Min Quan

The Monitoring Group Min Quan project works with victims of racial harassment within the Chinese community across the country. It runs a 24 hour victim support helpline in both Mandarin and Cantonese, and provides a casework support service to victims.

The project started in 1999, when staff at the New Diamond Restaurant in central London were racially attacked, and subsequently arrested despite being the real victims. The Campaign to help the victims of the New Diamond 5 quickly gathered momentum in the Chinese community, and within a short period TMG began to receive many calls from other Chinese families facing racial violence at their business premises.

The TMG Min Quan project came from the development of these cases. In 2001, the City Parochial Foundation awarded TMG with grant to help develop a service specifically for the Chinese community. This was a huge success and in 2006, the Department of Community and Local Government provided support to develop Min Quan’s work in supporting the Chinese community nationwide.

This has allowed Min Quan to focus on upgrading their provisions and facilities for the Chinese community in London, Southampton and Manchester. Over the past year the Min Quan project has achieved much including

Min Quan has helped the Chinese community to become involved in relevant partnership forums in London, Southampton and Manchester.

This has led to a greater understanding of the impact of race hate crime and fear of crime on the Chinese communities. This has been particularly important for Chinese businesses presenting its concerns to the statutory agencies and has lead to many improved community safety and victim-led services. Min Quan helps more than 30 clients in each area at any one time, 95% clients have positive outcomes in their cases.

TMG MQ has improved access to casework and advocacy services producing better community safety and criminal justice outcomes for victims Min Quan Increased confidence within the Chinese community to serve as change agents related to race hate crimes resulting in improved resources to support victims, tackle race hate crime and combat fear of crime

Min Quan has created an inclusive organisational base which enables us to speak to broader constituency on the impact of race hate crime and through developing activities which create bridges of understanding between Chinese and diverse ethnic communities.

For example we established the Southampton Race Solidarity Group, the members includes Southampton Chinese association, Polish association, and the French Africa association. We aim to share experience of racism and prejudice by all Black & Minority Ethnic Communities (BME), and to learn from each other on how to cope with the problem, to install confidence, respect and dignity for all BME communities.

This has Improved intra-ethnic cohesion between the Chinese and other BME communities through developing networks and mutual support systems in order to achieve better race hate outcomes for the Chinese and BME communities at large

The project will continue to develop its national focus over the coming year. For further information please contact our head office.