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ABC - American Born Chinese 🇺🇸👲🏻
TCI - Third Culture Individual 🌎
FOB - Fresh off the boat 🚢
Foreigner…China Man…Banana🍌
American, or not American. Chinese, or not Chinese enough...
I was often associated with these terms, not by other races, but by my own fellow Asian descendants. I called it a side effect of growing up in so many different countries, experiencing different Asian heritages – this lingering feeling of not fitting in was just a part of my history 🧩.
In the US, we are classified as Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) – but for many years this didn’t resonate with me. The term “AAPI” as an encompassing ethnic classification felt disconnected, and I found many ethnic groups were often siloed within their own bubble. From my experience, there was a lack of unity across the AAPI Community.
It wasn’t until the Covid-19 🦠 pandemic that my understanding of the term AAPI started to change. The escalation of xenophobia and racism toward the AAPI community made me feel unsafe, and I found a piece of sanctuary through leading voices in the AAPI community.
The term AAPI does not represent a monolith, but instead a powerful coalition of 50 ethnic groups. At our best, we can be a unified community that can create generations of advocacy.
Inspired by the advocates and leaders across the AAPI community, I felt a strong sense of emotion to DO SOMETHING.
I looked inward toward myself and asked:
How can I contribute and add value to the AAPI community today?
Start with what is nearest to me – reach out to my most immediate community(ies) for support.
1. Increase Awareness 🔊 by working with leading AAPI non-profits to help broaden their reach and tackle the issues faced in the AAPI Community.
2. Uplift the community 🎗 with our community business partners, to pool together resources to support future aspiring AAPI entrepreneurs, leaders, and representatives.
What started as an idea for a charity birthday party has now grown to become a campaign teaming up with leading AAPI non-profit organizations & AAPI business partners to deliver IMPACT.
Your donation to this campaign will support our combined efforts with these non-profit organizations to uplift AAPI Community!
Asian Hustle Network is a global online and offline super-connector for diasporic Asians crafting creative and entrepreneurial roads to success. Through our engaged community of 100,000+ members around the world, our storytelling, and our programming, we create an ecosystem to inspire and connect members to the people and resources who will take their pursuits to the next level. Our mission is to uplift creative and entrepreneurial Asians around the world whose pursuits are changing the world for the better.
CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) champions diversity by educating, connecting, and empowering Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and leaders in entertainment and media in three ways:
1. Nurturing and engaging creative talent and executive leadership
2. Providing cultural content consulting and talent referrals
3. Championing projects for critical box office and streaming success
Through our industry-renowned programs such as the CAPE New Writers Fellowship and the CAPE Leaders Fellowship, our consulting and talent referral services, the CAPE Database, and #GoldOpen, CAPE is breaking barriers to representation from the writers’ room to the boardroom to the living room.
Gold House is the leading Asian and Pacific Islander (API) changemaker community, fighting together for socioeconomic equity by uniting, investing in, and promoting API creatives and companies. Our innovative programs and platforms include membership systems and benefits to fortify relationships among APIs and with other marginalized communities (#StopAsianHate); investing in the next generation of top API founders, creatives, and social impact leaders (Gold House Futures, Gold House Ventures); and promoting affirming API creative and companies (Gold Open, Gold Records, A100 List). To learn more, visit www.goldhouse.org or follow @GoldHouseCo on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Hate Is A Virus is a nonprofit community of mobilizers and amplifiers to dismantle racism and hate. A movement started in 2020, Hate Is A Virus continues to amplify, educate and activate AAPI to stand for justice and equality in solidarity with other communities.
We started #HATEISAVIRUS because these issues are personal to us. Not only have we experienced racism growing up and in recent times, but we were seeing story after story about the hate crimes against our Asian American community fueled by the fears and misinformation around Coronavirus.
These AAPI businesses have volunteered to share resources and their network with the donors of this campaign and our AAPI non-profit organizations. You can learn more about our community business partners by clicking the logos in the team member section above🔝.
We want to give a shout-out to the team members of Unity Angels for supporting this campaign!
Unity Angels is an AAPI syndicate of emerging business leaders, family offices, and angel investors which invests across alternative asset classes. Unity Angels was created because of the lack of access to quality investment opportunities within the AAPI network and thus the founders wanted to harness a collective community to close this gap.
We want to extend a big THANK YOU for supporting this campaign and for being a part of our journey.
Let’s start unifying and uplifting Asian American Pacific Islanders together! 🚀
