Abstracts for Bridging the Divide: Strengthening Community Engagement and Partnership
Volume 16, Numbers 1 & 2, Fall 2018-2019
Serving the People in Long Beach, California: Advancing Justice for Southeast Asian Youth through Community University Research Partnerships
By R. Varisa Patraporn
ABSTRACT: Khmer Girl’s in Action is a nonprofit that successfully utilizes community-based participatory research (CBPR) with university partners to create social change for youth in Long Beach, CA. Based on semi-structured interviews and content analysis of news articles, I explore the impact and sustainability of this research work and the research partnerships. Findings highlight impacts such as youth empowerment, heightened awareness around community needs, policy change, and CBPR curriculum improvements in the field as impacts. Sustainability requires integrating research into program funding, utilizing a tailored training curriculum, building on community members prior relation- ships, and selecting partners that share common goals, levels of commitment, and flexibility. As funders demand more data to justify community needs, understanding more examples of such work in the Asian American community will be useful for informing future partnerships.
Sustaining University-Community Partnerships in Indigenous Communities: Five Lessons from Papakoleam
By Robert Agres, Adrienne Dillard, Kamuela Joseph Nui Enos, Brent Kakesako, B. Puni Kekauoha, Susan Nakaoka, and Karen Umemoto
ABSTRACT: This resource paper draws lessons from a twenty-year partnership between the Native Hawaiian community of Papakōlea, the Hawai‘i Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development, and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai‘i. Key players and co-authors describe five principles for sustained partnerships: (1) building partnerships based upon community values with potential for long-term commitments; (2) privileging indigenous ways of knowing; (3) creating a culture of learning together as a co-learning community; (4) fostering reciprocity and compassion in nurturing relationships; and (5) utilizing empowering methodologies and capacity-building strategies.
Theorizing a Sustainable-Holistic-Interconnected-Partnership Development Model with Feminist, Activist Lenses: Best Practices from a Community-University Service-Learning Partnership in Asian American Studies
By Jennifer A. Yee and Ashley E. Cheri
ABSTRACT: Mindfully engaging with one another on collaborative projects and relationship building is critical for sustaining partnerships of trust and reciprocity between community-based organizations (CBOs) and institutions of higher education. This resource paper presents the Sustainable-Holistic-Interconnected-Partnership (SHIP) Development Model based on a study theorizing the organizational evolution of the ten- year community-university service-learning partnership between the Youth Education Program of the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance and the Asian American Studies Program at California State University, Fullerton. The authors conducted a self- study intersecting their lenses as feminist activists of color and their use of qualitative methods. They found that they sustained their partnership by intentionally grounding their norms and practice in the values of democracy, equity, social justice, and liberation. The SHIP model has diverse implications for community-university partnerships and the fields of Asian American studies (AAS) and service learning.
Let’s Get Along: Strengthening Academic-Nonprofit Partnerships in Research
By C. Aujean Lee and R. Varisa Patraporn
ABSTRACT: There have been a growing number of partnerships between universities and nonprofits to conduct community-based research to understand important racial group disparities and develop community capacity. However, these relationships can be unbalanced and fraught with challenges. This resource paper offers a discussion of seven considerations that can assist university researchers in developing accountable and equitable partnerships. We also provide suggestions on how these steps may vary for Asian American and Pacific Islander groups and how to create mutually beneficial agreements that respect both parties and their goals.
Serve the People! Asian American Studies at Fifty: Empowerment and Critical Community Service Learning at San Francisco State University
By Eric Mar, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Russell Jeung, Philip Nguyen, Jensine Carreon, and Wei Ming Dariotis
ABSTRACT: This essay reflects on five decades of growth of the nation’s first Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University (SFSU AAS), focusing on its primary commitment to community empowerment and critical “community service learning” (CSL) and also highlighting past and present struggles, challenges, and innovations. This collectively written analysis summarizes SFSU AAS departmental approaches to CSL and community-based participatory research and highlights two case studies: (1) refugees from Burma community health needs research and advocacy in Oakland and (2) the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. We conclude by describing how we are applying our model and building support for critical CSL and argue that AAS and ethnic studies must reclaim CSL from the dominant “charity-based” model or risk losing our social justice orientation and commitment to empowerment and self-determination for our communities.
