Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council

he Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council (OCIC) is a 501c3 nonprofit laser focused on helping Oakland Chinatown small businesses, residents, and greater Chinatown community.

The main goal of OCIC is to make Oakland Chinatown cleaner, safer, and more vibrant for the community. Our Chinatown businesses have suffered from a first wave of business loss during the pandemic when people were afraid to patronize our businesses due to xenophobic and misinformed beliefs that our neighborhood would give them coronavirus. We were hit with a second wave of hardship in the form of anti-Asian hate when our elders, residents, and small businesses were targets of seemingly senseless violence. Our Chinatown walls, normally covered with wonderful community murals, have started to become defaced with graffiti that damages the cultural characteristics of the neighborhood.

OCIC as a Community Benefits District is a long-term solution to make our community feel safe, clean, and welcoming again. OCIC is currently in the process of rolling out its special benefit services to provide safety and cleanliness serves through ambassadors and security, graffibity abatement, helping promote our Chinatown and its small businesses, managing events around our cultural district, helping our small mom and pop shops with social media presence, coordinating the many volunteer efforts in Oakland Chinatown, and more.

We are governed by a diverse Board of Directors made up of Oakland Chinatown community members which includes property owners, small business owners, non profits, residents, volunteer patrol members, and both English-speaking and Chinese speaking community members.