Vancouver’s Chinese media greens up
Filed Under: city living, cultural, environment, event, green Profile, vancouver on October 18, 2009
One of the interesting observations shared within the environmental movement here in Vancouver, is the rather low participation rate of the Asian, in particular, the local Chinese-Canadian community.
A number of news editors had shared the following thought with me,
…why are there hardly ever… any Chinese people in these green media conferences?
Yes. Over the past few years, in the media conferences I’ve participated in, the majority of the presenters and of the media who covered, one can’t help but notice the absence of Asian faces.
Really, it shouldn’t matter.
Ethnicity and culture should not be an important quantifier… and is probably quite politically incorrect to even mention this.
But, in Vancouver, where over half the citizens are of a “visible” ethnicity –ie. south Asians and east Asians (stats indicate over 30% of metro region of Chinese ancestry), one can’t help but wonder why.
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Is it that the Chinese here in our city are not interested?
Well, it appears some changes are occurring.
Our summer effort “Green Leap Forward” (link here), had wonderful coverage by many of the Asian language newspapers, including all the major Chinese dailies, and some Korean and Japanese language news outlets too.
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Ours had been a planned effort to reach out and get the message out: to participate!
The best thing that has happened is that our organizing group, Cinevolution, who put the summer’s Green Leap Forward, has now developed some real strong and wonderful relationships with all three main Chinese language newspapers – Ming Pao, Sing Tao and World Journal.
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These media outlets have individuals – interested points of contact on Chinese language and “mainstream” (English language) environmental / sustainability issues.
It makes it so much easier to grab the ear of interested and informed journalists!
Of particular excitement was the meeting of one reporter, who earlier covered our efforts on saving trees in Vancouver a decade back, still active in covering community affairs.
We’re excited to be re-connecting and nurturing these wonderful friendships – relationships which we hope to bridge into a full and wholly connected partnership with all “mainstream” local and regional environmental efforts.
We all share the air, water and land. We’re all in this together.
So share the knowledge, and get involved. 
