Community Care in AANHPI Communities

As we come to the close of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we continue to focus on these communities from a place of ongoing commitment to learning and growth. 

At Realized Worth, we believe cultural moments of awareness offer something far more valuable than celebrations and consumption (though of course we all love the food, dance, holiday traditions, and spotlights on successful members of the communities we celebrate). We seek to fully accept the invitation to understand wisdom from different traditions that can transform how we approach our work in social impact and, ultimately, how we show up as human beings. 

The Wisdom of the Bamboo Grove: Collective Strength in AANHPI Communities 

This year, AANHPI Heritage Month’s theme is “A Legacy of Leadership and Resilience.” The Federal Asian Pacific American Council chose bamboo as a central symbol—not just for its incredible strength, but for how it thrives in interconnected groves where flexible stalks and intertwined roots support one another through even the harshest conditions. Bamboo bends without breaking, adapts to changing environments, and serves as a sustainable resource for communities—embodying resilience through both connection and flexibility. 

This interconnection reflects a critical facet of AANHPI resilience: not individual “grit” but collective care and solidarity. Throughout history, AANHPI leaders have demonstrated how community networks create transformative change in the face of systemic challenges: 

• Grace Lee Boggs, Chinese American philosopher and activist whose seven decades of movement work embodied solidarity at a grassroots level for global, systemic change 

• Haunani-Kay Trask, Native Hawaiian scholar and activist who taught that Indigenous self-determination requires challenging extractive economic systems that treat land, water, and people as mere resources to be consumed 

• Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, Filipino American labor organizers whose coalition work between Filipino and Mexican farmworkers created the foundation for better working conditions across California agriculture, demonstrating how solidarity across communities builds sustainable change 

• Yuri Kochiyama, Japanese American activist whose understanding that her own liberation was inextricably bound with Black liberation led her to not just support but fully immerse herself in the civil rights movement 

These leaders and more demonstrate that true solidarity means committing our whole selves to one another’s struggles as if they were – and because they are – our own. 

Reframing Resilience in Corporate Social Impact 

The dominant narrative often celebrates individual AANHPI “success stories” while ignoring the community networks that make resilience possible, perpetuating the harmful model minority myth. As social impact practitioners, we must transform this framing through these principles: 

• Community-Centered Design: Recognize that resilience emerges from collective care networks, not individual traits, and design programs that strengthen existing community connections rather than imposing external solutions. 

• Systemic Accountability: Acknowledge that our role is to address the systems that necessitate resilience in the first place, not place the burden of “being resilient” on communities facing oppression. 

• Reciprocal Learning: Approach AANHPI communities as sophisticated knowledge-holders with existing systems of mutual aid that corporate practices can learn from and support, rather than “fix.” 

• Long-term Investment: Commit to sustained relationship-building beyond crisis moments and cultural focus months, understanding that true resilience develops through consistent care over time. 

Resource: Explore Research on Community-Led Practices from Global Giving, including a Community-Led Assessment tool. 

Indigenous Wisdom: Reciprocity vs. Extraction 

Indigenous AANHPI cultures integrate reciprocal relationships with land, water, and community—wisdom increasingly essential as corporations reckon with sustainability challenges. Where corporate models often extract value, Indigenous approaches cultivate reciprocity: 

• Native Hawaiian practices like ahupuaʻa (land division systems) manage resources from mountain to sea through collective stewardship that recognizes the interconnection of all living systems 

• Many Pacific Islander cultures maintain complex gift economies where value circulates rather than accumulates, offering models for how corporate giving can build relationships rather than saviorism  

• Asian farming traditions often incorporate intercropping and community labor exchanges that sustain both the land and social bonds 

These traditions teach us that authentic corporate Social Impact requires moving from extraction to reciprocity: 

• Often subtle, language describing the “business case” and “return on investment” ultimately asks, “Can we get out more than we put in?”  Shift language by adding questions like, “How are we accountable to this community?” and “What relationships are we building that will sustain us all?” 

• Build trust and connection before transaction, recognizing that relationship precedes mutual benefit. 

• Understand that genuine impact requires long-term investment in relationship, which can be more challenging to present than quarterly outputs for executive dashboards. Capture it in great storytelling instead. (Social REV member resource: Story Crafting Workbook) 

Our Transformative Approach framework directly aligns with these principles by emphasizing relationship-building, critical reflection, and sustaining community connections over transactional volunteering. 

Social REV members: Watch a 7-minute Refresher on Transformative Volunteering, or explore the whole course, Introduction to the Transformative Approach. 

Shared Liberation Across Movements 

AANHPI Heritage Month presents an opportunity to include in our cultural celebrations the work of building solidarity across communities. Throughout history, AANHPI movements have recognized that liberation requires breaking down silos and barriers between communities: 

• The 1960s-70s Asian American Movement explicitly built coalitions with Black Power, Chicano, and Native American movements. 

• Today’s AANHPI-led organizations often work at intersections with immigrant rights, climate justice, and economic equity. 

• Cultural organizations in the AANHPI community often focus on community-building that honors the generations before and after our own – for Social Impact this means our foremothers and fathers in social movements and the children of a more just and beautiful future. 

For corporate social impact practitioners, this history offers important lessons: 

• Deepen partnerships between CSR teams and ERGs, or other internal people networks, and community organizations to enhance program design and community engagement, creating spaces where diverse perspectives enrich your social impact work. 

• Design volunteer programs that foster genuine human connection and empathy across differences, creating moments where employees and community members recognize their shared humanity as the foundation for real solidarity. 

• Recognize the interconnected nature of social movements and explore funding approaches that provide flexible, unrestricted resources to organizations working at these intersections, enabling them to respond quickly to emerging community needs. 

Social REV member resource:  Access The Community Partner Collaboration Guide for practical tools to build these bridges with both internal and external partners. 

Moving Forward Together 

As we move through the second half of AANHPI Heritage Month, let’s add intentional social commitment to our cultural celebrations. The principles of collective care, reciprocity, and solidarity that we learn from AANHPI communities should infuse our work throughout the year. 

1. Examine how your corporate Social Impact work can challenge extractive practices and build reciprocal relationships with AANHPI and other marginalized communities.
2. Invest in cross-community solidarity by supporting coalition work and organizations uprooting the systems that cause injustice.
   
3. Apply the lessons of collective care to your employee volunteer programs, focusing on relationship-building alongside service.
4. Recognize that meaningful engagement extends far beyond a single heritage month into ongoing accountability and partnership.
   

Want to continue these conversations with Realized Worth? Join us at quarterly RealTalk sessions, at our in-person immersive learning event, Social REV LIVE, and join Social REV as a member for year-round access to tools, resources, and more content like this blog.