The ministry. The vision. The rest is history.

The Herald Youth Center (HYC) opened in 1992 as a youth ministry to reach Chinatown youth to Christ. We offered one of the first After-School Programs in Chinatown and held an annual Gospel Camp for teens. Our goal was to cultivate a Harvest of Leaders for Christ.

The mission of the Herald Youth Center (HYC) has since been reshaped and is to unite, organize and mobilize the body of Christ to reach Chinese youth for the Glory of God. Our target population is Chinese teens in NYC's Chinatown and surrounding areas like Brooklyn. The focus of our ministry is to develop effective youth programs in cooperation and partnership with local churches and ministries.

The Herald Youth Center seeks to serve youth in their adolescence at a time when many youth are searching for meaning, direction and self-identity. For newly immigrated adolescents, these developmental issues are intensified by being uprooted and placed in a foreign country with a foreign language and a foreign culture. HYC plays a crucial role in helping these teens find their identity in Christ, develop their inner self, discover their mission in life and have Christ as their lifetime coach. Through our services, many teens who were dropping out have become youth leaders in the church today.

It’s for our youth.

The number of Chinese-American children is growing rapidly from year to year. A large majority of Chinese teens in Chinatown are immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Their educational and developmental needs are unique, given the stress of cultural adaptation. Issues of poverty and intergenerational conflict also challenge their household. Chinese immigrant parents tend to work long hours (10-12 hours a day, six days a week), causing these parents to grow emotionally distant from their children. While popular culture may paint Asian American students uniformly as academic high achievers, statistics have shown otherwise. A growing percentage of Asian American teens in New York City's public high school fail to graduate with their class. Our goal is to reach a segment of Chinese immigrant teens who are considered at-risk or on the poverty level.

In-school youth spend the majority of their daily lives in the classroom, but the experience is often frustrating. The attention placed on classroom participation favors extroverted students and leaves the often introverted Chinese youth at a distinct disadvantage. Many of the youth come from a poor educational background and have poorly educated parents, and often have difficulty catching on to the lessons and keeping up with assignments.

Many immigrant youth view school merely as a place to learn English so that they can get jobs. Immigrant students often do not understand test and homework questions referring to aspects of American cultural life of which they have little knowledge. Furthermore, New York State requires all students to pass the English Regents Exam in order to graduate from high school, regardless of time spent in the U.S. This poses a great disadvantage to immigrant students who enter high school late, and many are dropping out at very high rates. Parents, seeing the apparent failure of their children to learn English rapidly, may encourage them to take up jobs instead of attending school. Overage students, who constitute more than half of New York City’s non-English speaking students, are at special risk of dropping out.

Immigrants from Fujian constitute the fastest growing group of students among new Chinese immigrants, posing a major challenge to a public school system that lacks Fuchownese-speaking educators and the resources to help students with language- and learning-related problems.

Chinese youth often have stereotypes of other ethnic groups, and do not know how to interact with them in healthy ways. Much school conflict is the result of cultural misunderstandings between ethnic groups. There has been a sharp increase in school violence against high school students of Chinese descent in recent years, and Chinese immigrant students may experience verbal and physical abuse. Many of the youth do not speak up on these abuses and are largely unaware of the social mechanisms (laws and regulations) that can protect them. As a result, such problems are usually not addressed and the youth may appeal to gangs for self-protection.

On weekdays, thousands commute into Chinatown to work in hundreds of garment factories, grocery stores and restaurants mainly by subway, buses or privately operated vans. Non-English speaking Chinese New Yorkers commute daily for specialized jobs and many also bring their children along for educational programs offered by community-based schools and social service providers. Many workers often work ten to twelve-hour days, six and even seven days a week. Many after-school and day-care programs help take care of the otherwise "latch-key" children. Some stay with their parents at their workplace after school.

My, how you’ve grown.

Through the last few years, we continue to minister to numerous teens. In a continuing effort to be a resource for the community and churches, the Herald Youth Center has dramatically shifted its focus to mobilize and organize the body of Christ to meet the needs of the youth community.

Herald Gospel Camp (Summer) challenges Chinatown and surrounding churches to bring a team (counselors, youth and their unsaved friends) as an evangelistic outreach opportunity for the youth and the church. This strategy also allows the Herald Youth Center to partner with churches more effectively and provide for a more formal follow-up with the campers. This approach helps us build a more natural relationship with the local church as we empower the church to do youth outreach.