Below are brief descriptions of previous host organizations. The descriptions below are just a brief snapshot of each potential host organization.
*The list of Host Sites will be finalized through the fellowship application process.
If you are interested in being a host site, please contact us at change@seeding-change.org.
California
Asian Pacific Environmental Network (Oakland and Richmond)
APEN believes that all people have a right to a clean and healthy environment in which their communities can live, work, learn, play and thrive. Towards this vision, APEN brings together a collective voice to develop an alternative agenda for environmental, social and economic justice. Through building an organized movement, we strive to bring fundamental changes to economic and social institutions that will prioritize public good over profits and promote the right of every person to a decent, safe, affordable quality of life, and the right to participate in decisions affecting our lives. APEN holds this vision of environmental justice for all people. APEN’s membership base include Chinese immigrants and Lao, Mien, and Khmu refugees.
Chinese Progressive Association (San Francisco)
Founded in 1972, the Chinese Progressive Association educates, organizes and empowers the low income and working class immigrant Chinese community in San Francisco to build collective power with other oppressed communities to demand better living and working conditions and justice for all people. CPA’s core strategies include organizing, leadership development, and alliance building. CPA’s membership base include Chinese immigrant adults and Chinese American youth who are organized through the Tenant Worker Center and Youth MOJO. CPA has a rich history of worker organizing and leading local multi-racial alliances, including San Francisco Rising and the Progressive Workers Alliance. Other programs include: Gender Sexuality & Diversities, a queer & questioning space for Asian American high school youth; Common Roots: a joint program with PODER, which brings together Chinese and Latinx youth living in San Francisco.
Filipino Community Center (San Francisco)
Since our humble beginnings in 2004 in an unused room at a neighborhood church, the Filipino Community Center (“FCC”) has blossomed into a vibrant, central hub of community activity, services, and political action for Filipino residents in the Excelsior District and throughout the City of San Francisco. The Filipino Community Center has conducted education, advocacy, organizing, and direct services to serve the more than 13,000 Filipino workers, unemployed and underemployed people, youth, women, and parents living in the Excelsior District. We stand for paninindigan, where social, cultural, political and economic rights are respected; where relationships are based on equality; and where people actively work for a just society. We believe in pakikibaka and self-determination, so that all people have decision making power in their lives, in the community in which they live and work, and in the larger society.
Hmong Innovating Politics (Sacramento)
Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP) is a grassroots organization whose mission is to strengthen the political power of Hmong and disenfranchised communities through innovative civic engagement and strategic grassroots mobilization. HIP envisions a California of empowered communities that thrive in a socially and economically just democracy. Since establishing in 2012, HIP has dedicated itself to organizing and mobilizing historically disenfranchised communities in support of systems change that reduces health disparities and dismantles institutions that perpetuate socioeconomic disparities. HIP’s work is rooted in 4 core strategies: (1) Civic Engagement and Mobilization; (2) Parent Engagement and Education Advocacy; (3) Youth Leadership; and (4) Social Justice and Coalition Building.
Arab Resource and Organizing Center
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) is a grassroots organization working to empower and organize our community towards justice and self-determination for all. Recognizing the diversity of experiences and interests within the Arab community, AROC devises a multi-pronged strategy to meet those needs while prioritizing the most marginalized sectors of our constituency to inform our work. AROC envisions powerful and liberated Arab communities living with dignity from here to our homelands and sees the liberation of Arab people inextricably tied to the liberation of all people of color.
California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (Oakland)
Founded in 2005, the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (CHNSC, also referred to as the Collaborative) is a statewide grassroots organization that organizes nail salon workers and owners to address the epidemic of environmental justice, reproductive justice issues, immigrant rights workers rights issues faced by its low-income, female, immigrant and refugee workforce. The organization emerged in direct response to an increasing concern of nail salon workers who exhibited serious health issues such as chronic asthma, dermatitis, and reproductive health issues. Using a multi-pronged approach that blends community organizing, grassroots policy advocacy, and community-based research, CHNSC builds power of both workers and owners in developing solutions that benefit the nail salon workforce, their families, small immigrant and refugee owned businesses, and the Vietnamese community.
Filipino Advocates for Justice (Oakland & Union City)
Filipino Advocates for Justice, formerly Filipinos for Affirmative Action, was established in 1973 in response to the discrimination and alienation faced by the influx of immigrant newcomers from the Philippines. FAJ is grounded in the spirit of Bayanihan (people helping people). Over the years they have been an advocate for immigrant and civil rights for the Filipino community and served the more vulnerable in the Filipino community by helping recent arrivals, youth and low wage workers navigate the challenges and hurdles of life in the US. Today, Filipino Advocates for Justice uses a comprehensive approach to strengthening the Filipino community, implementing four main strategies: 1) civic engagement and advocacy; 2) leadership development; 3) capacity building for community organizations; and 4) direct services.
