Way back in July 2022, we published a blog announcing QARI Drives Green, our two-year partnership with Quincy Asian Resources, Inc, better known as QARI. Our partnership was funded through a grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center through its Accelerating Clean Transportation For All (ACT4All) program. Now, nearly two years later, that particular grant has run its course, so it’s time to celebrate what we’ve achieved and look to what’s next!

What We’ve Achieved 

Over the past two years, QARI and Green Energy Consumers have jointly developed and implemented an education campaign around electric vehicles (EVs) and other clean transportation options for the community QARI serves. This effort has involved specifically reaching out to the Asian and Asian-American residents of Quincy and surrounding communities to hear what they are interested in learning about when it comes to EVs and how they’d like to learn about them, and then crafting and delivering educational resources. Here are some highlights from our 65-page Final Report for MassCEC.

Together, QARI and Green Energy Consumers:

• Translated resources on our website provided written information about EVs in Chinese and Vietnamese (as well as Spanish and Portuguese), both in-person and online through Facebook and WeChat;
• Held dozens of events, from focus groups to EV101 in Mandarin and Cantonese, to larger EV showcases and ride and drive events, including at QARI’s largest cultural festivals, the annual August Moon Festival and Lunar New Year festival;
• Incorporated EV education into all of QARI’s departments, from engaging the high schoolers in QARI’s youth program to students in English-language classes;
• Helped a local driving school, North Quincy Auto Academy, acquire a Chevrolet Bolt EUV for driving lessons;

• Shared information not only on EVs, but on biking (many thanks to local advocacy group Quincycles), particularly e-bikes, and also electric public transit.

Here is a slideshow that features images from our various events!

A Personal Note from Anna of Green Energy Consumers

One of the biggest achievements I would like to celebrate of QARI Drives Green is the relationship and partnership between the two organizations and our staff. Way back in our 2022 blog, I wrote about how this project was intended to marry the EV-expertise of Green Energy Consumers with QARI’s local and cultural knowledge and trust within the community. I am very proud of how that turned out. Our teams have worked extraordinarily well together over these past two years, weathering a constantly changing EV market and shifting incentives. I am proud of how we leaned on each other’s strengths and learned from each other to craft resources and opportunities for QARI’s community members that were useful and welcome. And I’m happy to report that we had fun doing it too.

A Personal Note from Fangxue of QARI

It has been a tremendously valuable experience for our office to collaborate with the Green Energy Consumers Alliance on this QARI Drives Green program during the past two years. We’ve gained irreplaceable knowledge about EVs from our great partner and get connected with crucial resources through working together with them. Through all the events we organized together, QARI and Green Energy Consumer Alliance have learned greatly about local community members’ interpretations and understandings towards new technologies like electric vehicles. We organized educational programs and fun community events to connect our audience with EV technologies and incentives. We also owe a great debt to a lot of other community organizations and government agencies that helped us along the way. We hope to achieve the goal of much cleaner transportation in the City of Quincy one day!

What’s Coming Next

The end of this ACT4All project does not mean the end of the collaboration between Green Energy Consumers and QARI! We will be back at the August Moon Festival and Lunar New Year Festival and cohosting some workshops in Chinese and Vietnamese to educate community members about the state’s MOR-EV rebate program.

At the end of that 2022 blog, I said this project gave me hope. It still does!