Our Campaigns

AYPAL practices political education, leadership development, and arts activism with youth in Oakland to produce youth led campaigns for school and neighborhood transformation. For the past several years AYPAL youth have been leading a #WeHere campaign, referring to challenging stereotypes about Asian Americans, while also fighting against displacement and gentrification as long time residents of a changing Oakland. #WeHere

60%

of Southeast Asian youth

have never attended college of any kind (CARE, 2011). AYPAL has been a leader in addressing root cause data policies to increase the visibility of underrepresented youth in schools in an effort to improve support services for our communities. Learn More

2X

Rent Has Doubled in the Last Five years in oakland

(SFBT, 2015). AYPAL youth are leaders in challenging displacement and gentrification in Oakland, including creating Oakland’s first platform against gentrification along with Urban Peace Movement. Sign the platform today!

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45+

Asian American and Pacific Islander

ethnicities are enrolled in Oakland schools (OUSD APISA, 2019). AYPAL youth in partnership with the Oakland Unified School District, passed and implemented a historic Disaggregated Data Policy; which is the first of it’s kind to include better data for API youth, as well as Latinx, and African immigrant students.

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Our History & Programs

AYPAL started in 1998 in response to increasing gang activity, truancy, and substance abuse issues among low-income Asian and Pacific Islander (API) youth.  The project was also formed to address the marginalization of API youth voices in the burgeoning Bay Area youth movement. Continue to learn more about our history and programs.

Political Education

AYPAL believes that education is a right, that having access to quality education that is age and culturally relevant, is essential to the fight for our liberation. Given the lack of this kind of education within our public schools, until conditions change, AYPAL youth and staff continue to generate peer led workshops using popular education* models offered twice a week after school, free to anyone who attends. These workshops are often how youth get involved in AYPAL as community leaders.     

*Popular education is education as a practice (or praxis) of freedom. It is an approach to education where participants engage each other and the educator as co-learners to critically reflect on the issues in their community and then take action to change them.
 

Arts Activism

Cultural Arts Activism is power building. The more our youth know about our communities’ roots, traditions, and histories, the more powerful they become. AYPAL youth put on two community art events a year in collaboration with local artists of color. In the winter, the FOB: Fresh Off the Block Youth Art Show showcases the voice and narrative of API youth in Oakland through visual arts, videography, and fashion. In the spring during API Heritage Month, the AYPAL May Arts Festival brings community together in public spaces threatened by gentrification and displacement around traditional cultural dances, guerilla theatre, spoken word, and murals. Each event integrates AYPAL’s political campaign work while uplifting youth voice through art and culture.

Leadership Development

Youth are the hopeful, creative, and courageous leaders that we need to follow in order to transform society. AYPAL youth holds space for youth to practice and grow their leadership in partnership with adult allies through culturally relevant skills building, collective decision making, and prioritizing youth voice both internally and externally. Youth engage in civic life at the school, city, state, and often national level through our work as an essential part of their leadership development experience in AYPAL. Our leadership pipeline of youth member, youth intern, and youth campaign organizer provides appropriate avenues for leadership development through structured and youth centered activities and experiences.
 

February 2016

“Spaces like AYPAL, that I’m representing today, they saved my life, I would have been out here on the streets not doing anything. I probably would have gotten myself in trouble.”

Jason Le, Former AYPAL Youth / Read Full Article at Oakland North

Get Involved

We ♥ and thrive off community contributions. All donations are tax-deductible. Thank you so much!

To Donate Online

Please visit: mightycause.com/organization/Aypal and make sure to dedicate your donation to “AYPAL”.