Adventure Time with KC

As part of the art exhibit that the youth in AYA are doing this summer, we went out to the community today to ask people in New York what they thought of police violence, violence against women, and/or violence against LGBTQ members. Some of the youth spent a lot of time planning the script and the action details. We finally got our groups together and went out today to talk to people. My group went to Union Square. It was a nice sunny day after the rain in the morning. There weren't a lot of youth and youth of color during that time of the day.  We spotted a couple of people wearing a pink vest that seems to be from some sort of NGO working on girl's rights, and we thought, hey, they must have something to say about gender-based violence, right? Let's ask one of them. We approached one of the young men and it was a truly uncomfortable experience that we should've walked away from, no, I should've led them to walk away from, as soon as we realized how uncomfo...

Due to some scheduling changes, the AYA session tomorrow needs a workshop, so I'm working on the previously postponed Patriarchy workshop. Except this time we are focusing in on street harassment as a way to talk about patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia. So I'm looking up videos made by women that talk about street harassment, and a lot of videos have been made on this issue by white women. Which is awesome, but since we are trying to fight for racial social economic and gender justice, and the youth relate better to their own identities, I decided to look for Asian women speaking out against street harassment. During the retreat, we did an activity called Life Maps, where we have to illustrate our life journey and pin point moments that inspired us to fight for justice and join CAAAV or AYA. I focused in on my experiences with street harassment growing up, and how sometimes the harassment would be mixed in with other elements of oppressing, including my race and ethni...

Tomorrow is the retreat!!! Ruben and I have been working on the retreat details for this weekend. I stayed late today to help out. Even though there's a lot to be done, it seems like a lot has been prepared, so things should run smoothly tomorrow. We have about 6 workshops slated for the weekend, along with teambuilding and fun activities planned. I finished planning for the obstacle course and scavenger hunt, thanks to Ruben and Umma, one of the youth, who helped me look for things in the office that we can bring to the retreat and hide in the great nature. Ruben and I also worked with Anj on the gender and sexuality workshop. We were going to do a patriarchy workshop but it is quite early on in the summer program and the youth probably would do better with some more foundational stuff on gender and sexuality, so we started a new workshop from scratch. It was kinda hard trying to find engaging ways to teach definitions about many umbrella terms, but I think we have some good i...

It's been a week or so since I started working on the patriarchy workshop, and I can feel myself getting lost in it. Are the materials interesting? Am I involving the youth enough in this segment? Is this too complex? How can I make it more interactive? Is this going to take too long? A few days ago, my host mom from Nepal, the amazing badass woman who has taken care of refugees and me and my classmate, who hosts a radio talk show about sex and the raunchy things, shared a blog post from her friend, Jemima, who is an amazing country coordinator, an insightful and heartwarming woman. I first read Jemima's writings when the avalanche happened on Mt. Everest, an unfortunate event that hit close to home for her since she is a Sherpa. Jemima's writings were a breath of fresh air, full of sensory details but not in an overdone way, full of dignity and conviction but not in a bitter way that sours the reading experience. This time, Jemima wrote about what it is like to live ...

After interviews are over, the AYA team is in full gear to develop workshops and flesh out the summer program's schedule. We've had more meetings since then to make sure we are on track and to plan out what the summer looks like. We had to really think to fit different workshops and skills trainings in as well as the extra activities we want to do. It's going to be a packed summer! It's not finalized yet since the youth leaders will get to look at it and give feedback as well. Watch out summer, we are doing a lot every time we meet! I'm responsible for developing four workshops, and I'm pretty excited about them. One is on ableism and the other is on environmental justice. These two are issues that I do not know a lot about but I'm interested in and I think they're issues that deserve to be on the table. Researching for curriculum development materials has definitely taught me a lot about these topics, though. My favorite workshop and biggest priorit...