Below are brief descriptions of our potential host organizations for 2023.
We encourage you to learn more about the organizations by browsing their website and social media platforms. We match applicants to host organizations based on interests and skills.
East Coast
Asian American Resource Workshop (Dorchester, MA)
The Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) is a political home for pan-Asian communities in Greater Boston. We are a member-led organization committed to building grassroots power through political education, creative expression, and issue-based and neighborhood organizing.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aarw.boston/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aarw.boston/
Asian Americans United (Philadelphia)
Founded in 1985, Asian Americans United’s mission is to build leadership in Asian American communities to build our neighborhoods and unite against oppression. AAU has worked in Philadelphia’s Asian American communities and in broader multiracial coalitions around quality education, youth leadership, anti-Asian violence, immigrant rights, and folk arts and cultural maintenance. Accepting full time fellows.
Instagram: AsianAmericansUnited
Twitter: AsAmUnited
Facebook: AsianAmericansUnited
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. Accepting full time fellows.
Instagram: cpajustice
Twitter: CPAJustice
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cpaboston/
VietLead (Philadelphia, PA)
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.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vietlead/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vietlead/?hl=en
Oregon
Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (Portland, OR)
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.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APANONews
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apanonews/
California
Asian Pacific Environmental Network (Bay Area, CA)
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.
CA Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (Southern CA and Bay Area)
Founded in 2005, the California Healthy Nail Salon 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.
Instagram & Twitter: @CA_HNSC
Facebook: @CAHealthyNails
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.
Instagram: chineseprogressiveassocation
Filipino Advocates for Justice (Oakland, Daly 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.
Accepting part-time fellows.
Filipino Community Center (San Francisco, Daly City)
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.
Accepting part-time fellows.
Instagram: @filipinocommunitycenter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FilipinoCommunityCenterSF/
Hmong Innovating Politics (Sacramento and Fresno, CA)
Hmong Innovating Politics (HIP) is a grassroots organization whose mission is to advance social justice and build power with Hmong youth and families through leadership development and multi-generational community organizing. HIP is based in Fresno and Sacramento, CA — home to two of the largest Hmong American populations in the state and nation. HIP continues to serve as the largest Southeast Asian American power building organization in the Central Valley. 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 3 core strategies: (1) Civic Engagement and Base Building; (2) Youth Leadership Development and Empowerment; and (3) Narrative Change.
Instagram: www.instagram.com/hipcalifornia
Facebook: www.facebook.com/HIPCalifornia
Korean Resource Center (Los Angeles and Orange County, CA)
The Korean Resource Center (KRC) was founded in 1983 to empower low-income, immigrant, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and communities of color in Southern California. Using a holistic approach, KRC strives to empower our community by integrating services, education, culture, organizing, and coalition building, to improve the life of the individual and the community.
Accepting part-time fellows.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/krcla/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krclaorg/
Pilipino Workers Center (Los Angeles, CA)
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.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PWCSC/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pwcsc/?hl=en
VietRISE (Orange County, CA)
Founded in 2018, VietRISE is a community organization based in the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon, home of the largest Vietnamese population in the world outside of Viet Nam. VietRISE advances social justice and builds power with Vietnamese and immigrant communities in Orange County. We build leadership and create systemic change through organizing, narrative change, cultural empowerment, and civic engagement.
Accepting part-time fellows.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vietriseoc/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VietRISEOC/
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.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ncaatogether
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ncaatogether/
Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta (Norcross, Georgia)
Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta is the first nonprofit legal advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander (AANHPI) and Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities in Georgia and the Southeast.
Through our work, we envision a social movement in which communities of color are fully empowered, active in civic life, and working together to promote equity, fair treatment, and self determination for all.
Founded in 2010 as the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center (AALAC), our organization became part of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliation in 2014. Since then, we have re-organized our focus areas more specifically into four groups: Policy Advocacy, Organizing & Civic Engagement, Impact Litigation, and Legal Services.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdvancingJusticeAtlanta
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/advancing_justice_atl/
Asian American Pacific Islander Civic Engagement (ACE) Collaborative of the New Virginia Majority Education Fund (Northern Virginia – Fairfax, Prince William, Arlington)
Asian American Pacific Islander Civic Engagement (ACE) Collaborative is a nonprofit, non-partisan program started by the New Virginia Majority Education Fund. ACE members are Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Mongolians, Kashmiris, Nepalis and Vietnamese and other Asian ethnicities. Our communities face issues with accessing housing, education, health care, job instability, discrimination and racism.
Our mission is to educate, mobilize and organize our communities and collectively address issues. ACE strategies are community education and organizing, leadership development, community education, grasstops and alliance building as well as civic engagement. ACE organizers identify, recruit, encourage and train Asian working-class leaders in Arlington to run and win campaigns to collectively address community needs including access to low cost housing, payment of unemployment, rental assistance, and eviction prevention, displacement, etc.
Accepting part-time fellows.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acecollaborative/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ace_collaborative/
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