Task Force joins NQAPIA Conference in Hawaii

For the past week, Task Force organizers have been helping to bolster the power within in the Queer APIA community. With Senior Field Organizer Bex Ahuja’s leadership, the Task Force teamed up with NQAPIA to train over 125 leaders in the Queer AAPI community. For more than four months Bex Ahuja, Moof Mayeda and Causten Wollerman have collaborated with NQAPIA and local Hawaiian leadership to shape NQAPIA’s yearly leadership summit.

At the summit we focused on skills building the base and power of the Queer AAPI community. The summit began Thursday night with traditional Hawaiian Opening Protocols to open the space and ask our host for welcoming.

For four days participants and faculty built community, addressing pressing issues of inclusion with in their communities and learned core skills to build their organizational power.

Sessions included:

• Story of Self
• Radical Welcome
• Why Build Power
• Issue briefing on immigration, HIV/AIDS, and marriage
• Growing your leadership team through 1 on 1 meetings
• Conflict Resolution
• Team Infrastructure: Bringing order out of chaos
• More Money, More Power! Grassroots fundraising skills
• Trans Allyship
• Asking for Help/ Making Strong Asks

We are particularly proud of the action we took on Saturday. With Moof Mayeda’s guidance, participants and faculty spread across Oahu to ask people to support immigration reform that strengthens all families, protects all workers, preserves civil rights and shows compassion. We gathered over 2000 postcards in support of immigration reform that will be delivered to President Obama and members of congress. For the majority of the participants it was the first time they had gone out to talk to strangers and ask them to take political action an issue that is personally important to them. We believe deeply that with training and support taking actions like these can be transformative experiences for individuals and their community.

We were honored to partner with NQAPIA for this transformative summit. At the The Task Force we work to build the power of the LGBT community from the ground up. Through a project called naming our destiny we explicitly partner with organizations that work with LGBT people of color to build the power and sustainability of their community. To find out more about the Naming our Destiny Project, please contact Task Force Leadership Programs Manager, Causten Rodriguez-Wollerman.

We have enormous gratitude for NQPAIA’s board and staff leadership, the faculty training team, all of the participants and our Hawaiian hosts.