PEA Facilitates Asian American Pacific Islander Leadership Forum in DC
MOAPIA Director David Do
PEA was honored to facilitate the AAPI Leadership Action Forum for the Mayor’s Office on Asian Pacific Islander Affairs (MOAPIA) in DC on Saturday April 21st. The forum brought together 100 leaders and stakeholders from the Asian Pacific Islander community, with the highest numbers coming from the Chinese-American, Filipino-American, Vietnamese-American, and Korean-American communities but with many other ethnicities represented.
The meeting was a follow-on to a forum we facilitated for MOAPIA in the fall of 2015, where more than 200 residents and merchants established nine priorities across six policy areas – public health, public education, adult education and job training, public safety, affordable housing, and advancing small business. PEA and MOAPIA staff then worked with community stakeholders and numerous District agencies to develop a 2-year action plan starting in 2016.
This year’s forum looked to focus and advance on the same six policy areas plus emphasize on three new areas: civil liberties, immigration, and AAPI arts and culture. The forum featured speakers from:
- The White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who discussed the ways the federal government are working on behalf of the AAPI community
- National Council of Asian Pacific Americans who focused on the need for the AAPI community to remain vigilant on civil liberty issues
- Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center who reviewed the numerous ways in which AAPI DACA and other undocumented immigrants are at risk and what the center and other advocates are doing on their behalf
Co-Facilitators Steve Brigham and Janet Namkung
The day of deliberation resulted in priority recommendations for both MOAPIA and for AAPI community leaders in all nine policy areas that will shapes the community’s action plan for the next two years.