The Change I Made

Before you continue reading this post, go to my previous two posts, Where Are Their Voting Rights? and Asian American Voting Rights Activists’ POV. My first post, Where Are Their Voting Rights?, talks about the issue with Asian American voting rights and what have been done about it. For example, an issue with Asian American voting rights is language barrier and there are organizations like Asian American United (AAU) that help non-English speaking citizens with their voting registration when it’s election season. In my second post, Asian American Voting Rights Activists’ POV, I wrote about my interview with Xu Lin, one of the board members of Asian American United (AAU) and Wei Chen, the Civil Engagement Coordinator of Asian American United (AAU). I also talked about what I learned from them and how I can play a part in this issue.

There are many things that have been done to help Asian Americans with their voting rights. For example, organizations helped non-English speakers citizens with their voting registration. From my interview with Wei Chen, I learned that engaging young citizens in volunteering with Asian Americans can help with Asian American voting rights because they are informed about what’s going on in their community and they are able to help family members with voting or voting themselves when they pass the age requirement. During the presidential election in 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had their own ways to increase their votes with Asian Americans. Hillary Clinton had her own Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Outreach Director and Donald Trump worked with an Asian Pacific American Advisory Committee. There are studies that shows that the population of Asian American voters has increased during the 2016 election. From the 2012 election to 2016 election, there was a difference of 2 million voters. The UCLA Study for Center for Inequality and Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) predicts that from 2015 to 2040, Asian American votes would grow by 107%. Language barrier isn’t the only issue for Asian American voters, there are others problems like intimidating voters and more. I think that because voting rights for Asian Americans is an issue that can be solve in a day, I think that the ways that are used to fix this issue are effective because looking at the increase of Asian American voters at each election slowly the problem is getting fixed.

For my Agent of Change, I presented to a class of seventh graders at my old school, Folk Arts Cultural Treasures Charter School (FACTS). My original plans for my Agent of Change was not only to present at my old school, but also to volunteer at Asian American United (AAU) to help non-English citizens with their voter registration since on Tuesday, May 15 waas election day. I wasn’t able to volunteer, but at least I was able to inform a young generation of citizens about their voting right since most of the students were Asian Americans and what they can do to help their community. I decide to present at my old school, specifically seventh graders because in the future they would be the next generation to vote and not only they can understand their voting right, but also take the chance to help others around them out. For the first two weeks, I was thinking of other ways or things to do to help out with Asian American voting rights like a meeting or conference arranged to talk about Asian American voting rights or collaborating with an organization that mainly focus on voting rights. On May 9, I went to FACTS and had a present about Asian American voting rights and overall I think the result came out pretty good because I allowed them to understand how important it is for everyone to have a vote and in this case it’s Asian Americans. I think it is effective to make a change to the issue because I was able to spread the message, which allowed more people to understand what’s happening in their society and inspire them to help out with the issue in their own ways.

Here are some of the images of me presenting to the seventh grade class.

Overall I think that the You & The World project is one of the most interesting topics I have ever done because I felt like I grew a lot in this process and learned a lot about the society I am in, especially I got the chance to research something that is meaningful to me. Although, this project takes a lot of patience and hardwork, I think it paid off in the end because I think that I learn a lot about myself and different lessons that may come in handy in the future. What I learned about myself is that I am really realistic and I can help others out more than I can help myself because in this project I noticed that I won’t really believe someone or trust someone easily unless they prove to me that they can be trust. Especially through their writing and the way how they talk. I also noticed that many of the advice I give to people around or my classmates are really realistic and helps them out a lot because of my experience I had. For me, it is like I have to find someone more experienced than I am or more creative than I am to give me advice about something because I am pretty hard on myself and whether it’s an assignment or not I do not want to accomplish something that doesn’t really challenge my limits in specific way. To clarify, I am not saying that if someone advise me to sky diving to conquer my fear of heights, I would do it, but it has to challenge me to try something new and step out of my comfort zone. I think one thing I could have done better is time management for my Agent of Change because I believe that I could have done more than having a presentation. I think there are many things left to make a change in Asian American voting rights since it’s a problem with all fifty states in America, but I believe that the little changes we make now will eventually make a change for Asian Americans.