News and Events

Pasifika Power & Control Wheel Translation Project, 2021

Pasifika Power & Control Wheel Translation Project, 2021

This project aimed to translate and develop educational resources and tools on GBV in indigenous Pasifika languages. The project aims to empower individuals, families, community-based and system responders, allied professionals, and the community-at-large with culturally responsive resources to address and prevent GBV in Pasifika communities. Resources include project report and glossaries and tools for Samoan, Chuukese, and Native Hawaiian communities.

Related Resources

Pasifika Power & Control Wheel Translation Project Report
Matāpuna Ma’ilo Levenson, MSW
API-GBV

This report highlights the indigenous methodologies used and lessons learned from this project, and provides recommendations for how communities can integrate the approaches and lessons learned to their own work of ending gender-based violence in their respective communities.

Download Report

Native Hawaiian Resources: The Mo’ohihia framework

Developed by project consultants Kekai Lindsey and Ho’oleina Ioane, the Mo’ohihia framework reflects the succession of difficulties that progress through generations (Mo’ohihia).

Mo'ohihia Framework
Mo'ohihia Guide
Olelo Hawai'i DV Glossary

Samoan Resources: The ‘Ato and Afa Frameworks

Project partners Suzanna Tiapula and Dr. Michael Ligaliga developed two frameworks for understanding and responding to domestic and gender-based violence from a Samoan cultural perspective: O le ʻAto lau niu (the coconut leaf basket) and O le filigā Afa (the sennit rope braiding process).

'Ato & Afa Frameworks
Ole Filigā ‘Afa Guide
Ole ‘Ato Lau Niu Guide
Gagana Sāmoa DV Glossary
Gagana Sāmoa Translation Art Works

Chuukese Resources: Tatan Imw Framework

Project consultants Innocenta Sound-Kikku and Paul Otoko created the Tatan Imw framework: Broken Roles, Responsibilities and Values within Chuukese Homes. This framework focus on three important roles that comprise Chuukese life and Re Chuuk (Chuukese people) worldview : Wa (individuals), Imw (home and family), and Uut (clan and community).

Tatan Imw Frakework
Kapasen Chuuk DV Glossary
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Decolonizing Our Body As Land — Ritual of Sickness: ChilseongSaenamgut (With Dohee Lee)

Decolonizing Our Body As Land — Ritual of Sickness: ChilseongSaenamgut (With Dohee Lee)

May 25, 2022
10am HST / 12pm PST / 2pm CST / 3pm EST (1.5hr)

The creative process of ritual through our own body is the key word. Our embodied and mindful practice will bring the source and resources to explore and examine individual roots and cultural elements that we were longing for to reconnect. We reclaim our cultural and ancestral dignity and resilience from the colonial system of oppression. We reclaim our matriarchal beliefs into collective creative healing and spiritual activism once our ancestors did for the ceremonies and rituals. 

Register now!

About the facilitator:

Dohee Lee, a performance artist, ritualist, and educator was born on Jeju Island in South Korea. Her creative vision comes from traditional Korean music, singing, drumming and dance which is rooted in Korean indigenous ritual. Since her arrival in the US she has been a vital contributor to both the traditional and contemporary arts landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. She utilizes art to heal fractured relationships in the urban environment – relationships between humans and the land, histories and stories between individuals and their communities. She is the founder of Puri Arts, a producing organization of performance and ritual. Her work has been acknowledged by several awards, such as Guggenheim Fellowship, Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, Creative Work Foundation, Herb Alpert Award, Doris Duke Impact Award, Creative Capital, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Isadora Duncun Dance Award, Zellerbach Family foundation and more.

www.doheelee.com

Join our facilitated sharing session for AANHPI Advocates! (with Dr. Ada Cheng)

Join our facilitated sharing session for AANHPI Advocates! (with Dr. Ada Cheng)

May 18, 2022
10am HST / 12pm PST / 2pm CST / 3pm EST (1.5hr)

This is a facilitated sharing session, where staff and members will share their experiences and stories based on prompts. Facilitated by Dr. Ada Cheng, this session is designed based on the understanding that staff members have experienced vicarious trauma and exhaustion due to the pandemic and the current political climate of our time. The format of the intimate sharing is intended to create space for intimacy, vulnerability, connection, and hopefully care for the participants.

Please note: we are limiting attendance for this session to 30 participants. If you find out that you can no longer make it after signing up, please cancel your registration through Zoom or email Brittney Asher at bhasher@api-gbv.org, so that we can open the spot up to another participant. Thank you!
Register now!