California – Southern California
API Equality (Los Angeles)*
Founded in 2005, API Equality-LA is an LGBTQ rights and racial justice organization building grassroots community power and organizing for change in the API community. Our coalition has brought together veteran and newer activists who represent the ethnic, linguistic, age, professional, and gender diversity in the Asian American community. Every year, our dedicated volunteers have one-on-one conversations with thousands of community members, participate in parades and protests, reach out to ethnic media, and organize educational events on a broad array of social justice issues of importance to API LGBTQ people. API Equality-LA’s mission is to build power in the Asian and Pacific Islander community to achieve LGBTQ equality and racial and social justice. We envision an inclusive, equitable, and just society where all API LGBTQ people can thrive.
Khmer Girls in Action (Long Beach)
Khmer Girls in Action is a community-based organization whose mission is to build a progressive and sustainable Long Beach community that works for gender, racial and economic justice led by Southeast Asian young women. KGA builds the power and leadership skills of Southeast Asian youth in Long Beach, CA to fight for racial, economic and gender justice. We engage in organizing strategies and policy advocacy campaigns rooted in the resilience and strengths of low-income Khmer families, and responsive to the cultural and political conditions our community faces in Long Beach and beyond. We use a holistic youth development model that combines leadership development, academic/persona support, and arts and culture to support Khmer youth in engaging in movement building work to remove the barriers low-income families face in achieving our communities’ fullest potential.
Pilipino Workers Center of Southern CA (Los Angeles)
All people and communities have the right to a healthy, dignified quality of life. Yet so many immigrants are working in jobs that cannot meet their basic needs and living in unhealthy environments because they are isolated, disempowered, and overwhelmed by their daily struggle to work and put food on the table. They become victims of wage theft, human trafficking, occupational safety hazards, unhealthy lifestyles and their own despair. PWC focuses on providing programs that help meet the immediate needs of workers and their families while at the same time building their leadership to take collective action for long last change.
Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (Los Angeles)
Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED), founded in May 2012, is an organization of community activists, residents, business owners, workers, and youth in Chinatown. The organization formed in the wake of the new Wal-Mart but seeks to revitalize a thriving Chinatown with residents for good jobs, environment and recreational spaces, affordable housing, and education.
Korean Resource Center (Los Angeles)
The Korean Resource Center (KRC) was founded in 1983 to empower low-income immigrants, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and people of color communities in Southern California. Using a holistic approach, KRC strives to empower our community by integrating services, education, culture, organizing, and coalition building, all of which seek to improve the life of the individual and the community.
Pacific Northwest
Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (Portland)
APANO was founded in 1996 with significant support from the Immigrant Refugee Community Organization in Multnomah County under the principle that we are stronger together, and that our communities would benefit from more coordinated leadership particularly in areas of public policy advocacy. The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon is a statewide, grassroots organization, uniting Asians and Pacific Islanders to achieve social justice. We use our collective strengths to advance equity through empowering, organizing and advocating with our communities.
East Coast
CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities (New York City)
CAAAV is a pan-Asian community-based organization that works to build the power of working class Asian immigrants in New York City. CAAAV develops leadership in Asian communities to impact the policies and institutions that affect their lives and to participate in the broader movement for racial and economic justice. Accepting full time fellows.
Instagram & Twitter: @caaav
Facebook: CAAAVnyc
Chinese Progressive Association (Boston)
The Chinese Progressive Association (Boston) is a grassroots community organization which works for full equality and empowerment of the Chinese community in the Greater Boston area and beyond. Our activities seek to improve the living and working conditions of Chinese Americans and to involve ordinary community members in making decisions that affect our lives.
PrYSM (Providence)
PrYSM organizes at the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation by centering youth, female, queer, and people of color leadership in our campaigns, our organization, and our communities. PrYSM mobilizes queer Southeast Asian youth, families, and allies to build grassroots power and organize collectively for social justice.
Vietlead (Philadelphia)
VietLead, founded in September 2015, serves the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian communities in Philadelphia and South Jersey. As descendents of a people impacted by war and trauma, we understand that our community is at different places ideologically, emotionally, and materially, so we must meet our community where they are at and utilize different methods in order to build unity towards social justice. Therefore, our mission is to provide services to meet the direct needs of our community while also providing political education, and organizing our community towards community-centered and -led solutions.
