Meilan Xu - Gold Award

School: Westview High School
Category: Teens (11-15)
Hours: 349.25

Meilan is currently 16 years old, and a junior at Westview High School, where she has taken on numerous leadership positions. She is a lab leader of Parliamentary Debate for Westview Speech and Debate, one of the largest clubs at Westview with hundreds of members as well as one of the biggest teams in Oregon. Meilan has great passion, qualifying for and performing well at the OSAA State Championships in her freshman and sophomore years. Every week, Meilan trains new and returning teammates in her debate event, leading to successful results at tournaments. Additionally, she is president of OHSU Science Ambassadors at Westview, a STEM mentorship program focused on teaching science to elementary school kids in an engaging and hands-on way. As a board member in her third year with Science Ambassadors, Meilan helps lead meetings and communicates with parents, mentors, kids, and teachers. Meilan has always been interested in her Asian American identity, and in sharing its beauty with the local community and beyond. Combined with her background in music, dance, arts, and storytelling, she founded the Phoenix Hanfu Team with the Oregon Chinese Coalition in 2023. They have attended many performance events at the local, regional, and global levels. In the past year, Phoenix Hanfu Team has also done many events where community members have the opportunity to be immersed in traditional Chinese culture. Under Meilans leadership as the President, Phoenix Hanfu Team partnered with Lansu Garden for a Lunar New Year celebration and for Dress Han, a month-long celebration of hanfu and traditional clothing this past summer. These events involved hanfu volunteers from PHT as well as many community members. Meilan has also organized many hanfu modeling shows that invite the community to join PHT in performing and immersing themselves in traditional clothing. The hanfu team has shared traditional Chinese culture with thousands of audience members from multicultural events at local schools to large scale festivals such as the Salem World Beat Festival, the 50th Anniversary Celebration at Boeing, and the 2024 Chinese Festival. In addition to her activities with the Phoenix Hanfu Team, Meilan was also an emcee for multiple events, including giving the opening speech to the Chinese Festival and being an emcee for the first section of the festivities, emceeing for the Boeing celebration, taking TV interviews from Fox 16, and even more.

Oregon Chinese Coalition is proud to join the President of the United States in recognizing the volunteers who consistently take the time to make a difference in the lives of others. Therefore, it is a great honor to present the President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) to Meilan Xu.