CAPS (Chinese-American Prince­ton Sib­lings) is an orga­ni­za­tion at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity that focuses on build­ing long-term, one-on-one rela­tion­ships between Chinese-American Prince­ton stu­dents (“big sibs”) and Chi­nese adoptees in the Jer­sey area (“lit­tle sibs”).

Inspired by the CASPY pro­grams at Yale and Colum­bia (bi-annual events where adopted Chi­nese chil­dren are assigned a Yale/Columbia “big sib” for a day and par­tic­i­pate in a vari­ety of cul­tural activ­i­ties), I wanted to cre­ate some­thing sim­i­lar with Princeton’s Chi­nese Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion (CSA), but some­thing more focused on long-term matches.

CAPS, ini­tially intended to be a col­lab­o­ra­tion between CSA and Prince­ton AASA (Asian-American Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion), grew larger in scale than I had imag­ined, and is now a stand-alone stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion headed by myself and two other stu­dent coor­di­na­tors. We cur­rently have 49 chil­dren in the pro­gram, ages 4–16, com­ing from Cen­tral Jer­sey, South Jer­sey, and Jer­sey Shore’s FCC pro­grams. Each child has been matched to one (or, in some cases, two) Chinese-American Prince­ton stu­dents based on com­mon inter­ests. These “big sibs” serve as men­tors and Chinese-American role models.

We encour­age all sib­ling pairs to build their rela­tion­ship and stay in touch via email and Skype, but also hold sev­eral events on-campus every year to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for men­tors and mentees to meet eachother in per­son. Many fam­i­lies also make other arrange­ments to meet up for din­ner, for “play­dates,” etc.

Feel free to con­tact me with any ques­tions, at either caps@princeton.edu or my per­sonal email, ecai@princeton.edu

Eliz­a­beth Cai ’13
Founder, Senior Coordinator