Incorporating Community Engagement into Asian American Studies Curriculum Reform
By Emily Le and Sheila Sy
ABSTRACT: This article examines the assessment of the UCLA Asian American studies program and resulting curriculum reform that was put into effect as of Fall 2013. The essay will discuss the context leading up to the 2013 curriculum reform, including the 2011 UCLA Asian American Studies Curriculum Assessment Project, the departmental curriculum restructure process, the most recent Academic Senate program review, and initial response to the community engagement courses. This serves as a case study of curriculum reform that successfully addressed the needs of the students, met Academic Senate requirements, and returned the department to the original principle of service through community engagement and partnerships.
Navigating Ethnic Hierarchies in Community-Academic Partnerships: A Case Study on Koreatown Community Politics
By Angie Y. Chung, Carolyn Choi, and Johng Ho Song
ABSTRACT: Based on the experiences of a Koreatown scholar, the executive director of a Koreatown nonprofit, and a longtime resident student, the article advocates for greater attention to the complex and dynamic power structures of ethnic enclaves in community-academic partnerships. We discuss the changing landscapes of Koreatown as the global nexus of the Pacific Rim economy, the city of Los Angeles’s urban redevelopment plans, and growing diversity and inequality. Programs that aim to engage effectively with ethnic communities must reassess how knowledge is produced and conveyed, how we structure partnerships within stratified communities, and how to grow from issue-based partnerships to broader communities of interest.
Building Gardens: Food Justice, Community Engagement, and Gardens for the Asian Pacific Islander Community in the San Gabriel Valley
By Juily Phun and Elise Dang
ABSTRACT: Culturally relevant gardens can significantly benefit regions like the San Gabriel Valley, which contain nearly a third of Asian Americans who are low income, by providing organically grown produce for students (Asian Americans Advancing Justice, 2018). This article focuses on one service-learning program: Asian/Asian American Studies 3510 Food Justice, the Body, and the Environment in the API Community at Cal State LA that works with schools throughout the San Gabriel Valley to build culturally relevant produce gardens. While our work focuses on building gardens and considerations of food justice, one of the greatest barriers to community-university partnerships is the lack of procedural transparency embedded within the university structure and culture. The heart of this essay is this process.
Asian American Studies and the Fight for Worker Justice
By Kim Geron, Loan Thi Dao, Tracy Lai, and Kent Wong
ABSTRACT: This essay explores higher education–labor partnerships in the contemporary era between Asian American Studies (AAS), the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), and AAS community partnerships. With the intensified attacks on workers, unions, and Asian American, Pacific Islander, and other communities of color, the importance of higher education and labor and community partnerships will be a valuable resource to expand critical research and participatory education. These partnerships embody the community studies’ roots of AAS. Using three case studies, this essay highlights these partnerships and concludes with a discussion of the opportunities and challenges students can experience when working in labor union spaces and recommendations for building university-labor partnerships.
Pin@y Educational PARtnerships: Ethnic Studies Students, Teachers and Leaders as Scholar Activists
By Arlene Sudaria Daus-Magbual, Roderick Daus-Magbual, and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales
ABSTRACT: Although Filipinas/os/xs was (and continues to be) one of the fast- est-growing populations in the United States, especially in San Francisco Bay Area, when Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) started in 2001, there were limited services, curriculum, and research on Filipinas/os/xs at both the college and K–12 levels (Tintiangco-Cubales, Daus-Magbual, and Daus-Magbual, 2010). This resource essay focuses on the PEP’s development of Participatory Action Research (PAR) projects that were built through the direct result of university-school-community partnerships. We cover three innovative research methods known as Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), Teacher Participatory Action Research (TPAR), and Leadership Participatory Action Research (LPAR). YPAR, TPAR, and LPAR are informed by critical pedagogy, critical inquiry, and community responsive pedagogy (Daus-Magbual and Tintiangco-Cubales, 2016; Freire, 1970; Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2016). Building on this AAPI Nexus issue’s theme, this essay demonstrates engaged social justice research across the educational pipeline and the power of collaboration between universities, schools, and communities. Through PEP’s PAR projects, we offer ways that students, educators, and leaders can work together to- ward transformative change in schools and communities.