Immigrant History Initiative

The Immigrant History Initiative is a nonprofit startup founded in 2017 to mobilize and empower Asian American communities through in-depth programming using history, storytelling, and political education. Our mission is to bridge generational rifts and break the silence around racial justice within Asian American communities, while providing support to emerging activists. Founded by two Asian American women, IHI focuses on supporting emerging but isolated AAPI communities outside historic city centers. Often, we are the first organization to provide sustained in-language, anti-racist Asian American-centered programming to these communities, leveraging existing cultural networks and using comprehensive online resources to scale our reach.

About the Organization:

California • Louisiana • New York • Texas

The Issue:

“I am terrified for my children, my family. I don’t understand why this is happening, and I don’t know what to do.” At IHI, we have heard these sentiments expressed by hundreds of Asian American parents in the last year.

Since 2020, AAPI communities have faced dual harms of a pandemic and the upsurge of anti-Asian violence, with more than 6,000 recorded incidents since March 2020 and shootings in Atlanta and Indianapolis. One in four Asian American students has reported experiencing racialized bullying, and Asian students are returning to schools at 50% rate of white students.

AAPI’s are fighting back, but they need support. Confronting this moment requires knowing our histories of oppression AND resilience of those who came before. Activists, now emerging across the country and outside city centers, need spaces to grapple with their identities and histories to become fully empowered advocates for our and other marginalized communities

The Solution:

For many nascent Asian American activists, advocating for our communities alone and for the first time, without access to resources and reliance on rich organizing traditions, is daunting. IHI aims to provide exactly the kind of deep support necessary to empower multiple generations of Asian Americans. With Gold Futures Challenge funding, we will launch our intergenerational pilot using untapped spaces like heritage language schools, bringing families together to learn Asian American history, discuss identity and racial trauma, and gain advocacy frameworks to meaningfully engage in racial equity work for our communities and others. By the end of the program, participants will feel empowered to advocate for their families and communities and center Asian American issues in an antiracist framework that facilitates cross-racial solidarity and liberation. Our in-person pilot program will launch Northeast states in 2022, and we will simultaneously develop an online version to be offered nationally in 2023.

Immigrant History Initiative