English Club Series Report (Part 1), 2025

As a nonprofit community organization long dedicated to public-interest community health services, the Chinese American Community Health Services, CACHS, has extensive experience in organizing and planning programs for seniors. The English Club is an online daily English-learning program and one of the two major senior activity series hosted by CACHS in 2025.

The English Club was held every Monday and Wednesday evening from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., beginning in January and continuing for six months until June. The program was deeply loved by seniors in the community. In addition to professional English-speaking instructors, energetic youth volunteers from the Capital Youth Outreach Club (CYOC) actively participated in every session.

Because CYOC volunteers are teenagers who had school on Mondays and Wednesdays and still needed to complete homework and review lessons after class, logging in on time at 7:00 p.m. twice a week is a big challenge. Nevertheless, my teammates demonstrated remarkable dedication and professionalism by logging in early, starting classes on time, and maintaining this commitment consistently for six consecutive months. As the youth volunteer leader for this program, I typically shared the English course materials in the group chat over the weekend so everyone could download and prepare in advance.

Since more than 30 seniors participated and their English proficiency levels varied widely, they were divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes. The English proficiency of our CYOC youth volunteers was truly impressive. Although they were randomly assigned to different levels, they were able to handle course materials from any class with ease and confidence. In addition, the classes required not only teaching English but also frequent communication in Chinese. Our volunteers’ strong bilingual skills earned unanimous praise from the seniors.

During each one-hour session, approximately 40 minutes were led by the youth volunteers to help seniors preview or review the lesson content. Because many seniors struggled with pronunciation, even simple words had to be practiced repeatedly—again and again. The process was often tedious, but the volunteers patiently accompanied them until real improvement was achieved.

Learning itself is a demanding process, and a one-hour English class is an especially great challenge for seniors in their seventies and beyond. Having spoken Chinese their entire lives, changing pronunciation habits and beginning to speak English was truly difficult. The hardships involved were best understood by the youth volunteers who accompanied them for half a year. Although teaching was challenging and learning was strenuous, the English Club progressed smoothly thanks to everyone’s perseverance and dedication.

In every class, our performance earned countless compliments from the seniors and praise and recognition from the CACHS team. As the youth volunteer leader, I am incredibly proud of my teammates’ outstanding performance. At the same time, we learned so much from the seniors themselves. Though their youth has passed, they radiated positivity and inspired us deeply with their optimism, wisdom, calm confidence, and eagerness to learn.

With the strong support of CACHS and CYOC, and through the joint efforts of the English teachers, youth volunteers, and seniors, the 2025 English Club program concluded successfully and came to a perfect close.