CORE COMMUNITY RACIAL JUSTICE TRAININGS

AAJIL’s Core Community Racial Justice Trainings are for EVERYONE. We offer them in order to equip you with histories and critical frameworks that can deepen the work of antiracism in your lives and in your communities. This three-part series intentionally integrates what is often left out of general racial justice education: Asian American experiences and decolonial values. They represent our beliefs and values as an organization and are the foundation for organizing emergent community-led labs for mutual care, community-building, collaboration and innovation.

This is a three-level program, with Fundamentals designed for people who care about racial justice but feel like they are just starting out on their journeys. Foundations is for those who are further along but who could use a deeper dive— this level focuses on aspects of systemic racism that ideologies of whiteness strategically invisibilize: the function of Asian racializations and oppressions within a white-dominant societal complex built upon anti-Indigenous and anti-Black infrastructures. Fundamentals and Foundations together aim to show why all of us need to know both our own histories as well as the histories of communities who don’t look like us. They represent our beliefs and values as an organization and are the foundation for organizing emergent community-led labs for mutual care, community-building, collaboration, and innovation.

Formations is the third level of our core trainings program that focuses on a small cohort of community lab organizers who emerge from the Foundations level. Formations offers them a unique community leadership development program that is built upon emergent strategy, decolonial values, and an ethics of solidarity. For Formations eligibility, participants need to: 1) have participated as a member of at least one AAJIL community lab in the past 2) attend all three Foundations trainings.

LEVEL 1: FUNDAMENTALS

In the first session, participants will be invited to connect their own personal and family stories of immigration to larger systemic and national movements that form the Asian American identity. In the second session, Participants will be invited to explore the gifts and limitations of the Asian American identity as a label and to explore how we might move towards collective liberation across race, class, nationality, gender, etc.

*Recommended for those who have limited or no experience with exploring Asian American identity.

Connecting Histories: Collective Stories

June 24th and 25th, 2026 from 5PM PST - 6:30PM PST / 8PM EST - 9:30PM EST

LEVEL 2: FOUNDATIONS

Coming Soon!

Please expect 3 sessions from July 31st - August 2nd, 2026

  • History of Asian American Identity

  • “Modernity” and Institutional Racism

  • Coloniality, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy

LEVEL 3: FORMATIONS

Following Foundations, AAJIL provides an 8-month community leadership development program for the cohort of volunteers who step up to lead our community labs for the year. This program is free, and leaders will receive a certificate of honor upon graduating from the program.

For Formations eligibility, participants need to:

1) have participated as a member of at least one AAJIL community lab in the past (or currently in one)

2) attend all three Foundations trainings (in any year)

Our sessions cover topics such as:

Emergent Strategy

Decolonial Values

How to Design a Community Lab

The Colonizing Gaze

Anti-Oppressive Approaches to Accountability

How to Approach Facilitation

Creating Defining Moment

Community and Coalescing

The Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Social Change Ecosystem & Developing Leadership

Cohort Connection and Support

Timeline for the 2026 - 2027 Formations program has not yet been set