Since 2007, APIAVote and
our partners in 28 states have worked tirelessly to engage and
empower our Asian and Pacific Islander communities to become
civically engaged and heard from city hall to the White House. The
high water mark our electorate made in 2020 and again in the local
and state races in ‘21 were dividends paid on over the years of
investments we made in community outreach, educating and mobilizing
the electorate, and supporting our partner network.
This year, we continued to build the political power we seeded in
2020. We would like to highlight some of our accomplishments from
this year:
Through our Norman Y. Mineta Leadership Institute, we trained
community members across 12 states, giving them the leadership
training, tools and know-how to effectively participate in this
year’s redistricting process that empowered AAPIs to have their say
in how they should be represented in states like Texas, Arizona,
North Carolina, and New Jersey.
To encourage our communities to get vaccinated and boosted against
COVID-19, we trained a team of volunteers and contacted over 215,
240 (so far!) across the country through text banking. We also
disseminated multilingual information on COVID-19 and vaccines
through social media campaigns and directed users to our web
resources, where they got to better understand the importance of
COVID-19 vaccines, and learn how to get one!
We worked with our partner network to empower AAPIs to vote in the
2021 local and state-wide elections, reinforcing a voting habit.
Together with our partners we connected with tens of thousands of
AAPI households through our translated mailers and text and phone
banking. Our voter outreach also resulted in an increased number of
calls received through our 1-888-API-VOTE hotline, where voters can
get assistance and have questions answered about voting and the
elections in the language they are most comfortable with. We
strengthened our disinformation monitoring around voting rights, our
democracy, and problematic narratives within or about AAPI
communities. Our professionalized monitoring is arming our partners
with the information to fight back against false and poor
information.
We continued to directly invest in our partner network by
subgranting $180,000 to 11 community partners, a significant portion
of which offset the cost of building program infrastructure to
engage with the redistricting process in their respective states.
We look forward to continuing working with our partners and
supporters in 2022 to advance our vision in creating a world that is
inclusive, fair, and collaborative, and where Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders are self-determined, empowered and engaged!
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CHRISTINE CHEN
Christine Chen is a co-Founder and Executive Director of Asian
Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote), one of the most trusted
national, nonpartisan organizations. APIAVote’s mission is to work
with local and state community based organizations (CBOs) to
mobilize Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in
electoral and civic engagement. Since 2007, APIAVote has been
building power in AAPI communities by investing in their capacity
and infrastructure to mobilize voters. This investment, as well as,
proactively training and resourcing community leaders across the
country, paid off in the 2020 election cycle and Census. Under
Chen’s leadership, APIAVote strengthened and expanded APIAVote's
partners into 28 states and made two historical milestones;
attracted, then candidate Joe Biden to speak directly to the AAPI
electorate, a first in history for a Presidential nominee, and
second, contributed to the groundwork that led to the highest AAPI
voter turnout in history.
Chen has been a champion for the empowerment of AAPI communities
from the start of her career. Moving to Washington, DC, from Ohio,
she took on organizing and leadership roles at the Organization of
Chinese Americans (OCA), and started a consulting firm, Strategic
Alliances USA which was built on her broad and deep pool of
relationships and skills in the AAPI community and in government.
Chen’s firm included clients such as the Linsanity documentary,
Comcast, and USDA to coordinate their outreach to Hmong farmers in
Arkansas. While serving as Executive Director of OCA National from
2001 to 2006, Chen served as a member of the executive committee of
the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, founding member
of APIA Scholars, and served on numerous boards including the
National Council of Asian Pacific Americans and Demos Board of
Trustees. She currently serves on the Kennedy Center Community
Advisory Board and the Center for Asian American Media.
Position Executive Director |
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