Meet the Empowering Asian/Asian American Communities Fellows
"With the support of staff at the community center and essential programming, I developed values and leadership skills that have stayed with me as I have pursued a path in community development and social justice."
LINDA ‘07
In partnership with the Haas Center for Public Service, the Empowering Asian/Asian American Communities (EAAAC) Fellows spend a summer working full-time with a supervisor/mentor in a nonprofit organization or government agency on social, political, or economic issues affecting Asian/Asian American communities.
Check out the fellow from each year and learn about their experience with their Asian/Asian American organization:
2023
Fellowship Site: Chinese Progressive Association
Primary Location: San Francisco, CA
I supported organizing the Chinese elders who gather daily at Sisterhood Gardens. I got to know them through conversation in the garden and WeChat, and turned them out to community events and intergenerational field trips to other gardens and farms in SF so they could connect with Sisterhood Gardens' youth garden stewards and other gardeners across the city. At these events, I would translate or create bilingual resources for the elders so their participation would not be impeded by a language barrier.
I led some elder specific programming - I facilitated the creation of a new banner for the garden through a series of intergenerational/multilingual workshops and volunteer sessions that brought together elders, adults, youth, and children to design and paint the banner. I planned a movement and breathing workshop for elders in conjunction with a local traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. I also did some admin work for the garden, including conducting 1-1 phone interviews with garden members to collect feedback and hear their visions for the garden.
Connecting with one garden member led me to create some collage illustrations for the Sisterhood gardener's guide they had written. Once a week, I would support food pickup and small group facilitation for an youth environmental justice leadership program that brought
together working class Chinese and Latino youth. Through observing the adult leaders of this program, I learned what principles of popular education look like in practice. Lastly, I led the creation of a painted commemorative banner for CPA's annual summer celebration.
2023
Fellowship Site: Viet Rainbow of Orange County (VROC)
Primary Location: Orange County, CA
One of the most significant contributions I made to my host organization was developing their post-program survey/interviews for their youth summer program - Building Leaders Organizing Our Movement (BLOOM), and conducting research about grants that could possibly help fund VROC and their mission. The VROC staff/team expressed their gratitude towards me for being able to take on the post-program survey/conduction of interviews for their youth summer program, as they were prepping for their 10-year anniversary Gala.
Being able to take this project on towards the end of my internship was extremely rewarding, because I was able to:
1) talk to people and
2) being able to hear so much positivity and "glows" about the program and how it not only personally shaped the participants' own growth, but increased their awareness about what was happening in the political landscape of Orange County.
I created a report in which VROC can utilize to display to donors the impact BLOOM has on youth, and how their stories can be translated into grant funding. As mentioned previously, being able to research which grants VROC could possibly apply to was huge, as VROC was having some difficulty finding grants to apply to/foundations that supported their work. It definitely was quite difficult finding which grants/foundations aligned and supported VROC's work (given the intersecting identities of queerness and being Asian (broadly speaking), but I was able to find quite a few, such as the Asian American Foundation, the Gill Foundation, and the Rainbow Endowment, just to name a few. Not only did I feel like I made a huge contribution to my host organization through grant and foundation(s) research, but I saw and felt myself growing and learning, which I believe to be a significant contribution to myself.
2023
Fellowship Site: Asian American Drug Abuse Program
Primary Location: Los Angeles, CA
I helped to conduct outreach at AADAP's Safe Syringe Program sites, where people who inject drugs are able to safely dispose of their used syringes with us and receive free sterile syringes in exchange. This is part of numerous harm reduction services I helped facilitate, along with handing out life-saving Naloxone and hygiene kits to unhoused populations. After conducting outreach, I uploaded relevant paperwork into online databases for organizational needs and funding from the county.
I was definitely able to be exposed to the field of work I have been attracted to idealistically, but had never seen in practice. I found myself able to translate concepts I had learned about in my courses into physical settings that helped real clients, which was exciting. However, there was a tricky balance to strike where I had to do this without tokenizing the clients themselves. In coursework, I tend to see individuals as pieces in a bigger theory.
