Ithaca, N.Y. — An advocate for Asian-Americans in Ithaca was recognized Thursday for “excellence in community service as a volunteer.”
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Amy Somchanhmavong was given the “Anne T. Jones Award for Excellence in Community Service as a Volunteer” by the Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County.
Somchanhmavong’s nominators called her “one of the unsung hero[es] in our greater community.”
Somchanhmavong, 43, co-founded the Ithaca area’s Fingerlakes International Dragon Boat Festival with her husband about ten years ago, and has spent most of her adult life focused on community service surrounding the Asian-American community in Tompkins County.
(The Human Services Coalition also honored Maureen Kelly and Tania Villa with the “Cecilia Montaner-Vargas Spirit of Inclusion Award;” as well as Valerie Sykes with the “Ruth Pettengill Award for Excellence in Community Service as a Professional.”)
The festival — which features 44-foot canoes, piloted by approximately 20 people each — was introduced “to bring something to the community to highlight Asian- and Asian-American culture,” she said in an interview.
“We wanted to bring something to the community to highlight Asian- and Asian-American culture,” she says. “And also introducing a new way to look at community building.”
From Taiwan to the DR to the US
Somchanhmavong was born in Taiwan. As a child, Somchanhmavong and her family immigrated to the Dominican Republic, and later to the U.S.. She attended public schools throughout New York State and New Jersey.
She then attended SUNY Binghamton, where she studied history. At Binghamton, she said, she learned of the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad by Chinese laborers in the 1800s.
“I was really intrigued in learning more,” she said. “I started talking with some faculty members, wondering ‘why is there no course such as this?’,” referring to Asian-American studies.
During her sophomore year at SUNY Binghamton, she began petitioning for the implementation of an Asian-American Studies program at the school.
Somchanhmavong connected with faculty, community members, and other students regarding the potential program. By the time she was a senior, she said, a ten-year track was in place to create the Department of Asian and Asian-American studies, which is now offered as a major and a minor.
She was the first person at SUNY Binghamton to receive a degree with a concentration in Asian-American Studies, she said.
Community service in Ithaca
After coming to Cornell for graduate school at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, she became interested in connecting the university with the community-at-large.
To do so, Somchanhmavong, a mother of three, works as the Associate Director of Service Training at Cornell’s Public Service Center, where she places Cornell students in pre-K through 12th grade classrooms, where they provide support services — tutoring and SAT prep, for example — to local students.
“We have a lot of different students from organizations that address the issue of education equity,” she said. “Certain populations get more resources because of their socioeconomic levels … a student gets, for example, more opportunities to be engaged in different activities, or have more access to quality of supplemental academic support” if their parents are wealthier.
In 2006, Somchanhmavong worked with Ithaca College film professor Changhee Chun to produce “Spilled (Soy) Milk,” a film that “capture[d] the voices of Asian-American residents in the area.”
She assisted the production by gathering historical information regarding Asian-Americans in Tompkins County and interviewing several Asian-American community members.
“Being a part of those conversations, and going into interview sessions, being one of the interviewers, learning more about the residents … it was the most rewarding” thing she has done, she said.
Receiving the award, however, is by no means the end of Somchanhmavong commitment to community service.
“I think it gives you time to reflect on what you did,” she said. “So what does this mean next?”