What an amazing day! Over 520 people with 310 kids came out to Waverly Place in Chinatown to celebrate young children and families through planned games and crafts led by parents, along with fun novel activities never-seen-before in Chinatown!

This outdoor event is organized by the three SF Chinatown family resources centers: Gum Moon/AWRC, WuYee-Joy Lok Family Resource Center, and APA Family Services and sponsored by the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood. Our purpose with this block party was two-fold: first, to bring fun and engaging activities to children 0-5 and 5-12+ with the organization of parent leaders of each FRC. And secondly, we wanted to create more awareness of our city’s Family Resource Center programs and services for all families.

Throughout the fair, there were planned festivities for all ages. Examples of parents’ organized games and crafts for children from 0-5 are hook a duck with the wheel of fortune, water bead claw with prizes, air dried modeling clay. We also planned games for older children 5-12+ with basketball hoops, slime making, and sand art necklace creations. Together, we danced to DJ John’s playlist 🔊; we were amazed by Jeffery the unicycle juggler 🤹; we moved with Blair’s children-disco-dance 🕺🏻; we laughed with Boswick the clown 🤡; we were inspired by a trio of GuZheng children performers 🎶; and last but not least, we were exhilarated by the children lion dance troop from Lion Dance Me 🦁!

Other unique activities like a petting zoo with beloved goats, ducks, chickens, and rabbits 🐰 gave young kids the opportunity to learn about farm animals. Older children learned how to make a smoothie by pedaling a bike 🚲. A balloon artist amazed everyone with twisted balloon shapes 🎈. And everyone got moving with the hula hoops play workshop ⭕️.

All these festivities kept the families playing until the very end of the fair and as some local Chinatown people remark; “We’ve never seen so many families in Chinatown on a Friday at 6 pm still having fun!” What a way to revive our community with a great block party!

Sincere gratitude to our community partners:

Be Chinatown • Recology • Project By Project • Prince of Peace • Children Book Project • Dear Community • First Republic Bank