APICLI Action Projects Announced!

APANO is honored to be working with APICLI Fellows and Action Project Sites to build and strengthen leadership experiences of this year's cohort!

Community Action Project (CAP) Descriptions

Community Action Projects are intended to enhance the core curriculum by providing a structured opportunity for experiential learning through a collaborative, team-oriented approach focused on an outcome that benefits Asian Pacific Islanders and the greater community. Selected projects will focus specifically on addressing racial disparities of concern to API communities, and build skills and experience in the priority areas of community organizing and advocacy.

The API-CLI Community Action Projects for 2013 are being bottom-lined by APANO, and include projects in the areas of environmental justice, educational justice, health equity, community organizing, and community-led planning and development without displacement, and will place participants in a range of API communities in Oregon. You will work in groups of 2-4 people and we think you will spend about 48 hours over the next 6-7 months on those projects. You will have the opportunity to meet and greet host organizations at one of the next two meetings.

If you have any questions, please contact: Diana Pei Wu, PhD; APICLI Trainer / Organizer and APANO Organizing Director: Diana@apano.org

1. APANO Jade District

The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) is a statewide, grassroots organization, uniting Asians and Pacific Islanders to achieve social justice. We envision a just and equitable world where Asians and Pacific Islanders are fully engaged in the social, economic and political issues that affect us. Achieving racial equity is at the core of APANO’s strategic focus.

The Jade District, the area surrounding 82nd and Division in SE Portland was designated by the Portland Development Commission (PDC) as a Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative (NPI) district in 2011. The NPI is a public/private partnership that aims to transform underserved commercial districts in east Portland into engines of economic and community development through tax increment financing (TIF) without displacing the communities that currently reside there.

APICLI Fellows will work to engage the community in decision-making processes and help to establish the Jade District as the cultural center of the API community within Portland. We need the Fellows’ help in creating a vibrant new API economic zone without the negative effects of gentrification and displacement of the local community.

Supervisor(s):

• Duncan Hwang, Director of Communications and Development
• Stanley Moy, Jade District Manager

Website: https://apano.org

2. APANO Many Rivers Listening Circles

The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) is a statewide, grassroots organization, uniting Asians and Pacific Islanders to achieve social justice. We envision a just and equitable world where Asians and Pacific Islanders are fully engaged in the social, economic and political issues that affect us. Achieving racial equity is at the core of APANO’s strategic focus.

APANO’s Many Rivers Listening Circles is a core part of our organizing program that develops grassroots leadership, fosters organizational partnerships and frames collective policy advocacy goals. A “listening circle” seeks to surface the stories of Asian Pacific Islanders in Oregon and create policy solutions to the challenges we face. Through facilitated dialogue led by community members, respecting language, cultural and tradition, the listening circle is a powerful experience of understanding and civic engagement. Recommendations from listening circles are consolidated for an annual report that is shared with partners and political leaders.

Fellows will go through a collective process with APANO staff, members and partners to select a community focus, and determine their role as organizer and/or facilitator. Listening circle leaders will have the opportunity to go through a facilitation training, work with curriculum, foster organizational partnerships, summarize and report back on results.

Supervisor(s):

• Joseph Santos-Lyons, Executive Director
• Paolo Esteban, Field Organizer

Website: https://apano.org

3. Coalition of Communities of Color: Educational Justice

The mission of the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC) is to address the socioeconomic disparities, institutional racism, and inequity of services experienced by our families, children and communities; and to organize our communities for collective action resulting in social change to obtain self-determination, wellness, justice and prosperity. The CCC builds collective power through prioritizing the following strategies: leadership development, policy analysis and advocacy, culturally appropriate data and research, equity-based funding, and partnership and coalition building.

The CCC envisions that Leadership Fellows will create the first comprehensive mapping of educational justice actors and activities in Oregon by populating a matrix created by the CCC to capture the breadth and detail of current work, including organizations, geographic focus, core issues/areas of focus, and strategies employed. Fellows will then analyze the populated matrix for strengths and weaknesses using SWOT Analysis.

