"Project of the Year" Gold Award 

AAPI Heritage Month Celebration

Lexington town is a highly-diversified community with >35% and a yearly-increasing population of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). A comprehensive understanding of the rich AAPI culture would be important to broaden the ethnic diversity and establish an inclusive and vibrant community in Lexington. To introduce AAPI cultures, different AAPI cultural organizations in Lexington town have organized many culture promotional events; however, these events were often short (1-2 hours), organized by an individual organization, and mostly only attracted people from the same cultural background. In face of the rising Asian Hate crime rates in 2020 and 2021, it was clear that, as an Asian American community, we needed to stand up for each other to combat bigotry. While the cultural events did exist within their subcommunities, our team recognized the demand for a larger event to show Asian American solidarity within the community and grow support outside the community as well. To adequately demonstrate AAPI culture and enhance collaboration between different AAPI cultures, a team of Lexington High School students collaborated to organize a month-long celebration of Asian culture. The event put a specific highlight on Asian History, Food, Art, and Celebration. The events are designed to not only demonstrate the rich AAPI culture but also to engage with residents across all different cultures. 

Briefly:

–   The event featured one theme each week over four weeks in the AAPI month of 2022: week 1 for History, week 2 for Food, week 3 for Art, and week 4 for a cumulation celebration featuring History, Art, and Food. 

–   Each themed activity was designed in a "See--Do--Add" pattern that allowed citizens across ethnicities to experience AAPI culture, participate in activities, and potentially bring new aspects to AAPI cultures (Demonstration--Participation--Innovation). 

–   The events were organized by cross-AAPI cultural groups in Lexington and were open to all Lexington citizens and greater Boston citizens. 

– The events were led and driven by Lexington students and provided opportunities for Lexington youth to build our leadership and sense of responsibility for the community

     Our program promotes AAPI culture meanwhile enforces broad engagement and inclusion of the whole Lexington community across different ethnicities. More importantly, following the success of organizing this month-long AAPI culture celebration in 2022, we have planned to sustain this program as a custom celebration in AAPI month every year in Lexington, further fostering AAPI culture beyond Lexington.

For more information and details on the program please check out our website: http://aapimonth.caal-ma.org/