Background

The rules and laws of the United States or the customs and lifestyle of the American people are new and different for many immigrants with increasingly diverse backgrounds.

For these immigrants, it takes a very long time- for some, their entire life- to learn and understand matters of everyday life such as interacting with neighbors, communicating with school teachers and government officials, or volunteering in their communities.

As a result, immigrants cannot help but to continue living in ways that may not be relatable to neighbors, public officials, or even to their children, and thus become increasingly isolated within their communities.

These immigrants who wish to learn and adapt to their new country face many barriers. For example, immigrants have limited access to information such as a type of “101” class for new immigrants that allow them to learn about community affairs and various U.S systems.

In particular, language barrier prevents them from utilizing resources such as local libraries and community college that may be available to others. If a program- a “101” citizenship education class- provide immigrants, in their native language, information such as U.S history, systems, laws and other related materials, immigrants will better understand and increase a sense of ownership of their newly adopted country.

This, then, will foster civic responsibility and increase their desire to learn English and find ways to become a contributing member of this country.

The United States continues to accept immigrants every day to strengthen the nation and immigrants continue to apply to live in the U.S in order to become a part of what the United States represents. The sooner these immigrants can become well-integrated in the country, the sooner can immigrants contribute to strengthening the country and enjoy all that American offers. If not, both the immigrant communities and the nation as a whole will continue to accrue losses.

The Good Neighboring Foundation was founded to help the growing Asian immigrant population better understand and adapt to expectations, underlying values, and other various systems of the United States. Currently there exists a gap in which immigrants remain unknowledgeable, misunderstand, and become indifferent to American affairs, resulting in their lack of involvement and deepening fears of the unknown outside their ethnic enclaves. Moreover, this also negatively affects the civic behavior of their children, who will play an important role in building America’s future.

Our communities need linguistically and culturally appropriate programs, driven by voices from within the community, that bring Asian immigrant families out of isolation to become better connected to and participate in their larger communities.

This will not only prevent potential conflicts among diverse groups of people due to misunderstanding, but it will also unleash the immense potential stored within immigrant communities. By joining efforts to move toward the development of a diverse and participatory culture, the Good Neighboring Foundation works to move the United States to reinforce the idea of unity in diversity and realize a more ideal democracy.

 

Organizational History

Good Neighboring Foundation was founded in 2000 with a vision to transform the Asian immigrant communities in the United States. Choosing the Korean immigrants as the first target population of focus, the Good Neighboring Foundation started its project, the Good Neighboring Campaign, to increase knowledge and involvement of Korean immigrants regarding American affairs through programs such as Patriotic Pocket Card, Good Neighboring Post, Message Mats, Good Neighboring Day, Community Appreciation Supper Student Essay Contests, Good Neighbor of the Year Award, Etiquette Classes, Immigrants Leadership Forum, Presentations and column contributions, etc.

In 2010, Good Neighboring Foundation underwent structural and programmatic changes to develop a more systematic method of evaluating its efforts in helping Asian immigrant families become active citizens of the United States.

During these transitional years, the Good Neighboring Campaign started the KAmerican Post, U.S History & Systems Class, Adopt-A-Road Program, New American Hero Award and radio broadcasting as well as better promoting past programs such as Immigrants Leadership Forum, Patriot Pocket Card, and column contributions.

The Good Neighboring Campaign is continuing to undergo changes according to evaluations to better serve our communities.

Achievements since 2010:

In a year, KAmerican Post, an online news source, distributed 2,000 articles on United States affairs and culture, as well as opportunities to become involved in the community. The subscribers to KAmerican Post, has reached 6,000. According to surveys, 91% of respondents described that KAmerican Post motivated them to learn more about the United States.

In one year, 35,000 Patriot Pocket Cards with National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance written in English and Korean were distributed to Korean immigrants in 28 states. We have received numerous feedbacks regarding immigrants’ increased confidence at community events as a result of knowing the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem with the Patriot Pocket Card.

Also, in the past year, participants of U.S History & Systems Class numbered 110 and 10 Korean immigrant churches and associations joined Adopt-A-Road Program to clean nearby roads. The demand for U.S History & Systems Class and Adopt-A-Road Program has steadily been getting higher with many participants responding that learning U.S immigration history and cleaning community road increased their sense of belongingness and ownership of the country.

One hundred and fifty Korean immigrants attended 2nd Immigrants Leadership Forum and 1,000 forum reports with information gathered from the forum about ways for immigrants to become active American citizens have been printed and are being distributed to Asian immigrant opinion leaders nationwide.  

New American Hero Award was presented to LTC John Oh, a Korean immigrant and US Army medical doctor who removed an unexploded rocket propelled grenade from a wounded soldier in Afghanistan.

In a year, 22 radio interviews were made in order to disseminate information regarding the reasons and methods to become active American citizens to about 60,000 Korean immigrants in Metro-Atlanta and 4 columns encouraging Korean immigrants to become better integrated in the American society have been written for Korean community newspapers.