About the facilitator:

An educator-turned artist, storyteller, and creator, Dr. Ada Cheng has utilized storytelling to illustrate structural inequities, raise critical awareness, and build intimate communities. Committed to amplifying and uplifting marginalized voices, she has created numerous storytelling platforms for BIPOC and LGBTQIA community members to tell difficult and vulnerable stories based on their lived experiences.

Since she resigned from her tenured position in sociology at DePaul University in 2016, she has been featured at storytelling shows and done her two solo performances in theaters, universities, and conferences across the nation. She has given numerous keynotes since then. In 2019, she delivered her solo performance, Not Quite: Navigating Citizenship and Belonging, as the keynote for Women and Girls in Georgia Conference at the University of Georgia. In 2021, she delivered keynotes for Chicago Cultural Alliance’s Activating Heritage Conference, AAPI Heritage Month at Dominican University, AAPI Heritage Month at Environmental Protection Agency, and Immigrants in Our Midst Conference. Her interests encompass academia, storytelling/performance, and advocacy.

You can learn more about Dr. Ada Cheng and see some of her previous work here!

For AANHPI Advocates — StoryCircles with beckie masaki

For AANHPI Advocates — StoryCircles with beckie masaki

May 10 & May 11, 2022
9am HST / 11am PST / 1pm CST / 2pm EST (1.5hr)

In the midst of exhaustion, pain, grief, anger, and systemic, compounded violence from the parallel pandemics of COVID-19 and AAPI Hate, it is time to create space + time, gather strength, and renew energy, for leaders and advocates, by and for AANHPI organizations and communities. Whether it is your first time with Story Circles, or you have been in several Story Circle sessions, each one is different because of what calls us together in the present moments.

Storycircles is a 2-part session that will take place across 2 days — we encourage you to join us for both!. Please make sure to register for both days, below.

Register - Day 1 - 5/10/22
Register - Day 2 - 5/11/22

These sessions are designed with intentionality, in recognition that between the parallel pandemics of COVID-19 and AAPI hate, many AAPI advocates, families, communities, and organizations have not had the space + time to honor their own exhaustion, pain, grief, and anger. The story circles will give voice to the diverse individual experiences of careers, and make space to heal from the collective trauma of the pandemic.

Mindful and upholding that each and every one of you hold many responsibilities in your very full home/ work/ community lives, no homework is needed to prepare before joining this Story Circle session!

Outcomes:

  • Ground in y(our) whole selves, create breathing space;
  • Unleash creative thinking, reflection, and action practices;
  • Deepen our interconnectedness both within and across ourselves, families, communities, organizations, coalitions.

About the facilitator:

Beckie Masaki has worked in the field to end gender-­based violence for 40 years. In 1980’s, she co-­founded one of the first programs in the nation that could meet the language and cultural needs of Asian survivors of domestic violence and trafficking, Asian Women’s Shelter (AWS) in San Francisco, continuing on to serve as the founding executive director for over twenty-­one years. Beckie has been a co-­founder and staff of a national cultural resource center, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender­ Based Violence. She is also a movement-maker in the Move to End Violence (MEV), starting with the 2009 advisory group, first cohort, and currently co-­leads the Communities/ Building the Power of the Margins and Mending the Arc practice groups as part of Resonance, the MEV alumni network. Beckie has extensive experience in providing multilingual, multicultural services to domestic violence and human trafficking survivors and their children, innovative program development, prevention, community building, policy and institutional advocacy, training, technical assistance, and cultural change work.

Beckie is committed to make her best contribution to the movement for race + gender justice as part of an interconnected network of intergenerational, diverse leaders in a new era of shared leadership, shared power, and co­-creation. She lives and works through an intersectional approach that builds the power of the margins and is marked by collective power, collaboration, creativity, and love.

Bridges: A Connect Call for Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders Addressing Gender-Based Violence

Bridges: A Connect Call for Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders Addressing Gender-Based Violence

Next call: May 12, 2022 (9am HST / 12pm PST / 3pm CST / 3pm EST) (1.5hr)

These bi-monthly community connect calls are intended to be a space for AANHPI advocates, community members, and allies to connect, dialogue, share successes, problem solve, and network. API-GBV staff will be available to moderate and encourage discussion, but this is a space for YOU, as the experts of this work, to share your experiences and to learn from allies across the country.

