ESEACC Grand Opening Speech
by Acting Funding and Finance Manager and Community Activist Jabez Lam
Date: 9th May 2026
The Building
This building was opened in 1931 as a slipper bath, where working people after a day of hard work serving the City and West End come to get washed and relax.
From 1981, the building became the head o ice of the An Viet Foundation servingthe newly arrived Vietnamese refugees, supporting their settlement in this country.
March 2016, the building was registered as an Asset of Community Value, ACV Registration Ref: ACV/HOXW/16/01.
In 2024, Hackney Chinese Community Services, after serving the Chinese community for nearly 40 years at Ellingford Road, moved into this building.
Last December, the Charity Commission approved our application to change our name and objectives in the constitution to become the East and Southeast Asian Community Centre to serve people of ESEA heritage.
With the legal process completed with the Companies House, today we are here to declare the O icial opening of the ESEA Community Centre.
Exhibition of An Viet Foundation, Hackney Chinese Community Services, ESEACC in Workshop Rooms.
The transition
There are many people who must be thanked for this transition from a Vietnamese centre and a Chinese Centre to become a centre for people of ESEA heritage:
Most importantly, we must express our greatest thanks to Mr. Vu Khanh Thanh MBE. It is Mr Vu who obtained this building from Hackney Council on a 1954
Landlord and Tenant Act 20 year long lease to found the An Viet Foundation. The building then became known as An Viet House in 1981.
It was Mr Vu’s vision for the community to buy this building as a permanent home for the Vietnamese community. In 2004, the Council agreed to sell the building to
An Viet Foundation, the then Hackney Mayor Jules Pipe said “.. the sale to go ahead on the basis that the An Viet Foundation enjoys the full use of the centre in
perpetuity and so continue to be such a great benefit to the Vietnamese community.” It took another 7 years to 2011 before Mr Vu successfully secured the Cabinet resolution to approve the sale of this building on 99-year lease to the AVF for £600,000.In 2014, before he could raise the fund for the purchase, Mr Vu was advised by his GP to retire, at the age of 70. Sadly, Mr Vu passed away in 2022. Secondly, we must thank Mr HOANG Huynh. Mr Hoang was one of the AVF trustees after Mr Vu’s retirement. He and the trustees kept the AVF services running for another three years with no employee. In June 2017, the Council asked the AVF trustees to stop operation without making provision for specialist services for the Vietnamese.
Mr Hoang and the trustees refused to surrender the 1954 Act lease. He and the AVF trustees invited Hackney Chinese Community Services to jointly save the lease to continue services for the Vietnamese. This led to the negotiation with the Council and an agreement was reached whereby HCCS will change its constitution to include Vietnamese people as its beneficiaries, and in return the Council will grant a new lease of the An Viet House to HCCS under the CVS lease policy, a 5 year renewable lease, to serve both the Chinese and Vietnamese communities. HCCS was also has to undertake the internal capital works of the building. Next we have to thank Mr and Mrs Hotung. In 2018, HCCS’s annual income was under £130,000; it did not have the resources to demonstrate to the Council that it can fulfil the condition to fund the internal capital works of An Viet House. Mr Sean Hotung on behalf of the Hotung Institute of International Relations generously o ered £200,000 interest free loan to HCCS to proof that it can fulfil the agreement with the Council. We were then scheduled to move into this building in January 2018.
However, weeks before we were due to move in, the Council reported that following survey of the building it required a minimum of £400,000 to bring it to modern letting standard before a new lease can be granted, but because the Council Property Department did not have the budget to do so, we were told that the building is still allocated to HCCS, but we have to raise the funds for the capital works. This led us to an alternative strategy to apply to GLA Good Growth Fund for the internal capital works. HCCS launched a Mayor Crowdfund London campaign target for £50,000 to equip the community kitchen to proof there is community support for our initiative. Mrs Mary Hotung is the first person to donate £1,000 to kick off the crowdfund campaign. The crowdfund successfully attracted 434 donors in 8 weeks, raising £54,000, which demonstrated community support of the proposal to the GLA Good Growth Fund to invest in the building.
With the GLA Mayor Crowdfund London and Good Growth Fund investing £0.5m for internal capital works, in turn gave the confidence to Hackney Cabinet to invest in the structural capital works to bring this building to what you see today. To cut along story short, the capital works costs escalated from £400,000 in 2017, to
£600,000 in 2018, then after Covid in 2021 to £850,000, then £950,000, in 2022 it
became £1.25m, then in 2023 £1.6m, and the final bill upon completion was
£2.1m on the infrastructure and £530,000 from the GLA GGF for internal works.
I must also thank many others amongst our guests who have made this possible:
- Thank you Alice Fung, Filippa Hellsten from Architect 00 for designing this
building, and John Desmond from BWA Project Management keeping the works
within budget. Their great work transforming this building from a dilapidated
building to such a beautiful community space.
- Thank you to Simon Brooke of Hackney Council Property Department for
guiding us and obtaining the £2.1m capital investment from Hackney Council in
renovating the building.
- Thank you Jasmine Low from the GLA Regeneration Team who guided us
throughout the implementation of the investments from GLA and obtained a
further £125,000 grant for the garden landscape.
