Efforts of Chinese community in Peterborough recognised with King's Award for Voluntary Service

Community Group the Chinese Community in Peterborough (CCIP) been honoured with the King’s Award for Voluntary Service for their hard work in the community.

The group are the only recipients of the prestigious award in Cambridgeshire that aims to recognise outstanding. volunteer-led groups making a real impact in communities all across the UK.

The group has been honoured for “working to improve community cohesion, social harmony and community wellbeing.”

Faustina Yang, who moved to the UK 20 years ago, began the CCIP in 2014 as a way to meet fellow Chinese people and build a community so that her daughter would not grow up knowing nothing of the Chinese culture and language.

Without any advertising, 55 people turned up for the first meeting.

Since then, the group has an extended team of between 20 and 30 volunteers that lend their support to the group activities.

These include running regular Tai Chi classes at Thistlemoor Medical Centre, offering English lessons to Chinese speakers and running employability.

The group started Tai Chi classes overZoom during lockdown and were inundated with over 1000 requests to join sessions. Such was the popularity, that sessions continued on afterwards.

Lockdown was also a time in which the CCIP gave out over 20,000 face masks and ran hate crime awareness events as hate crimes towards the Chinese community grew during Covid.

Faustina said: “Covid was a really bad time for hate crime but it’s been really important for us to show that we are here contributing to the greater good and making positive contributions to wider society here as Chinese people.

"The Tai Chi lessons really took off in lockdown. I had to upgrade my Zoom to let everyone who wanted to join and we also had over 7000 people watch later on record.

"We were happy to be able to start running sessions face to face. There are so many benefits to health from practising Tai Chi. It is our dream that it will be recommended to NHS patients in Peterborough as it is in other parts of the country.

"We estimate that was have helped over 8000 people but we’re ambitious and want to keep growing that number, beyond 10,000 and then beyond 50,000.

"The community really brings me joy.”

The group has worked with over 40 institutions and have partnered with several local community and organisations.

The CCIP has paid a special thanks to the organisations that have offered support along the way. These include: NHS CPFT, Big Lottery, Cambridgeshire Community Foundation, PCVS, Peterborough City Council, High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, BGL, Allia Future Business Centre, Inspire Education Group and Near Neighbours.

Their free Tai Chi and Qi Wong lessons take place at Thistlemoor Medical Centre on Thistlemoor Road, New England on Saturdays between 10:30am and 12pn.

All the latest news and events from the Chinese Community in Peterborough can be found on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100070535048709.

Faustina has previously received a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, in 2019 for her Hampton Tiddlers group.