May’s Theme – Accounting for our communities: Strategies and solutions for disaggregated AAPI data

The nearly 17 million AAPI people in the U.S. represent a staggeringly diverse array of identities, backgrounds, and cultures. Unfortunately, the currently available data, whether on gender-based violence or simple demographics, does a poor job of capturing this diversity, and as a result, the experiences of several communities are invisibalized. Data scarcity also leads to inadequate allocation of funding and resources, or services that are not properly informed by need.

Join our APAHM Bridges Community Connect Call on May 12th, 2022 to discuss this critical lack of data and learn about recent research initiatives, including community-driven projects!

We will offer the following questions for discussions, among others:

  • Which AAPI communities or groups are “left out” of the current research
  • What are some reasons that disaggregated data on AAPI experiences are so scarce, especially when it comes to GBV-related data?
  • How does your organization collect and use information on the community you serve?
  • What data would be most useful to your work?

ASL interpretation and live captioning provided.


Other details:

Meetings will be hosted on Zoom, and you are encouraged to join with video and voice to the extent that you are comfortable. These calls will not be recorded, but we may share takeaways, without identifying information, with our staff or community. ASL interpretation and captioning will be provided. Please get in contact with us, or indicate in your RSVP, if you require additional interpretation or accessibility features.

If you cannot make February’s call, but would like to be on the list for future dates, please email sluo@api-gbv.org.

To RSVP, please use the form below, or click here to open it in another window.

Remembrance and Solidarity: API-GBV’s Statement on the One-Year Anniversary of the Atlanta Spa Shootings

Click above to view this statement as a PDF

3/16/2022

On March 16, 2021 eight women and men, among them six Asian massage workers, were killed at spas in the Atlanta area. Though today marks one year since their loss reverberated through AAPI communities and beyond, the loss continues for their families and the community. Since then, more names have been added to the list of lives lost to anti-AAPI hate, as recently as this month in New York City.

These tragedies, while on the extreme end of how racialized and gendered hate manifests against AAPI individuals, are not isolated events, but part of the historical and continuous white supremacy, misogyny, objectification, and ‘othering’ of AAPI and other immigrant communities.[1]

We share pain and outrage with our Black, Latinx, and Indigenous, Muslim, LGBTQ, and other allies, who are, and continue to be left out of justice: Americans who are targeted with hate in their own neighborhoods, immigrants and refugees who are made to feel unwelcome, the missing and murdered Indigenous women whose stories don’t make the headlines. Reinforced by systems and carried out in large and small ways every day, they contribute to an enduring climate of fear.

In this deeply painful time, we feel a mandate to stop and prevent violence of all forms, and we know that the only way forward is in solidarity with all communities affected by it. Even as we grieve, we have been heartened to witness AAPI and other communities coming together during the past year name these killings for what they are – hate – and to ensure they are not shrugged off as disconnected or random incidents. These are the conversations we have been, and will continue to have to lift up the need for all people to feel safe in their homes and communities.

Most importantly, we cannot forget that at the center of the way forward is remembering and honoring the victims who died last March 16th, whose names and stories have become absorbed into the broader struggle for racial justice: swept into history as the faces of the movement to end anti-AAPI hate. Participation in this movement was not a choice that they were able to make, nor their families and friends, whose loss has been the greatest.

We grieve for the mothers, daughters, sisters, husbands, brothers, and humans that were lost. We pledge to hold their names at the center as we continue to fight for safety and justice for all communities.

 

Messages from staff/board:

 “As we reflect upon the Atlanta shootings one year later, our hearts hurt for the families that are missing their loved ones, the survivors who are recovering from their physical and emotional injuries from the shootings. We know in our hearts, this act exemplified hate towards AAPI women, which continues to play out nationwide.  We continue to be grateful for the community care that we have created locally, nationally, and globally in the wake of a painful moment in our history.  We know we must continue to build our beloved communities alongside our BIPOC allies to create the belonging, dignity, and justice we deserve.  We hope that community healing and continued work towards equity will be the first step in that direction.”  

– Aparna Bhattacharyya, Board member­

“We honor the voices of those who are not heard at these points, especially AAPI’s bodies, minds, souls, which is taken away by hate, sexual objectification, patriarchy, racism, and colonialism. We cherish their healing and justice. We extend our solidarity with Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Muslim, LGBTQ, and other communities, lifting the value of the community’s love and care for each other to fight against gender-based violence and hate.”

– Youngju Ji, CSSP Program Manager

“These incidents go on to prove time and again that you could be a third generation American but based on how you look, you will always be othered. The objectification and fetishization of the AAPI community is nothing new, and our work to end this must go on”

– Sarah Khan, Director of Programs

 “As a native Atlantan, the loss of lives in the Asian community is heartbreaking, and a year later after the March 16 shootings, I still fear for my elderly mother and myself as well as the Asian community at large. We desperately need more attention and education to end hate-based violence toward any ethnic group. I know there is more love and support in our community to strengthen and celebrate our diversity.”

