The Adopt-An-Alleyway Youth Empowerment Project is a non-profit project of the Chinatown Community Development Center that is based in the San Francisco Chinatown area. Volunteers clean the alleyways of San Francisco's Chinatown, organize monthly programs for seniors and children, and provide tours with Chinatown Alleyway Tours.

History

This project started in 1991 when Reverend Norman Fong, a member of the Chinatown Community Development Center and a Chinatown advocate, recruited

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youth Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood ( maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. Y ...

from Galileo High School to help him on his quest to beautify the alleyways in San Francisco's Chinatown. Back in the 1980s, the City of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

did not officially recognize alleyways as city streets, so nothing was done to maintain them, leading to excessive amounts of graffiti and trash in those areas. For this reason, he decided to start the project. As of 2007, alleyways are still not considered to be streets because they do not meet the 32 ft width requirement, although other alleyways outside of Chinatown are. As of 2007, there are about 30+ members in the youth empowerment program, and 10 paid workers.

Volunteer life

Adopt-an-Alleyway (AAA) consists of volunteers (general and cabinet members) and coordinator(s). Monthly general meetings are held on the first Friday of each month, where all the volunteers come together to discuss and review upcoming events for that month. The cabinet will have their own meeting every second Friday of each month, supervised by the coordinator, to plan activities and organize events. The cabinet is composed of a president, vice president, two secretaries, four social chairs, and three to five cabinet leaders. The events/volunteer services done by the organization include: "Tenant Services," "Super Sunday," and clean-up/graffiti removal. "Tenant Services" is done twice a month, where the youths go to single room occupancies around San Francisco's Chinatown and interact with the seniors who live there, bridging the intergeneration gap. "Super Sunday" is an event where the youth take care of kids while their parents are having SRO meetings at Gordon J. Lau Elementary School. Clean-up/graffiti removal is where the youth break into groups, led by the cabinet, to sweep or paint over the graffiti of the alleyways of San Francisco's Chinatown.

Awards

On May 12, 2007, The project won the 2007 Crissy Field Heroes award and has a video spot at the Crissy Field Information Center.AAA Community Heroes
/ref> As part of the project, the AAA also offers tours of Chinatown's alleyways, beginning at

Portsmouth Square Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dense ...

.Tour Guides

List of Chinatown Alleyways in English and Chinese

* Commercial Street - 襟美慎街 *Wentworth Street - 德和街 * Beckett Street - 白話轉街 *

Waverly Place Waverly Place is a narrow street in the Greenwich Village section of the New York City borough of Manhattan, that runs from Bank Street to Broadway. Waverly changes direction roughly at its midpoint at Christopher Street, turning about 120 d ...

- 天后廟街 *

Ross Alley Ross Alley is a north–south alley in San Francisco's Chinatown. Ross Alley lies between and is parallel to Stockton and Grant, running one city block between Jackson and Washington. History Ross Alley was initially built in 1849, adjacent ...

- 舊呂宋巷 * Walter U. Lum Place - 林華耀街 * Hang Ah Alley - 香亞街 * Spofford Alley - 新呂宋巷 * Old Chinatown Lane - 舊華埠巷 *

St Louis Place St. Louis Place is a neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. It is bounded by Palm Street on the North, Cass Avenue on the South, North Florissant on the East, and North Jefferson on the West. It is home to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's ...

- 聖路易巷 *

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian anc ...

Alley An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in the older parts of towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road ( back lane ...

- 亞打罅巷 *

Stark Alley Stark or Starke may refer to: Places Antarctica and vicinity * Stark Point, James Ross Island * Stark Ridge, Churchill Mountains * Stark Rock, south of the Crulls Islands United States * Stark, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Stark, Il ...

* Joice Alley San Francisco Chinatown Alleys
/ref>

References

{{Streets in San Francisco Organizations based in San Francisco 1991 establishments in California Chinatown, San Francisco Youth empowerment