Dear FCSN Families and Friends,

2021 is an exciting year. With more and more people getting vaccinated, many schools and businesses have been able to reopen, and FCSN will be reopening soon as well. This year is FCSN’s 25th anniversary, and while we are celebrating what we have done, we are also planning where to go in our future.

FCSN currently has over 1,000 family members, and we are continuing to reach out to more new immigrant families with special needs children to welcome them into our community and to help them learn about the special needs services system. We also provide family support and low cost enrichment programs to all of our members’ families. On the vendorized program side, we provide adult day programs, supported employment programs, living services, after school programs, and respite services.

So what are our future goals? First, we would like to expand our services capacity, because we want to be able to serve more clients, including the ones on the waiting list. Second, we would like to provide services for clients with higher needs. Currently our vendorized programs mainly serve high functional clients, and we would like to expand on what we offer. Third, we would like to increase our facility space. Our East Bay Fremont center is overcrowded, so we recently bought a new site with 17,000 square feet. We are working on remodeling, with plans to have it ready for use in 2023. Lastly, we would like to build an integrated community center where we can work with business partners to provide a variety of classes for students with all ability levels.

To celebrate FCSN’s 25th anniversary, we established an emergency relief fund and a college scholarship fund to give back to our community. We have helped two FCSN staff members so far using the emergency relief fund, and the fund is still available to help other staff members in need. We had nine applicants apply for the college scholarship. Three of our FCSN board members are reviewing the applications, and we will announce the three recipients at the end of July. We also produced a 25th anniversary song and an interview video. Watch the touching song and the interview video below! Finally, we are working on the FCSN 25th anniversary book to remember the path we went through and the wonderful people that contributed to FCSN’s success.

This year’s fundraising gala is very important to us, because our goal is to raise enough funds to remodel the new site. We also hope to have it in person instead of virtual, so that we can see old friends, meet new ones, and enjoy the great performances. Of course there are always uncertain factors ahead, but we will continue to work together and keep progressing.