TOMATO Sunday Survey after MIKI080407

Hi all,

I want to thank you for all of your participation on Saturday's MIKI gathering. I learned a lot from all of you.

Attached please find a copy of email list with contact info. Please use it only for this group friends only. If you are to give out, please ask for permission.

Also, a brief summary of minutes. Both of the copies were created by Lucy Huang. Thanks for her help!

With much delight, I spoke to most of people on the list today. The followings are the summary of these conversation. I am opened for additional comments and suggestions:

1. For communication and identification purpose, we will give a name to this gathering. namely, TOMATO ( To Michigan Alliance of Taiwanese-American Organizations).

This is not a new organization, but rather a platform for all Taiwanese affiliate Organizations to get together for following purpose:

1.Providing a communication platform and resource sharing among all Taiwanese-American Associations and Taiwanese-American individuals.

2.Supporting TOMATO members' organizations in a positive, non- pressure, non political manner.

3.Promoting team work among all members and their activities, Organizationally and individually.

4.Promoting TOMATO member's young generation. Activity includes, but not limited to, future career planning, personal finance management, teenager struggles, etc.

5.Problem- solving and projects-sharing among all members. You are free to discuss a topic with members or to look for an answer or to share your ideas. Please respect each member's opinion and will.

6. Promoting Taiwan, supporting Taiwan, and proud to be Taiwan affiliate!

The list can go on. but the idea is to " Work together for better Taiwanese -American future". TOMATO does NOT supersedes any of member's organization, rather, a harmony platform for all Taiwanese_Americans(T-A), who live and breath in Michigan. Who want to associate with each other and providing a tighter net among T-A organizations and individuals. And, for who agree the ideas of promoting T-A future generations!

2. You are free to communicate among group members individually or as a group email. As long as they are within our guidelines( such as above). No Junk-mails. please.

3. Everyone appreciates the opportunity to meet with each other and update the news. Some prefer to meet again every one to two months, while others chosen three to six months. It seems that the medium is three- four months get together or as needed if sooner. Is this ok with all of you? say, early November? Hopefuuly, each organizations or individual has a schedule out for the coming year to share.

4. Some members suggest to have a brochure made out from each Organization ASAP, and put them in a package and distribute it among all participant members' organizations to promote each other organizations (or individuals if material is proper),during members' annual meeting and/ or VIP events(I.e., Art Fair booth, Taiwan Night etc). In addition, we can organize a fair if workable, so that each organizations or individual members has a booth to promote themselves.

5. Some suggest that we can have a theme seminar and/ or more time to discuss issues when we get together next time. What do you think? for example, how to assist youngsters to manage personal finance as parent(s)? How to prepare to enter into aging gracefully? etc.

6. We want to connect all T_A in Michigan, if you know any of Organizations that meet the category, please forward the complete name of Organization, contact person and phone number, please! I can contact them or you can! Such as churches? tsi-Chi? choir groups?

Feel free to add the opinions and give me the response. Better yet, we can create a " TOMATO Blog", so we can all share there. I will gather majority vote for any or all topics discuss.

Let's have fun supporting each other! Now we can say" a TOMATO a day, keeps worry away!" :)

Cheers!

All the best,

Theresa Chang

Theresa Chang

A great supporter of TOMATO