Our Story

Asian Refugees United (ARU) is a grassroots art and healing organization serving communities impacted by displacement. Established in 2016, ARU exists to improve the health and well-being of Asian immigrant and refugee communities by building voice, visibility and power. ARU is 100% staffed by first, 1.5 and second generation immigrant/refugee artist activists with deep connections to communities served.

ARU staff and project leaders use arts modalities that include traditional and contemporary music and movement, storytelling, cultural rituals and practices, visual art-making and media production to provide healing and leadership development opportunities for Asian refugee youth and adults. 

Refugees often face poverty, racism and language barriers, leading to struggles with school, work and civic participation and linking to a myriad of mental and physical health challenges, from diabetes to depression and even suicide. ARU believes that shared arts and cultural practices that intentionally focus on healing help us understand the harmful systems and trauma impacting us, name our demands for change and build personal and collective capacity to take action. This includes sharing our stories in performance and exhibition at spaces like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Eastside Arts Alliance and ARTogether gallery.

Asian Refugees United exists to improve the health and wellbeing of Asian immigrant and refugee communities by building voice, visibility and power. Our work centers the voices of the Vietnamese and Bhutanese refugee communities who fled persecution in their home country only to face new and shared struggles resettling in East Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area, California and Greater Harrisburg Area, Pennsylvania. 

Asian Refugees United grew from the experiences of Asian refugees sharing their culture and stories, developing their leadership and political analysis, building solidarity with multiple communities and taking action to improve their communities health holistically and in their workplaces. Vietnamese and Bhutanese women learned how to deepened their engagement with their own communities to advocate for health locally and on state-wide levels. The Asian refugees who participated in our program for the last 5-10 years have uniquely experienced political education, cultural healing, and inter-ethnic community building which has allowed them a voice to speak up and raise awareness about their experience and improve the health of their communities. In addition, due to the unique challenges of intergenerational trauma and cultural barriers, relationship and trust-building are key strengths of our work that have been built out within the last decade. Our advocates and organizers are uniquely positioned to bring out residents who would otherwise face fear and isolation from community involvement.

ARU is a member of the Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE) network, through which it collaborates with ten other California organizations serving East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian Muslim communities, as well as LGBTQ+ Asian American communities and currently and formerly incarcerated, detained and deported people. Together we work toward an inclusive vision of justice for all our people.

Our core values

Knowing our ancestral and diasporic lands and stories

We honor and learn the stories of our ancestral lands and the lands we are on in the diaspora.  We unlearn colonial and imperialist behaviors to examine our positionality as people of the Asian diaspora by having deeper understandings and learning our ancestral lands and the histories of the lands we are on (Turtle Island).

Asian refugee healing and justice

We center ritual, storytelling, art, and performance of our Asian refugee immigrant experiences to deepen collective healing, wholeness, power, and justice.  We center and create safer spaces for refugee, immigrant, LGBTQIA+ communities and redefine ancestral practices and healing with creative expressions.

Communication and care

We root in a culture in which people take responsibility and accountability for each others’ and our own needs, express openness, honesty, and courage to show vulnerability, and embody compassion, generosity, inclusion, respect, and having fun!

Building community power and movement solidarity

We want to build power with each other.  We also know the struggle for refugee and immigrant justice is bigger than ourselves and our liberation is tied to the liberation of all other marginalized people.  We want to be in solidarity with communities fighting for issues like land back, demilitarization, gender and queer justice, healing justice, and abolition of oppressive systems including caste discrimination. crimmigration, and the prison-to-deportation pipeline.