Immigrant History Initiative Work 

During the summer of 2022, as I looked for community service opportunities, I came across the Immigrant History Initiative (IHI). Based in Jersey City, New Jersey, the Immigrant History Initiative's mission aims "to empower Asian Americans, build empathy for multiple generations of immigrant communities, and foster solidarity to address hate and intolerance". Upon learning more about the organization, I was extremely passionate about working with them. Having made posters and campaign logos combatting Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) hate, I believed working with IHI would help continue my contributions to the AAPI community. 

I emailed the two founders of IHI, Kathy Lu and Julia Wang, asking them if I could do volunteer work for their organization and sent them my animation works. A few days later, I received an email from the founders asking to meet with them online. I was extremely excited and nervous at the same time as I had never met serious professionals before, but I was determined to make a good first impression. I logged onto the Zoom call and the founders discussed with me what kind of volunteer work I would be open to. It was a very on-the-spot question but I already had an idea in mind. I proposed that I could create an animated series of key AAPI historical figures in United States history for their social media platforms. The founders liked the idea, and I sent them a list of six AAPI figures for approval: Wong Chin Foo, Tammy Duckworth, Dith Pran, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Patsy Mink, and Hong Yen Chang. The first to be approved was Wong Chin Foo so I began working on his animated short. It took around six weeks of script writing, voice-overing, sound editing, animating, and video editing to complete.

The second name to be approved was Tammy Duckworth. It took around eight weeks to complete. 

After completing these two animated shorts, I realized it took too long to create a single video. It made sense considering that I was in charge of all five steps of the video-making process. So I sought out some of my high school peers and asked them if they would be interested in scriptwriting and voice-overing for the other four animated shorts. The average time it took for all four animated shorts to be complete was around 4-5 weeks.