This project will lay the foundation for the creation of a single-point clearinghouse for the sharing of educational justice information in Oregon, support alignment of fractured efforts to address educational inequities, and identify partnership and coalition building opportunities.

Supervisor:

• Inger McDowell, CCC Collaboratives Coordinator

Website: http://www.coalitioncommunitiescolor.org/

4. 211 Info: Clark County API Community Project

211info connects the people of Oregon and Southwest Washington with the health and social services they need. We assist people who are seeking food and shelter; health, dental and mental health care; assistance paying rent and energy bills; aging and disabilities services; legal assistance; financial literacy training; parenting education; and much more. Last year, we helped over 250,000 people through our free, confidential services.

Clark County has experienced recent growth in its API immigrant/refugee population, and many government agencies, businesses, nonprofits, schools, faith communities and other organizations lack the understanding necessary to provide equitable access to services for API residents. Of the county’s 438,287 residents (census estimate for 2012), 5.1% identify as Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Our project will address multiple issues facing the API community: Barriers to accessing resources (health and social services); Visibility of the API community in the region; and community-specific needs within the “API” umbrella (immigrants vs. refugees, PI vs. Asian, etc).

Fellows will receive extensive training; strategic support; introductions to organizations that serve and/or would benefit from the information collected by the Fellows; a platform for online publication of their results.

Supervisor:

• Kathy Wai, 211info Family Info Communications Liaison

Website: http://211info.org/

5. Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) Asian and Pacific Islander Employee Resource Group

The Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) leads and supports university-wide initiatives to create an environment of respect and inclusion for all people. CDI supports OHSU-sponsored and employee-managed Employee Resource Groups, which provide social support and networking opportunities for students, staff and faculty who share similar backgrounds.

We have been working on getting an Employee Resource Group started for Asian Pacific Islander employees and faculty. OHSU employs 14,000 workers across all its campus throughout Oregon, and about 1 in 10 of OHSU faculty and staff identifies as API.

For our proposed API CLI action project, we would like a group of fellows help us craft a strategy to effectively reach out to API faculty and staff who are motivated to start an Employee Resource Group for OHSU’s Asian Pacific Islander communities across the campus.

Supervisor:

• Maileen Hamto, MBA; Communications Manager

Website: http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/vision/center-for-diversity-inclusion/index.cfm

6. Organizing People Activating Leaders (OPAL) – Environmental Justice Oregon: APIs and Air Toxics Project

OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon is a community-based organization working to build power for environmental justice and Civil Rights. We achieve this goal through popular education, base-building and addressing root causes of oppression and environmental racism.

Portland communities have the highest risk of exposure to air toxics than any other region in Oregon, due primarily to population density, transportation and commercial/industrial activity. While air toxics from the primary emission sources are found throughout the Portland metro region, higher concentrations of emissions, well over health-based benchmarks, are found disproportionately in areas with higher concentrations of people of color and low-income residents. The health impacts stemming from these emissions in excess of health-based benchmarks include cancer, bronchial and other respiratory disease, heart disease, dizziness and eye, throat and skin irritation.

OPAL envisions the leadership fellows contributing leadership and activism around the project, raising awareness of the environmental justice issues and elevating the importance of this work throughout the API communities, particularly in Outer SE Portland and the Jade District (which is identified as an area with high API concentration and high on-road mobile air toxics emissions). Fellows will have opportunities for statistical and policy research, understanding of legal and health-based frameworks, popular education, community outreach and organizing, curriculum development, workshop facilitation, power mapping and power analysis facilitation, and developing advocacy approaches to implement policy changes.

Supervisor:

• Jonathan Ostar, Executive Director
• Vivian Satterfield, Associate Director

Website: http://www.opalpdx.org/

API-CLI is a joint project of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) and the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), and funded by the Meyer Memorial Trust.