WHY SPONSOR AAU?

About Asian Americans United

Founded in 1985, AAU has worked in Philadelphia’s Asian American communities and in broader multiracial coalitions around quality education, youth leadership, anti-Asian violence, immigrant rights, and folk arts and cultural maintenance.

AAU’s past accomplishments include:

1. initiating and monitoring the settlement of a lawsuit with the School District of Philadelphia to improve services to immigrant students (1986);
2. developing the leadership of hundreds of youth through the Summer Community Youth Leadership Project and Asian American Youth Workshop;
3. creating the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, the largest one-day event in Chinatown (1995);
4. founding the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School – FACTS (2005); and
5. leading citywide efforts to promote community revitalization in Chinatown, including the successful no stadium and no casino campaigns. (2000-present).

Current activities and campaigns include:

1. working with Asian American students at South Philadelphia High School to improve school climate issues so that no student or parent has to worry about their safety; and
2. 2) greening Chinatown. AAU youth have surveyed the area around FACTS, succeeded in getting a lot next to their school cleaned up and the fence fixed, and have begun converting this vacant lot into a garden.

Awards

• Tenants’ Action Group of Philadelphia Community Catalyst (1991)
• The Philadelphia Foundation’s Williams Award for Organizational Excellence (1995)
• Harry H. Dow Memorial Legal Assistance Fund’s Justice In Action Award (2001)
• Chinese Benevolent Association of Greater Philadelphia (2002)
• Philadelphia Inquirers Citizen of the Year Award to AAU Board Member Helen Gym (2007)

Bread and Roses Community Fund’s 30 for 30 Tribute to Change to AAU Executive Director Ellen Somekawa (2008)

Media Coverage

• Philadelphia Inquirer
• Philadelphia Daily News
• Philadelphia Magazine
• Philadelphia City Paper
• Philadelphia Weekly
• KYW 1060
• NBC – Philadelphia
• Fox News
• ABC News – Philadelphia
• CBS News – Philadelphia
• Al Dia
• Associated Press
• CNN
• National Public Radio
• Washington Post

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