By Isabella He and Ryan Liu

“As soon as our organization was just established in late 1996, we started working on the FCSN printed newsletter, and we published the first issue in January 1997,” FCSN Co-Chairperson and FCSN Voices Advisor Jim Chiao said. “The newsletter reported announcements, organizational updates, and articles from parents and volunteers, it helped bring our organization together and grow. Today, 24 years later, I see FCSN Voices as a huge extension of FCSN newsletter, with all the power that comes with the digital platform.”

FCSN Voices was formerly known as FCSN Blog. The blog started about 5-6 years ago with the publication of personal stories of our clients in the Adult Day Programs and Living Programs. About three years ago, Jim took over the blog in order to broaden its scope and reported on the latest news/events from all sectors within FCSN. Then 3 months ago, our Volunteer Director Linmei Chiao received an email from a youth volunteer Ryan, saying that he could help to make the blog a lot better with more personal and detailed blogs – Jim was very receptive to the idea and that’s how Jim and Ryan first got connected. Two weeks later, our tutoring coordinator of SNTutoring Isabella heard of the news and joined the team. Just around the same time, Jim was talking to Wei-Jen about recruiting youth volunteers for the FCSN printed newsletter, and found out that Helen, an editor, was also interested in bringing our newsletter online. It was amazing the speed that we put this team together; within weeks, we had a good working team. Soon, we were publishing at least one article each week. Now, after many weeks of publishing and discussion, we decided to change the name of the publication and FCSN Voices was born.

The name FCSN Voices was chosen to allow the voices of the special needs community to be heard, which consists of special needs individuals, their families and friends, and volunteers and professionals who dedicate their time and effort to improve the lives of special needs individuals. We aim to provide information about FCSN events and programs; inspirational stories about special need individuals; and personal accounts of volunteer initiatives.

FCSN Voices publishes at least one new featured article each week.  Our team currently consists of five core members and a growing team of volunteer youth reporters. We are open to contributions from all members, staff, and volunteers, as we believe that everyone has a unique story that can make a difference in someone else’s life. We are constantly looking for ways to add a fresh voice and a new dimension to our publication to cover a wider scope and serve a much wider audience. We hope this will be an important platform for FCSN to share our dream of building a community for our children & adults with special needs. We look forward to the day when all special needs individuals are fully embraced by the community they live in, becoming an active part of the integrated community. We hope FCSN Voices can play an important role in working towards that goal. 

Follow the FCSN Voices to stay tuned with new stories and events! If you have something to share, please contact our editors.

Meet the Team Behind the Scenes:

Editors: 

Blog Coordinator, Parent Contact – Helen Chou (kaihuei.chou@gmail.com)

Youth Reporter Lead, Volunteer Contact – Isabella He (ihe210699@gmail.com)

Web Editor, Marketing Manager – Ryan Liu (ryanliu268@gmail.com)

Advisors:

Jim Chiao (jim_chiao@yahoo.com)

Wei-Jen Hsia (hsiawj@yahoo.com)

Youth Reporters: 

Nitya, Alice, Hillary, Andria, Anna, Shreya, Kaitlyn, Jessica, Sara, and Daniel