The goal of the Program Department is through empowerment, education and leadership development, to create programs that engage and involve youth and others in effecting positive social change.

Our Current Programs

Project: Community:

The purpose of Project: Community! is to develop and empower the youth's voice in Little Tokyo. Through a series of interactive sessions, high school participants will gain an understanding of identity as well as the importance of preservation of the Japanese American community.

Each session will gather facilitators and speakers from various parts of the community to conduct interactive workshops focused on specific topics ranging from identity, to the power of place, to grassroots organizing on a youth level.

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This program is generously supported by:

Bridging Communities:

The goal of the Bridging Communities Program is to create awareness, dialogue and ultimately activism from Japanese American and Muslim American youth through a series of interactive sessions including topics such as: identity, culture, religion, civil rights, community history, advocacy, and community service.

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Check out the Blog for the 2010 Bridging Communities Program!

Mobilize for Policy:

The Mobilize for Policy program is one of JACL’s signature youth leadership programs aimed at connecting student leaders/organizers with 1) students from other campuses who are doing similar work, as well as 2) connecting those students to a larger context of issues affecting the Asian and Pacific Islander community. JACL hopes to increase the effectiveness of local on-campus education and advocacy as well as broadening the scope of student advocacy to connect to a larger array of nonprofit advocacy.

This year our students within two major frameworks including: access to higher education and immigration reform. Understanding that the Asian and Pacific Islander community, as well as other communities of color encounter major barriers educational attainment, our students will work on-campus, as well as state-wide in order to address the need for increased ethnic and socio-economic diversity on campus. In addition, many Asian Pacific Islander students are very familiar with the crisis that currently exists with the current US Immigration system. Our students will work to educate and organize for a path to citizenship and a reformed system of immigration for our community members.

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Nikkei Student Leaders Community Organizing Project:

The Nikkei Student Leader Community Organizing Project is meant to organize students involved in on-campus Nikkei Student Groups for the purpose of connecting with, educating and advocating around major Little Tokyo Community issues. This project was created as a continuation for Project: Community as well as a new approach to connecting collegiate student leaders into Japanese American community organizations.

Our Programs in 2008-2009

Mobilize for Policy Program

For many people, their time spent in college is the first time they discover their true passions.  It is also their first opportunity to actively pursue these passions. Public policy attracts many people because of its relevance in the community and its dependence on public involvement. For those that found they are interested in policy activism, JACL PSW created a program for youth to become active participants in pushing policy changes. This program, named Mobilize for Policy, was aimed at college students who found they were passionate about getting involved in the political process.

The program participants assembled from several colleges throughout California such as UCLA, USC, Pomona, LMU, and Scripps.  Spanning a five month period the program went beyond teaching about public policy in the Asian American community—it gave participants the opportunity to actively participate in the process of pushing policy forward. 

Hate crimes awareness, Proposition 8, health reform, immigration reform, and gentrification in communities were the main topics examined during Mobilize for Policy.  These topics were chosen because they deal with current public policy issues so that participants were learning about issues that are relevant to today.  There were also other organizations that participated in the workshops like the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) and the Asian Pacific American Legislative Staff Network (APALS).  JACL PSW dug deeper with the issues covered in Mobilize for Policy, matching topics with the actual interests of progressive youth today. 

The 16 students that participated in the program are passionate individuals who were able to complete the program by educating their peers, calling senators regarding legislation, and by sitting in on a budget hearing for the state.  Like Project: Community! Mobilize for Policy acts as a way for youth to learn and get involved in the community.

Project Community

Community, identity, activism: these are certain lessons that go beyond the high school classroom.  Recognizing the importance of youth participation in the community allowed JACL PSW to launch its second annual Project: Community! program. This program works to pick up where classrooms leave off and teach youth about important themes that get them involved in the community.  Project Community teaches youth to be empowered and gives them a path to become involved in the community.

Each year, 15 high school students are chosen for this program and meet once a week for nine weeks during the summer.  During this time, participants are introduced to various topics by listening to outside speakers, going on tours, and experiencing events in the community first hand. 

In its second year, Project: Community! covered issues specific to Little Tokyo and the Japanese American Community.  Participants went on walking tours of Little Tokyo to learn about its history and development.  Despite this concentration on Japanese American issues, Project: Community branched out to other issues in civil rights and policy that broadly affect the Asian American and Pacific Islander community by holding workshops on immigration issues and hate crimes prevention.  These workshops were held to educate participants about the past and the present, the Japanese American community and other communities. 
The eight workshops concluded with the participants creating works of art reflecting what they learned about the community and themselves.  The artwork ranged from abstractly recounting Japanese American history touching on events like Japanese internment during WWII and redress to showing an individual with its arm raised while barbed wire stands in the background.  This artwork was displayed in a showcase put on by JACL PSW called Culmination in August 2009.  During the event students were able to talk about their art and their experiences in the program to other community leaders. 

By holding Project: Community! for youth, JACL PSW hopes to bring in a new generation of active participants to the community who are aware of their identity and are eager to get involved.  Project: Community! allows youth to empower their voice in the community.

Bridging Communities Program

In the Spring of 2009, twenty-four high school aged Japanese American and Muslim American youths from all over Orange County and Los Angeles County in Southern California, joined together to participate in the Bridging Communities Program.  The program, sponsored by the Japanese American Citizens League – Pacific Southwest District, Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, sought to build solidarity and compassion between both communities through education and empowerment of their youth. 

Since the heightened hostilities, discrimination, and civil rights infringements that Muslim American communities faced in the U.S. throughout the past decade, Japanese American camp veterans were able to reflect back on their own experiences only sixty years earlier and empathize with the hardships that Muslim American communities face today.

The program boasted five day long sessions where participants engaged in workshops ranging from ethnic identity to activism and visited locations such as the Islamic Center of Irvine, the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, and Manzanar War Relocation Center. 

The first workshop in Session One entitled “360 Degrees of Identity”, participants drew a journey map detailing the most important events, people, and things in their lives.  One participant was able to express his interests visually, helping him to understand the depth of what his identity meant to him.  “Being a Muslim American means almost everything to me.  I was raised as a Muslim, and almost every aspect of my life goes through Islam – what I do, eat, how I act – it just all plays a very big role in my life, and I honestly can’t imagine myself without it,” he stated.  

The program also provided an opportunity for participants to meet and chat with college-aged and other community activists.  “Volunteering can mean different things depending on how others look at it,” says another participant.  “For me, volunteering in today’s society not only helps others but it also helps me learn more about the world and myself. When we reach out to others and take the time to learn, we feel good about what we do without expecting anything in return.  When I volunteer, I learn about cultural differences and similarities which keep my mind open for ideas and opinions.”