- Thank you Dennis Chung and Sindy Lui, the Chair and Treasurer of HCCS in
2017, who led us to amend the HCCS constitution to include Vietnamese
people as its beneficiaries.
- Thank you Lin Fat Man, the Chair in 2018, who led us in adopting the mission
that when we move to this new building, we should become a centre for all
ESEA people.
- Thank you Sarah Yeh, the Treasurer in 2019, for producing the over 10,000 word
application form for each of the Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the Good Growth Fund
application.
- The building was being squatted for nearly two years from before the Covid.
When the Council repossessed the building in early 2020, the capital work
costs just kept escalating. The Council threatened to withdraw the allocation of
the building to HCCS and started exploration talk with private developer. Thank
you Sindy Man of the Jun Mo Generation who introduced us to the then
Hackney Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Policy and the Voluntary
Sector Cllr Caroline Selman and joined us in meeting with Cllr Selman to
rea irm the allocation to HCCS subject to satisfactory business plan.
- Thank you Alex Jarosy, trustee in 2020, for the three versions of the 15-page The
Old Bath House East & Southeast Asian Centre (ESEACC) Business Plan to
meet the Council’s CVS lease eligibility criteria in getting approval to our
mission to establish a community centre for ESEA people.
- Thank you Chit Chong, chair in 2021, for leading us in the meeting with Cllr
Selman and in obtaining the GLA GGF approval.
- Thank you to the Hackney Mayor’s O ice and Cabinet approving to meet the full
costs of the capital investments on the structure of the building.- Managing a bigger building and developing services poses many challenges,
financial and otherwise, in an environment of continuous public finance
austerity, Thank you Independent Age for funding the Together We Rise incomes
inclusion service for female pensioners, thank you Cli ord Chance for funding
our Hate Crime victim support service, thank you Evergreen and Man’s Food
donating weekly vegetable, meat and groceries to the Lunch Club. Thank you to
all the funders, sponsors and donors have kept our services running. We have a
list of sponsors and donors in the exhibition.
- We are a small organisation with limited resources, we are privileged to have
many committed volunteers serving in the kitchen for the lunch club,
gardening, running projects such as the Film Club, Four Wind Mahjong Club for
beginners, Qigong class, fund raising and all the contributions that have made
this space become a community home. A particular thank you to Jenny Lau,
who since 2019 tirelessly developed projects to make this place relevant to
younger ESEA people, and Sue Man and Siu Yen Lo for co-ordinating the annual
Big Fat Barbeque fund raising. Thank you to all the volunteers!
- Thank you to all our partners in the Hackney Lunch Clubs Network, the HCVS,
the Ura Matsuri Japanese Festival, Islington Chinese Association, ESEA Sisters,
Social Founders, An Viet Archive and many many more in our collaboration in
serving our communities
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- Thank you to all the trustees serving throughout this journey.
- A special thank you to the current trustees, the Chair, Lin Fat Man, Vice Chair
Josephine Farrell, Treasurer Shuang Wu, Secretary Richard Cheung, Danny
Chow, Kris Liu, Sophia Yeung, Angie Hu, Wing Hang Wong, Xiaoda Lin, and Kooi
Chock Glendinning who sadly passed away last month. I thank them for their
leadership upholding the good governance of the organisation, steering it to
fulfil the important milestone in completing the legal process in changing the
centre’s constitutional beneficiary to serve people of ESEA heritage and to
change its name to East and Southeast Asian Community Centre.
- Last and not least, to all the employees that contributed in this journey, David
Tam, Bikyu Lian, Phuong Ann Nhuyen, Jenny Loh, Yan Ma. I wish to specially
thank Tom Cheung, my joint manager in 2017. It was his calmness and skilful
negotiations that instilled confidence to the AVF trustees and struck the initial
deal with the Council agreeing to grant a new lease of this building to serve both
the Chinese and Vietnamese community, that brought us onto this exciting
journey from a Chinese centre to a centre serving Chinese and Vietnamese
people, and now to the UK’s first community centre for people of ESEA heritage.
The Future:
Mr Vu retired at 70, he spent his entire career in serving the Vietnamese community.I am 70 this year. I started my career in community work serving the Chinese community
in the1970s. I am pleased to see that as I am planning my retirement, there is now a new
generation of community activists galvanised by the wake-up call of anti ESEA racism
during COVID. We are witnessing the emergence of the East & Southeast Asian as a
community identity.
We are at the beginning of a new journey, to make this place a centre for ESEA people to
feel at home, a centre that nurtures mutual support, develops services and activities to
connect and encourage ESEA people to fulfil their potential.
The ESEACC has a ten-year lease for this building, renewable in 2034.
We are proud of our achievement, that the ESEA community has saved this building
from dilapidation and potentially being sold to a private developer, instead renovating it
as an Asset of Community Value and a community centre.
One thing for sure from the history of AVF, HCCS and this building demonstrated that
there will be plenty of challenges ahead of ESEACC, I am firmly believe that the
collective wisdom and collective actions of the ESEA community will rise up to see o
any challenges in our way.
I am hopeful that one day, the aspiration of Mr Vu for this building to become a
permanent home, this time, for the ESEA community, will be fulfilled.
Finally, this is an open invitation to all people sharing our vision of ESEA as one
community to enjoy this space and join us to fulfil the mission in making this a
community home for East & Southeast Asian people.
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