For this year’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, students will be receiving a special visit from Lisa Hasegawa, a woman who has dedicated her career to improving the conditions of APA communities.
On April 8, Hasegawa will be coming to the university, the only major public research university designated as a “minority-serving institution” — a status that Hasegawa had been working on for more than ten years, to give students a look into the power of advocacy. “I am really excited about visiting and talking about what it really takes to get that accomplished and to see what we imagine [come through],” she said.
Hasegawa is the executive director of the National Coalition of the Asian Pacific American Community Development, a national advocacy organization geared towards aiding Asian Pacific American communities across the nation.
Her career path began at University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied Asian American Studies and psychology. She then graduated from Harvard University in 1996, where she studied public health.
From there, her background in AAST and in public health brought her from one end of the country to the other where she catered her interests towards helping low income APAs. She traveled from Washington, D.C. to Oakland, Calif., working with both federal agencies and local health centers.
In 1999, she became the community liaison to the First White House Initiative on APA, an interagency working group who advises the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on initiative activities.
The Asian American Student Union board decided that this year’s keynote speaker should be Hasegawa, whose experiences will serve as encouragement to students to become more involved with APA communities.
“As a board, we decided to focus APAHM on getting students involved in the greater APA community. Hasegawa [and the National CAPACD] work with a lot of grass roots organizations to build and use resources,” said junior Asian American studies major Camden Lee, the vice president of programming for AASU.
As Hasegawa’s journey has shown, it is never too late to become involved. She found her passion for becoming an advocate for APAs shortly after her first job working for the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture as they addressed the issue of uninsured pregnant mothers.
“It was a moving experience to see people talk about their own experiences…that shattered the model minority myth,” said Hasegawa. “It was at that moment that I saw what was possible in the advocacy power of the community.”
Since then, she has continued working with APAs through her position as the executive director of National CAPACD, working on a new project that responds to the national APA foreclosure crisis and unemployment.
The National CAPACD is the first national advocacy coalition, joining over a hundred organizations across the U.S. to focus on meeting the housing and community development needs of APAs. Specifically, they focus on four key areas of community development, namely those dealing with affordable housing, economic development, cultural preservation, and neighborhood revitalization.
Through peer to peer learning, leaderships of APAs, and cooperation with policy makers, the National CAPACD hopes to address the needs for a diverse range of communities, from South to East Asians to Southeast Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
The advocacy role of the National CAPACD in D.C., the first White House initiatives, and the hopes of what the new Obama administration can do for the APAs in the near future are only some of the main topics that Hasegawa will focus on in her speech.
“It is important for students to pay attention because they can really produce change with the local and larger APA communities and with society in general with their involvement,” said Lee.
“The APA community has developed and grown, but we still face discrimination so student voice really does matter in making a difference,” said freshman government and politics major Lois Yeom.
Throughout the weeks prior to the actual event, AASU will be busy getting students to attend.
“[We] plan on attracting students by word of mouth, Facebook, flyers, and outreach to APA organizations and AAST course,” said Lee.
