Washington State faces a $4.8 billion budget deficit and our community cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. We must engage friends, families, neighbors, and ourselves on issues of education, economic development, and health and human services. If we don’t speak up for ourselves, how can we be sure that someone else will?

As a community organizer, I have had the privilege of talking to many different AAPI communities across the state through a Washington State AAPI Civic Engagement Initiative. From the Pacific Islander community in Pierce County to the Filipino American community in the Yakima Valley, we all agree we’re facing tough times.

The aim of the AAPI Civic Engagement Initiative was to build advocacy skills through hands-on activities, like building public speaking skills and how to meet with a policy decision maker. We helped demystify government and the role it plays in our lives, our communities, and our State—using education as an example to examine how public policy works. The initiative rolled out eleven civic engagement workshops over the course of three months.

Though the initiative has concluded, the time for engaging our communities is now. We need to continue to educate ourselves and together make our communities more than the sum of our parts.

For more information, please contact Heidi Park at heidigopark@gmail.com