But in practice, I had to see them as individual people with their own lives and struggles. I gained more direction as to what work I want to do in the future and which populations I'd like to focus on in my career.
2023
Fellowship Site: Asian American Writers' Workshop
Primary Location: New York, NY
My primary project was handling the library of the Asian American Writers' Workshop which, after a decade or so of neglect, had become badly disorganized and functionally unusable in so far as you could not locate a title nor author by any meaningful system—alphabetization, genre, or otherwise.
In ten weeks, I was able to take a disheveled collection of over five thousand items and categorize them both by genre and alphabetization so that they had the same degree of organizational sophistication as a library or bookstore. They were double indexed, meaning that you could find them using physical finding aids as well as a digital spreadsheet where their metadata was labeled, meaning that anyone could find exactly what they needed with ease and accuracy. As an offshoot of that, I also pored through a literal ton of organizational files, mostly papers but also multimedia objects, to declutter the office space and make decisions about what to keep and archive.
Last but not least, I was put partially in charge of the personal library of the late poet Meena Alexander, which I unpacked with care and organized as well. The aforementioned project, while overseen by two supervisors in a remote capacity, was almost entirely done by me and would not have been completed in my absence. Staff members occasionally came in to lend a hand once a week, but I was in charge of doing much of the brunt work and holding myself accountable to the project's completion. It has been a tentative project of the organization for about a decade, only ever partially completed with varying success by previous fellows and never enough capacity provided by the already busy staff, but my participation thanks to the funding of Stanford has made it possible for the Asian American Writers' Workshop to finally have a working library. For that, I thank Stanford for giving me such a wonderful opportunity to make a lasting imprint in this community to which I owe very much.
2022
Fellowship Site: Asian American Liberation Network
Primary Location: Sacramento, CA
The first project I worked on was organizing a suicide prevention training, which was open to all community members. This was a 3.5 hour training, facilitated by one of our Licensed Clinical Social Workers. I created the outreach materials, managed emails to participants, and served as a community resource staff on the day of the event. To prepare for this training, I completed several mental health trainings including ASIST and Mental Health First Aid. This project would not have gotten done without me.
The second project I worked on was the Stakeholder Engagement Event for CA's Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. This event comprised of two listening circles for Asian American youth and youth allies to understand their mental health experiences. I created and managed promotional materials, communications, and logistics.
I also led and organized a research project on the help-seeking behaviors of Asian American youth in Sacramento, which would not have gotten done without me.
My first main learning objective was to learn about the landscape of community mental health and grassroots initiatives in Sacramento, CA within the Asian American community. I feel that I accomplished this goal through my conversations with community members and community partners at the listening circle we held. I gained a deeper appreciation for how mental health experiences can vary widely within the Asian American community.
Additionally, I realized how well-equipped our community members are to speak about these experiences. Often times, there is a stereotype that Asian Americans have a hard time speaking about mental health, but I learned that many folks are willing and ready to have these conversations. My second objective was to learn evidence-based intervention skills for community mental health. I definitely developed these skills through the various mental health trainings I attended. In particular, I began to think a lot about suicide--how it's such a taboo topic, but it's something that touches everyone's lives. Going back to Stanford, I have a renewed motivation to raise awareness about suicide prevention.
Finally, I aimed to reflect on my career goals and my own mental health this summer. Getting to meet so many mental healthcare providers solidified my desire to work in the medical field, serving the Asian American population. Being at home helped reconnect me to my identity and community--they are my why. I feel rejuvenated moving into this next year.
2022
Fellowship Site: Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants (PAWIS)
Primary Location: San Jose, CA
I helped PAWIS in organizing and distributing outreach materials in conjunction with the Santa Clara County Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE) to care homes and other service workers in San Jose. The outreach material consisted of flyers informing workers about the organization's advice line for legal assistance, information about upcoming organization events, and other documents that included guidelines for navigating wage theft claims, abuse, and other worker concerns.
I also met with workers from Fight for 15 for coordination and training on what effective outreach looks like. Some other projects that I helped that would have not gotten done without my help complete included organizing and staffing the PAWIS's meet and greet and conducting worker interviews for the organization to understand some of the conditions they face. I also assisted with other various in-person and virtual workshops that the organization held and was able to integrate myself into some of the organization's day-to-day tasks.
