Community Action Projects
The Community Action Project (CAP) is a collaborative effort between CAPAL scholars and interns in service of the mission to CAPAL. Students will work together in small groups with community partners, creating deliverables to give back and address issues facing the AANHPI community. The groups then present their final projects at the Summer Closing Ceremony. Click below to view past Community Action Projects.
2019 Projects
Community Partner: DVRP
Team members: Helena Ong, Kristina Smelser, Mary Thao, & Jessica Li
Goal: Research the impact of domestic and sexual violence in API communities.
Community Partner: AARP
Team members: Cassie He, Abeeha Shamshad, & Jeremiah Azurin
Goal: To collect data on millennial experiences with the concept or action of caregiving, along with its expectations and relevant education
Community Partner: 1882 Foundation
Team members: Zoie Chang, Sarah Kamakawiwo’ole, David Kim
Goal: Continuation of 2018’s CAPAL Range 99 project.
Community Partner: National CAPACD
Team members: Rachel Oda, Courtney Tran, & Emily Tran
Goal: Conduct research to help CAPACD design leadership development programs to support community focused AANHPI organizations.
2018 Projects
Community Partner: Asian Americans Advancing Justice
Team Members: Sylvia Peng, Charlotte Rhodes, Jessica Lee, Angela Li, An Pham
Goal: Highlight the influence of technology with case studies showcasing how technology is utilized by AANHPIs in a variety of fields – from running businesses, in academia, and when confronting sexual and domestic violence.
Community Partner: The 1882 Foundation
Team members: Ashley Tjhung, Tingyao Li, Cassidy Pregil, Hannah Hsieh, Sally Pak, Samantha Mori
Goal: Research Range 99, a section of the Historic Congressional Cemetery, and justify memorializing the site and develop a fundraising plan for the 1882 Foundation to implement, ensuring funds are secured for a memorializing project.
Community Partner: Libraries Without Borders
Team members: Michelle Chung, Yvonne Shih, Jeremy Lee, Xiong Her, Angela Zhao
Goal: Create standard curricula/training modules for weekly workshops for elderly AANHPIs, providing resources on health, legal assistance, financial literacy, and language learning. so they may be run by volunteer groups from surrounding schools and organizations.
Community Partner: National CAPACD
Team members: Angela Tran, Patricia Choi, Kelly Chang, Sharon Le, Sara Kang
Goal: Gather and map data and indicators measuring the impact of gentrification and displacement in hot market neighborhoods. The mapping tool will include AAPI poverty trends, national housing preservation data, environmental and neighborhood health metrics to assess the impact of displacement on low income AAPI communities.
Community Partner: Asian American Government Executives Network
Team members: Télyse Masaoay, Nashi Gunasekara, JungJun Cho, Mark Dong, Anita Mathias
Goal: Become familiar with AAGEN by serving as volunteers at the annual Leadership Workshop to best learn of the logistic processes feeding into the successful implementation of a workshop, and work with advisors to craft Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for this and AAGEN’s other operations and programming.
2017 Projects
Community Partner: Asian Americans Advancing Justice
Team Members: Jordan Choy, Neil Decenteceo, Vivian Kim, Ting Lin.
Goal: Create an awareness campaign that effectively engages older AAPIs to engage in hate incident reporting.
Community Partner: Asian Pacific American Vote
Team members: Ariel Higuchi, Alain Xiong-Calmes, Richard Fu, Evan Yoshimoto
Goal: Design a deliverable workshop presentation highlighting landmark Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) political movements to generate appreciation for AANHPI civic engagement, and perform background research on historical and contemporary AANHPI identity.
Community Partner: National Resources Defense Council
Team members: Starla Couso, Emi Okikawa, Bernadette Mead, Justin Rose, Javan Santos
Goal: Supplement the deficit in data surrounding energy burdens of Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) households.
Community Partner: National CAPACD and Asian Community Development Corporation
Team members: John Camara, Areeba Haider, Richard Li, Carlo Tuason, Steven Xie
Goal: Prove the displacement of AAPIs from Boston’s Chinatown and create a guide as to how to use a mapping tool to better analyze housing trends.
Community Partner: Domestic Violence Resource Project
Team members: Melody Fan, Crystal Im, Farjana Islam, Justine Kim, Marcia Saeteng
Goal: Create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) detailing three methods by which a bystander can intervene in situations of domestic violence. Translate the PSA into English, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese.
Community Partner: National Education Association
Team members: Anna Casalme, Michelle Liu, Maki O’Bryan, Camille Sanchez, Jun Min Zhong
Goal: Produce and execute a webinar targeted towards the Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community on engaging with state and local educational agencies on the 2017 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Plans.
2016 Projects
- Voter Engagement
- The Intersectionality of Asian and African Americans
- Fetishization of AANHPI Women
- The Importance of Racial Diversity Across Environmental Government Agencies, NGOs, and Foundations
- How Federal Education Policy Affects AAANHPIs
- LGBTQ AANHPI Allyship and Nonprofit Advocacy
- AANHPI Representation on Capitol Hill
Team members: Janny Jang, Stephanie Xiao, Leangelo Acuna, Allen Lo
Goal: To showcase how all issues, including those that are not considered “traditionally AAPI” are relevant to our community and can impact voter engagement of the generally untapped political power of AAPIs. They want to create a holistic image of AAPI issues but also to deconstruct them to uncover the less talked about issues.
Team members: Megan Matthew, Peter Liu, Devin Tran, Stephanie Xiao, Grace Kim
Goal: To provide a history that weaves the relatively short history of Asian Americans with that of black America. To allow others to see how relations between these two groups were shaped through history and what Asian and black solidarity can look like in the upcoming years.
Team members: Nancy Luo, Abigail Wang, Sylvia Guan, Ashley Truong
Goal: To give AAPI women an opportunity to speak about the fetishization and marginalization of their identities to bring more awareness to the complexity of race and gender in their lives.
Team members: Divina Li, Victoria Vong, Philip Samuel
Goal: To examine real examples of environmental injustice – the historic Warren County PCB landfill, Richmond CA’s Chevron Oil dispute, and D.C. Chinatown’s gentrification – and to reveal how race or nationality of victims, as well as of the organizations and agencies trying to help, can impact outcomes in disadvantageous and unfair ways.
Team members: Bo Chong, Michael Yee, Celine Nguyen, Sophia Fang
Goal: Educate others on the issues surrounding DACA/DAPA and its effect on AAPIs in this country, and provide a way for others to understand the impact of immigration policy from the perspective of those that the policy affects on a day to day basis.
Click here to visit their website.
Team members: Miru Osuga, Sooji Yang, Olivia Flechsig, Tien Weber, Rosa Keller, Marisa Paipongna
Goal: To bring LGBTQ allies into a conversation on the the diversity of the AAPI community when it comes to gender and sexual identity. To highlight the importance of nonprofit or advocacy work within this sphere. To be a proactive call for action in supporting our LGBTQ brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings.
Visit their Facebook Page.
Click here to download their project.
Team members: Felicia Wong, Bichnga Do, Juhi Patel, Rachel Chiu
Goal: To illuminate the current state of AAPI representation on the hill and point towards how the AAPI community can affect change on the hill and vice versa to “progress” AAPI-significant issues.