Apic Spokane

Health and Wellness: Our health and wellness program focuses primarily on mental health for Asians and Asian Americans (A/AA) and on conducting the Spokane area's first ever Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) for the A/AA community. We host monthly Boba Buddies events for K-12 A/AA students to learn about traditions and celebrations from across the many regions of Asia. These attract a consistent community of about 15 A/AA kids each session. We also acilitated healing circles, produced an Asian American Heritage Month series related to healing and mental health, and hosted an Asian therapist hybrid workshop to share about overcoming intergenerational trauma. All of these events were free and open to the public and served about 120 people. See Schedule O for more information.

Education: Our education programming included two important opportunities to share knowledge with the larger Spokane community. We held a community forum with over people in attendance to share what our vision of collective liberation is. Our panel included board members, staff, and college students. We also put together a portrait and essay exhibit that gave Asians and Asian Americans in Spokane a chance to share their lived experiences. This exhibit taught people in our community the power of storytelling and taught the greater public about the diversity of identities and experiences that makes up the Asian/Asian American community. These opportunities together reached almost 100 people.

Civic Engagement: Our team proudly served on the Justice Not Jails campaign that successfully defeated Measure 1, ensuring that public money did not go towards building a new jail in Spokane County. We coordinated with the APIC Washington statewide coalition to bring members of the Spokane A/AA community to Olympia to speak with our state lawmakers during AANHPI Lobby Day. In collaboration with several partner organizations, we hosted the Vote for Survival Festival, a music festival that brought hundreds of people together to register to vote, get excited about voting, get their COVID and flu shots at a vaccine clinic, and learn from our partners why voting is so important.