Rising Star Awards

C.A.C.A. Seattle Annual Rising Star Awards

C.A.C.A. Seattle's Rising Star Award is presented to youth under 30 years old who personify C.A.C.A.’s mission to develop leadership, serve the community, and promote civil rights.  Each year, the award is presented to the honorees at the Annual Gala Banquet.  The inaugural awards were presented in 2022.​

Eric Chan grew up in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District (CID) when his family started the Jade Garden Restaurant in 2003, and which he now owns. When COVID-19 brought anti-Asian hate to CID, he became the de facto spokesman for the community, fighting back against the hate and crime. Eric himself was a target of an online racist troll. He, at times, has had to put the family business on the back burner to focus on what he described as virtual and vicious attacks on him and his business. But he fought back. During COVID, Eric has had to deal with attempted break-ins and vandalism but Jade Garden did not stop serving the best dim-sum in Seattle for a single day.

2023 Honorees

Han Eckelberg has been selected as our 2023 Rising Star Award recipient. Han is graduating this year from the University of Washington, Communication Leadership program, with a Master in Communication in Communities & Networks. While he was a UW undergraduate student in Art and American Ethnic Studies for a Photo/Media class in 2020, he created the Bruce Lee Ascending design. The artwork quickly proved popular among the student population and was voted the Best Artwork at the 2020 UW Maker's Summit.

He has his artwork "Bruce Lee Ascending" installed as a permanent art installation on the stairs of the Odegaard Undergraduate Library (OUGL) at the University of Washington in September 6, 2022. The event was sponsored by UW's American Ethnic Studies (AES) Department, the OCA Asian Pacific Advocates of Greater Seattle (OCA-GS), and the Bruce Lee Foundation, with additional support provided by UW Libraries and the UW School of Art History and Design.

2022 Honorees

In the summer of 2020, Olivia Guo and Garrett Lee founded the Education Coalition for Asian American Representation (ECAAR), a completely student-led non-profit organization at Mercer Island High School. The students of ECAAR strive to educate their community about diverse history that is often untaught in the American education system through regular webinars, events, social media, and more. While they focus primarily on Asian American representation, they often branch out into other areas such as climate justice and collaborate with others to tackle representation issues in general. By the end of the 2021-22 school year, ECAAR will have hosted over ten educational community events about topics that range from the history of Asian American Supreme Court Cases to celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year. You can find ECAAR on Instagram at @ecaarmi!

Olivia Guo is a first-generation Chinese-American student at Mercer Island High School. She aspires to learn everything about everything, or at least try her best to. ECAAR has helped cultivate her love of learning into a drive to promote representation and unity through education. She loves it when her identity is recognized in the classroom and strives to make representation commonplace for all students. When not working with ECAAR, Olivia is passionate about STEM, playing the violin and volleyball.

Garrett Lee is a second-generation student at Mercer Island high school. Since he was little, his parents emphasized family and cultural history as very important, especially as circumstances with Asian hate arose. ECAAR has been a way for him to learn about activism and work to ensure that future generations will have fewer barriers to success. Garrett enjoys designing, baking, playing the violin, and figure skating, and he strives to be a lifelong learner.