Social Justice Leadership Institute (SJLI)

CACF launched the AAPI Social Justice Leadership Institute to create learning opportunities for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to gain the skills, knowledge, and tools to be agents of social change.

The AAPI Social Justice Leadership Institute (SJLI) invests in the power of our collective community. CACF envisions social justice leaders as forward-thinking, community-connected, and long-term drivers of social change.

SJLI encompasses a range of programs and trainings that bring together those with a desire to engage in social justice work for the AAPI community, including: high school and college students, staff and volunteers in community-based organizations, parents, educators, and funders. Grounded in an understanding of the dynamic AAPI community and our history, SJLI programs will build the capacity of participating individuals and organizations to increase their involvement and connections to social change activities and to each other.

Understanding Anti-Asian Hate through a Shared Learning Community: Workshop Series for Asian American Parents

This workshop series aims to empower Asian American families to become advocates for an equitable and anti-racist public school system and to create a shared learning community of Asian American families in the NYC public school system, focused on understanding racism through the Asian American lens.

Healing Ourselves, Healing Our Communities

Healing Ourselves is a healing-centered youth workshop series for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)* high school and early college-aged youth that focuses on mental health and emotional wellbeing. The curriculum was developed together with input from 8 different AAPI youth-serving community-based organizations, who then ran the workshop series in 2022 as part of their respective youth programs. In 2023, CACF worked with a cohort of 9 new organizations who each piloted the curriculum with their own youth. Youth took the time to explore themselves and their AAPI identities, shared family histories, and found connections with the stories of their peers as well as with events in AAPI history. They discussed examples of movements for freedom, visibility, and joyous self-expression, tools and skills for caring for oneself, and envisioned dreams for their communities' futures. The workshop series aims to equip participants with the knowledge, tools, and skills to be engaged in their own healing, and also in efforts to achieve racial equity in the long term.

*AAPI communities aiming to be inclusive of Middle Eastern, Indo-Caribbean, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and South, Southeast, East, Central, and West Asian American communities; however, this workshop series has also served young adults that do not identify as AAPI.

Organizations Who Participated in the Inaugural Spring 2022 Cohort

  • Apex for Youth

  • Asian Americans for Equality

  • Arab-American Family Support Center

  • Chinese-American Planning Council

  • Korean American Family Service Center

  • Mekong NYC

  • MinKwon Center for Community Action

  • South Asian Youth Action (SAYA)

Partnership with Sesame Workshop

CACF is partnering with Sesame Workshop to support our community’s early childhood caregivers and providers with a joint racial literacy initiative. Through this partnership, CACF aims to support our members and partners as they discuss race and identity with the youngest members of our community. 

In April 2022, CACF hosted a racial justice webinar led by Sesame Workshop that led early childhood caregivers and providers through the use of Sesame Street in Communities’ available racial literacy resources. Sesame Workshop also created a Muppet Message video to celebrate our communities and the diversity of our coalition.

Who to Contact

For more information, please contact Kristen Sze-Tu, Program Coordinator, at kszetu@cacf.org

 
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Asian American Student Advocacy Project (ASAP)