I wanted to improve my Filipino language conversational skills as well as translation skills, Canva/website design, as well as data analysis skills. When it comes to improving my Filipino language conversational skills, I feel like they've improved somewhat; however, I still felt a large language barrier because a majority of the organization's members didn't necessarily speak the same languages that I was familiar with hearing/speaking growing up. I was surprised at how difficult it would be to communicate with recent migrants, which could be due to the internal anxieties I had with not wanting to convey the wrong message/translations. It was often nerve-wracking to put skills into practice.
I also wanted to learn how organizations like PAWIS work with other existing organizations in the Santa Clara County, as well as PAWIS's relation to the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. I think that learning how various organizations work together toward common goals was a valuable part of my experience, and through practice, was something that definitely resonated with me and helped me grow as a fellow. I learned to value the importance of collective work and as a result, greatly improved my communication skills through interactions both with organization members and community members outside the organization. This allowed me to better understand how PAWIS is able to build relationships with other Filipino organizations to better combat the developing political situation in the Philippines with regards to the recent Philippine election. I also learned to be readily adaptable/flexible to the organization's/my own changing needs, which was reflected in how I was able to coordinate the tail-end of my experience with the organization when personal challenges arose.
2022
Fellowship Site: Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)
Primary Location: Detroit, MI
I worked on a series of community accessible deliverables for the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, a project I led and completed mostly self-directed. This project included completing readings on language accessibility and summarizing scientific findings, iteration in Canva, discussing and analyzing my own methodology and research design, and feedback meetings with multiple members of the ACCESS research team. I was also able to meet with some of my supervisors to learn more about life as a nonprofit employee, and learned more about communicating my research aims and ethics.
My main learning plan objectives were to:
- To apply knowledge I gained in my academic projects to practical issues of service;
- Learn more about the landscape of Arab-American health more generally and evaluate any gaps I see in the literature as I approach my graduate research career;
- Learn about how a community-focused organization navigates serving a population without a Census designation;
- Observe my supervisors to see how a full-time career in service looks like;
- Gain more technical fluency in data coding and visualization in NVIVO;
- Deepen my values around how I want to approach community-based research accessibility and dissemination;
- Develop a more specific career ethos for how I want my research to be communicated, used, and applied.
I was able to achieve these objectives in multiple ways.
Firstly, being able to translate my research from a less accessible, more dense 80-page thesis format into a short deliverable allowed me to gain practice in presenting and discussing my research for lay and non-academic audiences, which helps me to apply my research findings to more vulnerable populations / less privileged ones.
I also learned more about the landscape of Arab American health through my discussions with my supervisor, who also informed and invited me to the annual Arab Health Conference. I learned more about the workload and projects of ACCESS employees, whose responsibilities included advocacy as well as research dissemination and application. I learned that a career in service could still be a thoroughly academic one, and that my research goals were not incompatible with a future in nonprofit work. I also learned that I hope to work such a multifaceted career, which allows me to both conduct Arab American - focused research as well as apply it and disseminate it to the community.
2021
Fellowship Site: Asian Law Alliance
Primary Location: San Jose, CA
I did my fellowship at Asian Law Alliance, a nonprofit law firm that provides an array of legal assistance and representation to low-income communities in the Bay Area with a focus on the Asian Pacific Islander (API) communities. As part of my fellowship, I was able to guide potential clients through legal intakes and effectively served as the messenger between the legal staff and the potential clients.
2021
Fellowship Site: Asian Health Services (AHS)
Primary Location: Oakland, CA
My fellowship was at Asian Health Services, an organization that works towards providing healthcare to the broader Asian population in the Bay Area regardless of income, immigration status, language barriers, and other barriers to health for the community. I worked with my supervisor to create guidelines regarding cryptocurrency in nonprofits and better understanding the South Asian/South Asian American population in the local community.
