Newsletter

In Community: November 2022 Newsletter

TAAF hosted over 300 AAPI leaders at its Leadership Summit, announced significant progress in its AAPI Giving Challenge, and celebrated AAPI Heritage Heroes as Shorty Award finalists.

Dear Friends,

We recently had the privilege of hosting over 300 AAPI leaders from across the country at our inaugural Leadership Summit in San Francisco. The collective spirit and energy were electric, and leaders from the philanthropic, nonprofit, corporate, government and media sectors came together to connect and develop shared solutions for our community.On October 25th, TAAF and KKR hosted Giving Challenge corporate and ERG leaders and nonprofit executives to drive direct impact to the New York City AAPI community. This event is just one example of how the Giving Challenge has come to life. To date, more than 130 partners have committed $1.1 billion in donations and in-kind support over five years. Stay tuned as we look to expand and evolve the Giving Challenge to unlock additional resources for the AAPI community.Finally, I am proud to announce that AAPI Heritage Heroes, our Hulu program celebrating the unsung heroes in our communities, is a Shorty Impact Awards Finalist in four categories! We also have a chance to win the Audience Award, so please show your support by voting here.

In solidarity,

Norman Chen‍
CEO, The Asian American Foundation

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PROGRAMS

Building Allyship at the AAPI Leadership Summit

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**Daniel Dae Kim, Tavae Samuelu, Fatima Angeles, and Eric Kim. (Credit: Sally Pinera)**

Our inaugural event at the end of September brought together AAPI leaders from diverse sectors to convene and connect on key issues for the AAPI community.

From a rousing keynote by trailblazer Helen Zia to inspiring panels and fireside chats with AAPI leaders, the takeaways were clear:

We need to be in this together, and we will lose this fight if we focus on our own agendas.
We need to recognize the deep history and challenges of all ethnicities making up AAPI identity, especially Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
It is our responsibility to provide support for future generations of leaders.

**TAAF Board Members Joe Tsai, Joe Bae, and Juju Chang. (Credit: Sally Pinera)**

With the incredible expertise and diverse perspectives in the room, attendees worked together to brainstorm desired outcomes and metrics through breakout sessions led by Bain & Company.

Key materials and emerging themes from these sessions are summarized in this Capture Book.
For TAAF, we are incorporating learnings from these discussions into our core areas of work—anti-hate, education, and narrative change—as we build out our future plans.

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EDUCATION

Partner Spotlight: Implementing the TEAACH Act in Illinois

“We are setting a new standard for what it means to truly reckon with our history. It's a new standard that helps us understand one another, to move ourselves closer to the nation of our ideals.”
–Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (Photo: Office of Governor J.B. Pritzker)

‍TO CATCH YOU UP: In July 2021, The Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act, was signed into law making Illinois the first state to require all public schools to make Asian American history part of the curriculum (The 21st). As of this fall semester, some teachers have started teaching AAPI history in their classrooms, while others are still preparing to do so.

TAAF formed and co-funded the TEAACH Implementation Collaborative, which has mobilized over $1.02 million over two years, with Chicago-based foundations and partners: The Woods Fund of Chicago, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, AAPIP-Chicago, AAAJ-Chicago, the Asian American Caucus Education Fund (AACEF), the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), and Education Pioneers.

The Collaborative is focused on developing curricula, aligning existing curriculum to standards, and creating professional development opportunities so teachers feel prepared, incentivized, and acknowledged for teaching Asian American history.
Out of 9,000 teachers in Illinois targeted to be the primary audience for professional and curricular development, over 2,300 have already engaged in training.

AAPI educational resources from our partners:

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago has created a comprehensive Asian American Education Resource Database that aligns K-12 curricular resources to Illinois' standards, with links to in-person & virtual professional development workshops.
The University of Illinois has developed a micro-credential consisting of 3 modules.
The Asian American Education Project has numerous, in-depth lesson plans that provide tailored K–12 curriculum for educators to teach AAPI history to students.

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RESOURCES AND REPRESENTATION

AAPI Giving Challenge Update

Etsy joined the AAPI Giving Challenge with a commitment to support AAPI small business owners and organizations serving the community. The company has also supported the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. (Credit: Etsy)

‍TAAF AAPI Giving Challenge is a multi-year initiative designed to unlock resources from foundations, corporations and individuals to support AAPI communities and causes. Less than 0.2% of philanthropic giving from foundations goes to AAPI nonprofits and causes, so the AAPI Giving Challenge helps to fill the critical lack of investment and resources provided to our communities.

In 2021, 70 Corporates, 13 Foundations, and 50 Individuals joined The AAPI Giving Challenge, committing $1.1 billion over five years. Over 83% of the commitment is going directly to AAPI communities and causes during this period. The remaining 17% of contributions are allocated to TAAF and includes the Board’s commitment to cover TAAF’s operating costs.

The Giving Challenge was built to be flexible, enabling our partners to determine how and where they designate their multi-year commitments, from in-kind support to contributing directly to AAPI communities and causes.

See below for examples of how Giving Challenge partners are directly supporting the AAPI community:

Additional examples can be found at TAAF’s website.

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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

Jeremy Lin led the Knicks on a seven-game winning streak in February 2012, part of an exciting run known as Linsanity and chronicled in a new HBO documentary called “38 at the Garden.” (Richard Perry/The New York Times)

At the AAPI Leadership Summit, our attendees got a sneak peek of 38 AT THE GARDEN, a film about Jeremy Lin and the movement that was bigger than basketball. Watch it on HBO Max now.
RISING AGAINST ASIAN HATE: ONE DAY IN MARCH is a new documentary supported by TAAF and narrated by Emmy nominated actress Sandra Oh with original music by Grammy and Academy Award-winning musician Jon Batiste, that examines increasing violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The film is streaming on PBS now.

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Partner Spotlight HEADLINES FROM ACROSS OUR COMMUNITIES

Queens Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, Department of Education Chancellor David Banks and Mayor Eric Adams announced new legislation at the state level that would establish Diwali as a New York City public school holiday on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. (Photo via the City of New York/Twitter)

CNN Diwali will be a public school holiday in New York City starting in 2023‍

‍AP News ‘Momentous’: Asian Americans laud Anna May Wong’s US quarter‍

‍Pew Research Key facts about Asian American eligible voters in 2022

NBC News Why Celeste Ng's new book places an Asian American mom in the eye of a social justice movement

ABC 10 'It makes me proud that we're being recognized' | Lunar New Year now a state holiday in California

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