– Sarah Hawk, Board member

“As we hit the one-year anniversary of the Atlanta shootings, our hearts at API-GBV are with the families of the victims and our community. This anniversary is just one of many anniversaries of shootings and violence against our community.  Our hope is for a world that is free of hate and gender-based violence, but to get there we must speak up and unite with our allies to stand up for justice.  API-GBV will always be here to educate, train and provide resources on behalf of our community, and finally we will always stand for survivors of gender-based violence especially when fueled by racism, fetishization and misogyny.”

– Monica Khant, Executive Director

 

[1] In a new report from NAPAWF, nearly 75 percent of AAPI women report experiencing racism and/or discrimination over the past twelve months.

Past Events

Remembrance and Solidarity: API-GBV’s Statement on the One-Year Anniversary of the Atlanta Spa Shootings

Click above to view this statement as a PDF

3/16/2022

On March 16, 2021 eight women and men, among them six Asian massage workers, were killed at spas in the Atlanta area. Though today marks one year since their loss reverberated through AAPI communities and beyond, the loss continues for their families and the community. Since then, more names have been added to the list of lives lost to anti-AAPI hate, as recently as this month in New York City.

These tragedies, while on the extreme end of how racialized and gendered hate manifests against AAPI individuals, are not isolated events, but part of the historical and continuous white supremacy, misogyny, objectification, and ‘othering’ of AAPI and other immigrant communities.[1]

We share pain and outrage with our Black, Latinx, and Indigenous, Muslim, LGBTQ, and other allies, who are, and continue to be left out of justice: Americans who are targeted with hate in their own neighborhoods, immigrants and refugees who are made to feel unwelcome, the missing and murdered Indigenous women whose stories don’t make the headlines. Reinforced by systems and carried out in large and small ways every day, they contribute to an enduring climate of fear.

In this deeply painful time, we feel a mandate to stop and prevent violence of all forms, and we know that the only way forward is in solidarity with all communities affected by it. Even as we grieve, we have been heartened to witness AAPI and other communities coming together during the past year name these killings for what they are – hate – and to ensure they are not shrugged off as disconnected or random incidents. These are the conversations we have been, and will continue to have to lift up the need for all people to feel safe in their homes and communities.

Most importantly, we cannot forget that at the center of the way forward is remembering and honoring the victims who died last March 16th, whose names and stories have become absorbed into the broader struggle for racial justice: swept into history as the faces of the movement to end anti-AAPI hate. Participation in this movement was not a choice that they were able to make, nor their families and friends, whose loss has been the greatest.

We grieve for the mothers, daughters, sisters, husbands, brothers, and humans that were lost. We pledge to hold their names at the center as we continue to fight for safety and justice for all communities.

 

Messages from staff/board:

 “As we reflect upon the Atlanta shootings one year later, our hearts hurt for the families that are missing their loved ones, the survivors who are recovering from their physical and emotional injuries from the shootings. We know in our hearts, this act exemplified hate towards AAPI women, which continues to play out nationwide.  We continue to be grateful for the community care that we have created locally, nationally, and globally in the wake of a painful moment in our history.  We know we must continue to build our beloved communities alongside our BIPOC allies to create the belonging, dignity, and justice we deserve.  We hope that community healing and continued work towards equity will be the first step in that direction.”  

– Aparna Bhattacharyya, Board member­

“We honor the voices of those who are not heard at these points, especially AAPI’s bodies, minds, souls, which is taken away by hate, sexual objectification, patriarchy, racism, and colonialism. We cherish their healing and justice. We extend our solidarity with Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Muslim, LGBTQ, and other communities, lifting the value of the community’s love and care for each other to fight against gender-based violence and hate.”

– Youngju Ji, CSSP Program Manager

“These incidents go on to prove time and again that you could be a third generation American but based on how you look, you will always be othered. The objectification and fetishization of the AAPI community is nothing new, and our work to end this must go on”

– Sarah Khan, Director of Programs

 “As a native Atlantan, the loss of lives in the Asian community is heartbreaking, and a year later after the March 16 shootings, I still fear for my elderly mother and myself as well as the Asian community at large. We desperately need more attention and education to end hate-based violence toward any ethnic group. I know there is more love and support in our community to strengthen and celebrate our diversity.”

