P.I.A. project post from APIASF blog

Last week we responded to a New York Times article that erroneously labeled Pacific Islanders as Asian. In our post, I mentioned that while the P.I.A. project is opposed to misclassifying Pacific Islanders as an Asian subgroup, we appreciate that there are many  coalition groups that serve both Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who are doing good work.  These groups go by different acronyms, from "AAPI" (Asian American and Pacific Islander), "API" (Asian and Pacific Islander) or "APA" (Asian and Pacific American). The acronym isn't really important -- what's important is that they serve and engage both of the groups they claim to advocate for -- both 1.) Asian Americans and 2.) Pacific Islander Americans.

One AAPI group we've enjoyed working with is the Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF).

I'd heard about APIASF about a decade ago when I came to Washington as an intern, but it wasn't until a year ago that I really go to know the organization.  That change happened thanks to Phong Luu, APIASF's outreach specialist.  Phong came across our blog, and took the time to reach out to us so he could learn more about the P.I.A. project's efforts to increase higher educational opportunities for Pacific Islanders.

More recently, I was invited to be a regular contributor to APIASF's blog, re/present.  This week, I blogged about the Pacific Islander Access project's success in working with two forward thinking underrepresented minority scholarships -- the HBCU Minority Scholarship and the Actuarial Diversity Scholarship -- to include Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in their definition of "underrepresented minority."

You can read that post by clicking here: LINK

Kawika