Asian American Organizing Project

Beginning 2016, Asian American Organizing Project (AAOP) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded to empower young Asian Minnesotans prioritizing LGBTQ+ and women/femme identified to create systems change for an equitable, conscious, and just society. Through a gender justice and critical cultural lens, AAOP addresses issues impacting our young Asian Minnesotan communities through youth participatory action research, grassroots organizing and canvassing, and narrative shift to co-create community change.

NIRH supported the Asian American Organizing Project’s Gender Justice Program, which works to build the next generation of young Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American (APIDA) gender and reproductive justice leaders, organizers, and socially conscious community members. Together through that program, we focused on creating a multi-method research project to measure the knowledge and experience that the APIDA community in the Twin Cities and around Minnesota have with abortion-related care and information. The goal of this project is to build a narrative campaign on reproductive justice and abortion with young Asian community members and supporters with the goal of building towards concrete policy impact in 2023 and 2024. We also cultivated young people power to support AAOP’s work on the Patients’ Right to Know Act and other reproductive justice policies. NIRH also helped execute AAOP’s first-time effort in canvassing on reproductive justice issues specifically with the APIDA community. 

In 2023, we will continue our work with AAOP to build capacity of both AAOP staff and community members to become legislative advocates for reproductive freedom in Minnesota. AAOP will also continue gathering data and stories from the APIDA community to build a fuller picture of what their community needs to realize full and unrestricted abortion access.