2020
Fellowship Site: Asian Liver Center / JoinJade Movement
Primary Location: Stanford, CA
I planned and executed the annual Youth Leadership Conference for the Asian Liver Center where high school students were introduced to leadership and advocacy skills tailored towards addressing disparities in the Asian community, more specifically Hepatitis B. The conference included keynote speakers, workshops, and the team challenge - an event where I tasked participants to create a media campaign to bring more awareness to Hepatitis B.
2020
Fellowship Site: Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
Primary Location: Oakland, CA
I worked with APEN’s State Organizing Team and created voter information guides, ballot guides, an AAPI Demographics guide, and other resources that could be translated in different languages. APEN will use my research and developed guides to inform their members and AAPI communities in Oakland and Richmond as well as to make strategic decisions.
2019
Fellowship Site: Lu Mien Community Services
Primary Location: Sacramento, CA
Over the summer, I worked for my host organization lu Mien Community Services. I helped with daily office work, filling of community members that came in during walk-in hours, fundraising, working with the youth program, and working with the elderly program.
One project that I worked on was the annual fireworks booth fundraiser that IMCS puts up every year. I was crucial in the setting up, taking down, and selling of all the products in the booth and worked to keep it running smoothly. I did a lot of the packing up which required a lot of labor. Another project I worked on was being on the brainstorming session for the annual IMCS high school student conference. I kept the minutes of the meeting and facilitated discussion / talked about the climate of high-schoolers.
The most significant contributions I made to my host organization, I believe, was presence. The office is sort of small and somewhat understaffed- me being there to take up whatever they needed me to do I think made things go a little bit faster. Another significant contribution I made I think was with the senior program- not many younger individuals take the time to speak to the elderly or interact with them at all, so I think I made an impact with the elderly.
2019
Fellowship Site: Filipino Community Center
Primary Location: San Francisco, CA
I was an intern at the Filipino Community Center in San Francisco, a non-profit dedicated to providing direct services in the areas of migration, workers' rights, and youth education to the Filipino community of San Francisco and the US more broadly. As an intern, I provided interpretation and legal services to clients seeking assistance with immigration concerns; assisted in organizing protests against human rights abuses occurring in the Philippines; updated know your rights materials for the Center's workers' rights program; and designed a teach-in on housing inequality for Stanford workers.
As part of the Filipino Community Center's workers' rights program, I researched labor laws at both the city and state level, compiled relevant laws into an infographic and brochure, and worked with one of my fellow interns to design and print the infographic and brochure for distribution at a local church. This project wouldn't have gotten done without my involvement. Given my proficiency in Tagalog, I also did interpretation work at the FCC's front desk and assisted in providing direct services to clients; one of my main commitments was providing legal and interpretation support to an undocumented client who had received a notice to appear from Customs and Border Protection. In addition, I assisted in phone banking, prop making, security, and planning for a protest outside the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco calling for an end to human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.
2019
Fellowship Site: Sikh Coalition
Primary Location: New York, NY
During the summer of 2019, I left the quiet suburbs of Iowa and spent three months working in the bustling city of New York. Supported by an Empowering Asian Americans Cardinal Quarter fellowship from Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service, I worked at the Sikh Coalition—the nation’s largest Sikh civil rights organization—creating films of Sikhs across the nation involved in seva (community service) as a way to combat negative stereotypes about the Sikh community.
Des Moines was like that bar in the show “Cheers,” where “everybody knows your name.” New York was...less cozy. Because I was living with a host-family upstate, I had a daily one-hour commute via New York’s famous (or infamous) subway system to lower Manhattan. Every morning, I would feel anxious as I squeezed my way into a packed subway at Grand Central Station. Most mornings, I would be so nervous to ask people to sit next to them that I would just stand the entire way. So even though—or perhaps precisely because—I was surrounded by so many people, I felt a profound sense of loneliness and anonymity.
I eventually learned to manage and integrate these elements of life in New York. I recharged by building a regular sleep cycle and incorporating mindfulness strategies on the subway such as listening to podcasts, deep breathing, and meditation.I also started to plan weekly dinners with my fellow interns and join my host-family for outings during the weekend like devouring dumplings in Flushing Chinatown with their two adorable kids. By the end of my summer, I no longer felt any of the loneliness, exhaustion, or anxiety that marked my first few weeks in New York. Instead, I found that approaching new experiences with intentionality helped me understand that a city so different from Des Moines can also be my home.