Instagram: @vietlead
Facebook: www.facebook.com/vietlead
Boat People SOS – Delaware Valley (Philadelphia & South New Jersey)
BPSOS-Delaware Valley is a local branch of a national Vietnamese American community organization with the mission to empower, organize, and equip Vietnamese individuals and communities in their pursuit of liberty and dignity. Established in 1980 to address the plight of the Vietnamese “boat people”. We have since evolved and now provide direct services and community empowerment work across the country. Our Camden and Philadelphia offices were opened in 2001 and since then we have become the leading Vietnamese community-based service organization servicing the 24,000 Vietnamese community members in the region.
Ugnayan Youth for Justice and Social Change (New York)
Ugnayan Youth for Justice and Social Change (Ugnayan Youth) is a comprehensive grassroots organization of Filipino/Filipino American youth based in New York and New Jersey. Through collective leadership, progressive culture and community engagement, we strive to reclaim and re-root to the true history of the Filipino/Filipino-American people to better understand how our local and personal issues and struggles are interconnected.
Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia
The Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, the city’s foundation of social, health and education programs for Cambodian refugees and their families, has achieved extraordinary organizational development and growth over the past thirty years. We are the only organization of its kind, specializing in providing innovative and unique bilingual programs and services to meet the combined social, economic, health and educational needs of Cambodians in Philadelphia, many of whom are survivors of the Cambodian genocide or descendants of survivors. At CAGP, we strive to improve the quality of life of Cambodian-Americans in Greater Philadelphia through direct service, advocacy and cultural education.
South
North Carolina Asian Americans Together (Raleigh, North Carolina)
North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization in Raleigh, NC whose mission is to engage and empower the diverse Asian American communities across the state. Immigrants from Asian countries make up 30 percent of NC’s immigrant population. Between 2000 and 2016, NC’s Asian American population grew by 144% – the fastest rate among the Southern states and the second-fastest in the country. Through civic engagement, leadership development, youth empowerment, and grassroots organizing, NCAAT works closely with the community and its partners to broaden cultural, social, and political boundaries for Asian Americans in the unique context of NC and the US Southeast.
VAYLA-New Orleans (New Orleans)
VAYLA is a progressive multi-racial community-based organization in New Orleans that empowers youth and families through supportive services and organizing for cultural enrichment and positive social change. Young community leaders founded VAYLA in 2006 as a means to reach out to the larger community to create a voice and organize to address the needs in the local community. Committed to youth development, community empowerment, higher education, and cultural awareness, VAYLA is composed of young leaders, high school and college students that want to engage and empower others educationally, mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Southeast Asian Coalition (Charlotte, North Carolina)
Based in Charlotte, SEAC is the first organization in the Carolina’s focused on building community empowerment for Southeast Asian American communities. SEAC is committed to uplifting the grassroots through three main program umbrellas: youth development, civic engagement, and advocacy. SEAC upholds the belief that in order to empower ourselves, we must build personal, historical, and political consciousness from within our communities. SEAC also exists to reinforce and uphold integrity, empowerment, inclusion, tradition, leadership, and critical consciousness at the grassroots level.
Midwest
OPAWL – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati)
Founded in 2016 under the original name “Ohio Progressive Asian Women’s Leadership”, OPAWL is a grassroots member-led community that organizes for social justice and elevates the voices, visibility, and progressive leadership of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and nonbinary people in Ohio. We are a multi-ethnic, multigenerational, intersectional feminist community centered around immigrants, refugees, and adoptees; women; and queer and trans individuals. Our members represent the diverse diaspora of Asia and the Pacific Islands, including those of South Asian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, Central Asian, Southwest/West Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian descent.
We are building a strong intersectional feminist community with the purpose of building collective power and progressive leadership in Ohio. OPAWL has three regional hubs in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland as well as an online community of members across the state and beyond. Our primary strategies for building power are through community building, art and storytelling, political education, and organizing campaigns.
Instagram: @teamOPAWL
Facebook: Facebook.com/teamOPAWL
Rising Voices of Asian Americans Families (Michigan)
Asian Americans are the fastest growing electorate in the United States and the largest growing racial group in Michigan. We organize and develop the leadership capacity of Asian American women (cis, trans, GNC, and femme-identifying) and young people for power in Michigan through culturally competent programming and values-based organizing.
Instagram: @risingvoices_aaf
Facebook: @RisingVoices_AAF