How a Chinatown Nonprofit Uses AI to Map Neighborhood Change in Real Time

The Organization

Welcome to Chinatown
📍 Bowery, Manhattan
👥 6 full-time staff, 3 part-time
🎯 Mission: Support and advocate for Chinatown businesses

The Problem

Victoria Lee and her team were doing neighborhood surveys with paper and pen.

• Tracked business openings and closings manually
• No system to actually use the data they collected
• Hours of volunteer time spent on repetitive data entry
• By the time reports were ready, the information was outdated

The AI Solution

Tool: Anthropic's Claude ($322/month)

What they built:

• Neighborhood mapping system divided into zones
• Custom form tool that coordinates entries across 4 systems
• Volunteers use phones to input real-time data on business changes

The Results

Impact:

• Immediately welcome new businesses
• Alert entrepreneurs about vacant spaces
• "It has greatly enhanced our capacity, which means we can actually spend more time interacting with our constituents" — Victoria Lee

The Training

Program: Decoded Futures (Tech:NYC Foundation)

• 8-week training with tech mentors
• Supported by Robinhood Foundation and Google.org
• Now named lead for AI training across 25 NY Entrepreneur Assistance Centers statewide

Why This Matters

Victoria Lee also uses AI personally — she has ADHD and Claude helps her overcome "blank document paralysis" by letting her talk through projects before writing.

The lesson: AI isn't replacing their team. It's letting them do the human work (relationships, advocacy) instead of the paperwork.

Source: THE CITY, Brooklyn Eagle (March 2026)