Nearly 1,000 Asian American business leaders and business leaders across the country have pledged to donate $ 10 million to aid the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities (AAPI) amid a national outcry against anti-Asian violence.
Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, Debby Soo, CEO of OpenTable, and Sheila Marcelo, founder of Care.com, are among the directors who have pledged to collectively raise $ 10 million over the course of a year. Donate dollars. The group will work with the Asian Pacific Fund to support community-level organizations including Stop AAPI Hate, AAPI Women Lead, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and the Association for Asian American Studies.
“As a proud Asian American, it is daunting to see the hatred and violence against our community,” Zooms Yuan told CNBC Make It in a statement. “Racism in any form is unacceptable and I firmly believe that it is important to give my voice and stand up with my colleagues, friends and family who are suffering during this time.”
In addition to providing financial support for justice issues, company leaders have pledged to support Asian employees, for example through the creation and funding of AAPI employee resource groups and through better representation in their companies, such as better reporting on the diversity of Asian Americans, a term which includes up to 19 groups of origin at all levels of your organization.
The coalition of business leaders posted a paid ad in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday to announce its commitment and asking allies in American businesses to do more to support their AAPI workforce.
“Asian-American business leaders in our community are committed to change,” the open letter said. “The change needed requires a national awakening and dialogue involving leaders from all communities to reverse generations of systemic biases and racism. We are business leaders. We can help bring about change.”
More than 2,800 Asian American business leaders and their allies have since signed the pledge.
Researchers say incidents of hate against AAPIs increased over the course of the pandemic, in part due to racist characterizations of the coronavirus. Stop AAPI Hate said it received 3,795 self-reports of anti-Asian hate incidents between March 2020 and March 2021. Scientists add that the recent string of anti-Asian racism is part of a long history of xenophobia and scapegoat by Asians in the United States
Anti-Asian racism and violence came to the fore after the March 16 shootings in the Atlanta area that killed eight people, including six Asian women. In the two weeks since then, nearly 30 philanthropic donors have pledged approximately $ 25.8 million to AAPI justice groups or causes. This is based on preliminary analysis shared by philanthropy research group Candid with The Associated Press. By comparison, US $ 595,000 had been tied up this year prior to the attacks, and US $ 54 million was donated to AAPI throughout 2020, the AP reports.
Stakeholders say they often see donations spike after high profile events, but the sustainability of the financial support remains to be seen.
“Typically, emergency donors are not sustainable donors,” said Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the national chapter of the NAPAWF. “You are generous at the moment and then move on.”
“Our challenge, not only in collecting donations, but also in our programmatic work, is to keep the interest in our cause high,” Choimorrow told the AP. “This is the first time women from Asia, America and the Pacific have been heard and we don’t want to give up on that megaphone.”
The White House on Tuesday announced several initiatives to combat anti-Asian violence, including the reinstatement and expansion of the White House’s AAPI initiative, improving data-gathering efforts to study national hate crime statistics, and funding training for state and local law enforcement agencies to include a Promote accurate reporting of hate crimes.
In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services will allocate $ 49.5 million to programs that aid AAPI domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, and the National Science Foundation will allocate $ 33 million to prejudice and sexual assault research Issuing xenophobia.
Check:
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