– Sarah Hawk, Board member

“As we hit the one-year anniversary of the Atlanta shootings, our hearts at API-GBV are with the families of the victims and our community. This anniversary is just one of many anniversaries of shootings and violence against our community.  Our hope is for a world that is free of hate and gender-based violence, but to get there we must speak up and unite with our allies to stand up for justice.  API-GBV will always be here to educate, train and provide resources on behalf of our community, and finally we will always stand for survivors of gender-based violence especially when fueled by racism, fetishization and misogyny.”

– Monica Khant, Executive Director

 

[1] In a new report from NAPAWF, nearly 75 percent of AAPI women report experiencing racism and/or discrimination over the past twelve months.

Join our team! 4 open positions

Join our team! 4 open positions

API-GBV is growing and expanding! We are excited to open up the following positions. Applications are due March 25, 2022.

Communications Coordinator: Supports digital media and content projects. This position will work in close collaboration with our team to coordinate communications strategies, media relations, social & digital media, and content services. (full time)

People Operations Coordinator: Coordinates a diverse range of essential human resources, benefits and administrative functions that support our programs and internal operations, by pro-actively ensuring day to day operations run efficiently. (part time)

Research and Evaluation Manager: Supports activities and projects to identify and promote effective research and evaluation across multiple issue areas. (full time)

Director of Finance: responsible for providing leadership, direction and management of the organization’s fiscal affairs as they relate to finance/accounting, contract and grants management. This position ensures smooth and timely grant and contract processing and reporting, budget development and monitoring, and compliance with funder requirements and applicable laws. (full time)

 

Advisory Revised Feb 2022: How Will ‘Public Charge’ Proposed Policy Changes Impact Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing a new rule that put longstanding policy about the meaning and application of the “public charge” provisions of immigration law into regulation form. This advisory describes provisions under this new proposed rule and how it will impact immigrant survivors of violence, particularly in light of the pandemic.

Related Resources

By Grace Huang, J.D.

February 2022

Download Advisory
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The Impact of New Proposed Public Charge Rules on Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking, 2022

The Impact of New Proposed Public Charge Rules on Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking, 2022

March 3rd, 2022
9am HST / 11am PST / 1pm CST / 2pm EST (1hr)

The Department of Homeland Security has posted a draft public charge proposed rule to update regulations that guide officials in determining when people seeking entry to or permanent status in the US can be denied, because they are determined to be likely to become a “public charge.” Come join us for a webinar to get an overview of the proposal, to learn about how the proposal impacts immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, and how the experiences of survivors can impact the final rule.

Register here

Related Resources

Presented by Grace Huang,

March 2022

Download Slides
Watch Recording
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The Village: A Podcast with API-GBV

The Village: A Podcast with API-GBV

New! Episode 1 – Intersections to Interactions: Building Culturally-Grounded Responses for Pacific Islander Communities

The Village Podcast features a series of virtual conversations with experts in the public health, anti-gender violence, community response, community development, and adjacent fields aimed at.

Happy Year of the Tiger! Your Lunar New Year support will support our critical programs

Happy Year of the Tiger! Your Lunar New Year support will support our critical programs

Dear Friends,

We hope this email finds you safe and healthy. We also hope you have had an opportunity to joyously welcome in the new Lunar Year!

API-GBV looks forward to settling into a more hopeful YEAR OF THE TIGER, after we have witnessed and felt the collective pain in our Asian American Pacific Islander communities caused by the health and economic upheavals of COVID, and sadly, the resulting anti-Asian racism tied to the pandemic. Despite these seismic hurdles, we know we will thrive in 2022 when we all work together.

Survivors of domestic and sexual violence were pushed to the limits of their resiliency to navigate new dangers during this unprecedented time. In turn, service organizations quickly adapted and steeled themselves for turbulent changes. Along with our direct service partners, API-GBV dug deep into our reserves to transform exhaustive danger and unpredictability into hope and trust as we steadfastly provided policy advocacy, fought for language access, provided technical assistance to programs, and influenced systems to prioritize immigrant needs.

Thank you for your generosity – we would not have been able to sustain our programs during this remarkable period of unrelenting challenges without your past support. We hope you continue partnering with us to create a seat at the table for immigrant survivors and strengthen the capacity of our community to serve them.

Similar to the virtues of the tiger, our anti-violence movement will emerge from 2021 with a renewed sense of steadiness, strength and hope when we all work together. Please join our list-serve to stay updated on how your contributions help our communities and receive exciting agency developments.

We wish you and your beloved community a prosperous, safe and joyous Lunar New Year!

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