch Companies, hosted a cross-cultural communication seminar. The speaker was the world renown cross cultural communication expert Dr. Lilly Chen. We enjoyed a morning of networking and learning communication skills. As in the past, OCA, St. Louis was again invited to give seminars in Chinese culture and customs to students at Rockwood South High School and Webster University.

3. Encouraged Entrepreneurship - OCA organized this workshop with the help of the S.B.A., the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Regional Enterprise Center. More than 50 professionals and businessmen learned how and when to start a profitable new business and sustain the success with the available resources from the S.B.A. and the Regional Enterprise Center in St. Louis.

In addition, OCA will continue to promote Mandarin Chinese as an optional foreign language in local elementary schools in recognition of its importance in the growing trend toward globalization.

The 2006 annual banquet will be held at the Double Tree Hotel in Chesterfield on Saturday January 21st. Many businesses, civic and political leaders will congregate at the banquet to exchange ideas for the benefit of the Asian community. This is an excellent forum for individuals to meet and for companies to drum up business opportunities and network with other firms. Please come and join us.

We look forward to seeing you at the banquet. To register, please visit: http://oca-stl.org/event_register.html or call 314-426-8222.