2019
Fellowship Site: API Equality - Northern California (APIENC)
Primary Location: San Francisco, CA
APIENC is a grassroots organization that builds queer and transgender API power through leadership development, community building, intergenerational work, and more. This summer, I participated in APIENC’s Summer Organizer Program with five other young emerging leaders where we got to learn the tools to create change and build the world we want to see. Together, we participated in leadership development retreats, marched with over 300 people in the API contingent of SF Trans March, and coordinated a grassroots fundraiser that raised over $11,000. My personal project was to build a team of community members to collectively formulate a long-term data analysis strategy for the largest ever Bay Area Transgender/Gender Non-Conforming API Needs Assessment.
APIENC has given me a political home where I feel held and loved in all my identities – I never have to hide or sacrifice a part of myself to feel like I belong. I learned so many organizing and life skills, from coordinating a community security team to making strong asks for help. Beyond that, I built strong relationships with new people who have become my best friends, spent a lot of time cooking and singing karaoke, and even got matching tattoos with my cohort. After the summer, I joined APIENC Core where we use community values to make organizational decisions and guide the direction of APIENC’s work.
We live in a society of scarcity that tells us that there’s limited people, time, resources, and capacity. But APIENC has shown me so much abundance and I now know that there is enough and WE are enough. We have all that we need to create sustainable social change and build a world where we can be free.
2018
Fellowship Site: Filipino Community Center
Primary Location: San Francisco, CA
Christian worked for the Filipino Community Center in San Francisco, CA, an organization which provides services for the Filipino community in the Bay Area around immigration, employment search, and workers’ rights. She was able to work with community members one-on-one on their individual needs, as well as learn new strategies to serve the community from other service organizations in the Bay Area. Additionally, she gained a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding the Filipino community in the Bay Area and the potential solutions to it.
2018
Fellowship Site: California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative Project
Primary Location: San Jose, CA
Going into this summer, I knew that I wanted to combine my interest in public health with my cultural background. I had the incredible fortune to stumble upon the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative project of Asian Health Services. The Collaborative strives to create a healthier and more just working environment for nail salon workers, who are predominantly Vietnamese, immigrant, and lower-income. I worked with an exceptional team combining expertise in public health, labor rights, and environmental safety. I got to see the inner workings of a nonprofit organization, interact directly with workers, and advocate for policy change at the California state capital.
Being part of an institution like Asian Health Services with such a powerful legacy was also instrumental to my growth. I learned so much about the history of Asians in the Bay Area and the importance of grassroots work in our communities. Places like Asian Health Services are necessary not only to provide for our communities but also to be a voice to power, to advocate for us on the local, state, and federal level. Though I’m still unsure on what exactly what I want to do in the future, my summer experience instilled in me a fundamental need to give back to the communities that have made my success possible. I am so grateful to the A3C and Asian Health Services for allowing me to be a part of such important work.
2018
Fellowship Site: Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)
Primary Location: San Francisco, CA
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible. The organization is most prominent for CAAMFest, the world’s largest showcase for new Asian American and Asian film, food, and music programs, at which I began my CAAM journey as a volunteer in May. Little did I know that I would spend this summer not only working with the very people whose tireless efforts make CAAMFest and other watershed moments in API representation possible but also finding community with some of the coolest folks--from artists, activists, organizers, and scholars to bowtie-makers, fellow queers, Burners, karaoke kweens, and even VEGANS--with whom I feel proud to say I share an API identity.
Having grown up very religious, I had been so used to the church being the sole source of Asian community in my life, and as a casualty of colonization, I had and have been harboring a great deal of internalized racism that I have been trying very hard to unlearn. At the onset of my fellowship, I was worried I wasn’t going to be “Asian enough” to work for an Asian-centered organization, but I was excited to learn from and grow with people who look like me and reclaim power in my API identity. Working at CAAM, I was not disappointed. Not only did I get to share space with awesome people who are collectively working towards a mission in which I wholeheartedly believe, but I also got to pick up a couple of valuable life and workplace skills along the way. During the first weeks of my fellowship, I had the opportunity to get hands-on experience with the processes involved in nonprofit development, the coordination of CAAM’s fellowship program, and the meticulous process of digitizing and archiving raw film footage. As an intern, I also got to attend industry networking events and an API Council meeting, where community leaders advocated for more inclusive and accessible mental health resources and practices.
