Café Cà Phê and Hella Good Deeds began with coffee, festivals and community gatherings. Now, the two sister organizations are working toward building permanent infrastructure for Kansas City’s Asian community.
That vision includes mental health access, small-business support, a physical headquarters and a long-term plan for an Asian cultural district in the city. For Jackie Nguyen and Hella Good Deeds founder and executive director, Béty Lê Shackelford, the work is rooted in a need they both felt after moving to Kansas City: the absence of a visible, centralized place for Asian residents to gather, celebrate, receive support and feel at home.
Café Cà Phê started in 2020 as Nguyen’s pandemic pivot after her Broadway tour of “Miss Saigon” shut down. What began as Vietnamese coffee soon became a cultural meeting point for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Kansas City. Hella Good Deeds grew from that same outreach work and officially became a nonprofit in 2024.
“Café Cà Phê started because I didn’t know where to go as an Asian person,” Nguyen said. “I didn’t know where to gather or feel safe, and so I created that space for myself.”
Carving out space for Asian Americans in KC
The need became clearer during the Stop Asian Hate movement and after the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. Lê Shackelford said a Café Cà Phê regular named Chi approached Nguyen after noticing that other cities were holding events to support Asian communities, but she could not find a similar gathering in Kansas City.
“That day, over 500 people showed up, which to me was so incredible, but also really bittersweet because here was the first time I saw so many Asian people,” Lê Shackelford said. “It was the first time I spoke Vietnamese in public. And yet we were all here for such a tragic reason.”…