ASIAN PACIFIC ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK
426 17th St Ste 500, Oakland, CA 94612 www.apen4ej.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: All people have a right to a clean and healthy environment in which their communities can live, work, learn, play and thrive. Towards this vision, APEN brings together a collective voice to develop an alternative agenda for environmental, social and economic justice.

All people have a right to a clean and healthy environment in which their communities can live, work, learn, play and thrive. Towards this vision, APEN brings together a collective voice to develop an alternative agenda for environmental, social and economic justice. Through building an organized movement, we strive to bring fundamental changes to economic and social institutions that will prioritize public good over profits and promote the right of every person to a decent, safe, affordable quality of life, and the right to participate in decisions affecting our lives. APEN holds this vision of environmental justice for all people. Our work focuses on Asian immigrant and refugee communities.

Richmond Program & Oakland ProgramAPEN maintained strong relationships with our grassroots membership bases in Oakland and Richmond, including leadership training and engagement of APENs Leadership Steering Committee (LSC) to inform APENs campaign priorities. APEN held monthly LSC meetings (in Lao, Khmu, Cantonese, Mandarin and English), plus a retreat. Richmond's youth membership grew to twenty-three, almost doubling the group from the previous year. In Richmond, action teams engaged thirty-five adult leaders through quarterly meetings. APEN also partnered with Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) on a project to Engage, Educate, and Empower California Communities on the Use and Application of Low-Cost Air Monitoring Sensors and engaged twenty-five Richmond residents in the air monitoring project. Members provided strategic input on campaigns. And during a Leaders Retreat, fifty members and staff participated in APENs long-term strategic planning. APEN maintained strong relationships with our grassroots membership base in Oakland. Through 2019s programming, campaigns, and projects, Oakland expanded our community members pool to 1,200 supporters, 380 members, and 130 leaders. In Oakland, seventy-five leaders participated in two action teams that met every other month. Leaders' skills were developed in areas such as communications/narrative development, housing rights and policies, and local policy campaign development. In addition to addressing issues related to housing among APEN's existing members, organizers have been conducting community outreach and working to identify potential sites in Chinatown or Eastlake area for land trust conversion. This work entailed mailing flyers to over 300 residents, door knocking outreach to 750 residences, tabling at community events such as Lincoln Summer Nights, Keep Oakland Housed, and hosting a land trust workshop in Chinatown with 20 attendees. We also made progress towards leveraging communications as a core strategy. APEN members attended the groundbreaking in May 2019 for the first 211 of 465 planned affordable rental apartments at Brooklyn Basin, the result of a 16-year community organizing campaign by the Brooklyn Basin Community Benefits Coalition (of which APEN was a member) to ensure families in the Chinatown, Eastlake, and San Antonio neighborhoods would benefit. APEN provided leadership among the Real Peoples Fund, and led two workshops on cooperatives with APEN Chinatown members of working age and young adult phone canvassers to educate community members about cooperatives and gauge interest among community members for cooperative ideas for the Fund. Staff connected with community entrepreneurs interested in receiving capital when it launches.

State & Policy ProgramSolar Energy: APEN has been implementing an outreach plan for the Solar On Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) program, an outcome of AB 693 in 2015, which APEN supported alongside allies such as CEJA. Also, APEN has developed a strong partnership with RYSE Commons (expansion of RYSE youth center in Richmond currently under construction, to be completed in Fall 2020) as a site for a solar project where a board of youth members will be active in governance of the project. We secured a planning grant, which included capacity building support, to facilitate additional fundraising and financing for the project. Healthy Homes, Emergency Planning, and Resilience: APENs Leadership Steering Committee (LSC) played key roles in identifying the need for AB1232 Healthy Homes Bill. APEN members participated on the media team, advocacy team, and rapid response team. They gained critical experience in creating and promoting a legislative solution, telling powerful stories in the capitol, and making difficult and strategic decisions. APEN gained 100 new supporters and new donors from this campaign. APEN will track this bills implementation and may work to amend if the research shows that low income renters are being displaced due to efficiency upgrades. Additionally, two APEN staff, as part of the Women's Policy Institutes Environmental Justice team, drafted and educated decision-makers on the value of frontline communities participation in emergency planning. In the end, SB160 Cultural Competence in Emergency Planning was passed into law. Finally, APEN released Mapping Resilience: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate Disasters, an advocacy tool to ensure that frontline communities are prioritized when it comes to design policies that respond to and cope with the impacts of climate change such as wildfires, sea-level rise, extreme precipitation and flooding, and heat waves. In addition to conducting outreach workshops with various decision-makers, government staff, community members, and allies, it has also been made available on APENs recently redesigned website (launched Fall 2019).

Network & Communications WorkAPEN was able to hire our first Communications Director in 2018 who created an internal communications team that then received training and direct experience with narrative strategy. The new Communications Director also led out on developing member stories with our leaders, produced two short videos about our local work in Richmond and Oakland, and ran multiple spokesperson trainings with our members. Our work was covered by diverse media outlets including local and ethnic media outlets. We continued our leadership of, and participation in, diverse local and statewide alliances aimed to lift up the leadership and vision of low-income communities and communities of color facing the combined threat of racism, pollution, and climate change.

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