In the last couple weeks of my fellowship, I was lucky enough to work as a production assistant for a CAAM-produced film--directed by Wayne Wang (of “The Joy Luck Club” fame) and produced by Don Young, my first “9-to-5” boss of my dreams; written by Stanford’s very own Professor Chang-rae Lee; starring Justin Chon, Jackie Chung, John Lie, July Kim, Leesa Kim, and finger-licking delicacies by Benu’s Chef Corey Lee; and materialized by a motley crew of industry veterans, students, and burgeoning stars (although everyone was a rockstar in their own right!). I am so grateful for this organization that amplifies Asian voices and tells their narratives in a respectful, authentic, and empowering way and for all the people I met this summer who truly made me feel like I was part of the CAAMily.
Now that it’s been released, I can proudly say the title of the film out loud: “Coming Home Again” made its debut at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2019, and no surprise, Rotten Tomatoes seems to be a fan!
2017
Fellowship Site: Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC)
Primary Location: Oakland, CA
This summer, I have had the privilege of working with Asian Prisoner Support Committee, currently the only organization in the nation that works to provide culturally competent support specifically for incarcerated API communities. Through APSC, I’ve been able to work with organizations on both local and state government, but the most important work I’ve been able to do is the class we facilitate in San Quentin State Prison: Restoring Our Original and True Selves (ROOTS). In ROOTS, we work with lifers on topics like acculturation, intergenerational trauma, and histories of colonization, specifically in relation to Southeast Asian identity. This work has been transformative, not only for them, but also for me - being able to talk with people who have spent years going through the same struggles that I am going through continues to provide more for both of us than we could have ever imagined.
During our classes, and during my internship, I talked with and organized with so many people from so many different stages of the process. I got to grow with people who were just starting their organizing journey, collaborate with people who have been doing this work for decades, and share with people who are still dealing with the worst repercussions of an unjust institutionalized system. Being in this space both challenged and expanded my ideas of community and solidarity, and gave me the space to feel grounded in my own identity, privilege, and power. Organizing in these intersectional spaces continues to push my boundaries of understanding gender, ageism, culture, and many other identities, all compounded with the incarcerated state. Doing this work has allowed me to see how those labeled as “other” continue to resist, grow, and fight for change.
2017
Fellowship Site: Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
Primary Location: Sacramento, CA
When I learned that the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC) was the only national civil rights organization devoted to empowering Southeast Asian American communities through advocacy and leadership development, I knew it would be an incredible opportunity for me to intern there, and it was everything I hoped for and more. SEARAC was the perfect place for me to grow more comfortable within my identity, to be in a space surrounded by fierce, empathetic leaders who were supportive mentors, and to understand the remarkable history of how Southeast Asian Americans have fought hard to carve a space for ourselves in this country and make our voices heard.
For once, I was in a space where I was innately understood, owing to our shared histories, experiences, and struggles. SEARAC is uniquely situated as an organization with deep ties to community partners, but is also a state and national leader in policy research and is oftentimes the only source of disaggregated data focusing specifically on Southeast Asian Americans. Here, I was able to better my explore my interests in direct community work as well as broader level policy advocacy, and to think more deeply about intersectionality both among issues that Southeast Asian Americans face, and also across other racial and ethnic groups. I was able to go into the community to interview Southeast Asian American youth on their sexual and reproductive health needs, but also had the chance to visit the California State Capitol on legislative visits and learn more about the policymaking process. I am determined to continue seeking public policy experiences after graduation, while always remembering to ground my advocacy in the communities that I am a part of and working for, and this is all due to my experience at SEARAC. I am immensely grateful to have been part of SEARAC, and I know I will take the love and resilience that I felt there with me wherever I end up going next.
