Asian Immigrant Women Advocates

Leadership Programs: Leadership programs at AIWA include Leadership Development Trainings, committee involvement, public speaking engagements, and intensive leadership opportunities for youths and women to build their skills and confidence, while reinvesting their collective efforts back into the low-income immigrant and other disadvantaged communities. In 2022, women peer leaders trained 200 other workers workplace fire safety. They also held training on anti-Asian hate, Black Lives Matter, and Asian-Black solidarity to build solidarity with blacks and other disadvantaged in order to challenge the current racist sentiments and policies. Women leaders continued organizing themselves in their Senior Trainers Committee. At their monthly meetings, they honed their skills for training new immigrant women workers, developed their ideas for Chinatown safety, and discussed and evaluated AIWA programs. Youth leaders, who cultivated their knowledge and leadership skills at their weekly meetings, conducted ten-week leadership sessions to train new immigrant youths regarding civil rights issues affecting them. The topics of their curricular encompass language justice, patriarchy, homophobia, Asian immigration history, community organizing. The leaders also organized a weekend-long retreat in April with the new cohort of immigrant youths.

Civic Engagement Activities: Civic engagement projects address the surveyed needs of low-income immigrant women and youth. Activities include issue identification and education, self-advocacy, and networking with other organizations. Continuing from their last years endeavors, AIWA Homecare Worker Committee members persisted their concerns for retirement benefits for Alameda County homecare workers. But they also focused on demanding Alameda County In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) to institute a Chinese hotline for its Chinese speaking employees, whose number reaches several thousands. The workers felt that this was an urgent matter because they could not get necessary information about their health insurance and work-related issues, such as filling out their timesheets, due to language barriers. They organized a petition drive and are in the process of negotiating with IHSS for their needs and demands.As a response to the escalation of Anti-Asian hate crimes and violence, AIWA women leaders advanced their campaign to discourage cash transactions among Chinatown businesses which would reduce robbery and make Oakland Chinatown safer and welcoming. While in-person events and rallies had subsided during the COVID19 pandemic, AIWA youths participated in in-person events in solidarity with broader communities this year: They volunteered at the AAPI Heritage Month celebration in Chinatown, Oakland and joined a rally and march with Fast food chain restaurant workers to advocate fair wages and better work conditions.

Educational Programs: Educational programs include Workplace Literacy classes, thematic workshops for adults, and after school general meetings, and workshops for youth. In 2022, Workplace Literacy classes were held for two semesters, in which participants practiced how to talk about health and safety issues, including how to fill out a COVID-19 time-off request form. They also learned the terms that would help the campaign efforts of Chinese-speaking homecare workers in Alameda County to expand language access. For this years workplace health and safety training, they focused on how to recognize and prevent fire hazards in different workplace settings, especially where kitchens are a main component of the workplace and flammable chemicals are frequently used. They also received information about emergency plans and fire drills. AIWA Nepali leaders continued holding weekly community support groups to assess community needs and organized workshops providing essential information about health and safety, vaccines, stress management, domestic violence, unemployment insurance, and rental assistance.