Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA)

Mission

Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) empowers low-income limited English-speaking immigrant women and youth to advocate for their meaningful social participation, determine their own future, and collaborate with other marginalized groups for the common good.

What We Do 

AIWA's programs build skills and opportunities for immigrant women & youth to step into their own power as community leaders and advocates. Through education, leadership development, and collective action projects, AIWA supports immigrants' leadership transformation to bring concrete changes and solutions to their work and living conditions. AIWA has a long history of developing the grassroots leadership of immigrant women who work in historically exploitative industries, such as garment shops, food service, home care, and cleaning industries. To learn more AIWA history, visit: https://www.aiwa.org/ 

2025 Highlights

Empowering Women through Education

Not only do women learn English and technology skills in our classes, they learn about their rights as workers, immigrants, and women.

To enrich members' learning experiences, AIWA organized three educational field trips in 2025: the Black Panther Museum, Angel Island Immigration Center, and the Japanese American Museum. Through these trips, AIWA members learn immigration history and build solidarity with other minority communities. AIWA also distributed "Know Your Rights" cards as well as ICE information during classes and events. 

Transforming Lives through Organizing and Advocacy

Through self-organizing committees and Peer Leader positions, AIWA's women advocate for their rights. The AIWA IHSS committee remain active in fighting for retirement benefits and holiday pay. In 2025, they developed a petition, spoke with Alameda County Supervisors, and shared a social media campaign.

Developing Youth Leadership

Through AIWA's youth program, immigrant youth develop their grassroots leadership by leading social justice workshops for their peers, including a yearly weekend long retreat they organize themselves.

Here is Ms. Wu's reflection on how involvement in AIWA changed her life: 

I can think of four words that would describe my situation as a recent immigrant. I felt disabled because I didn’t know how to get around on my own. Blind, because I couldn’t read. Deaf, because I couldn’t understand what people said to me and mute, because I couldn’t speak English. 

At first, I just came to AIWA to learn English, but there was a campaign going on so I also learned how we could win justice for immigrant women. Through working on the campaign, by striving and letting my own voice be heard (developing leadership), the result was a success... Because of AIWA, I developed my confidence and my attitude of self-empowerment. Now as a senior trainer, I actually train other Asian immigrant women on the skills I learned from AIWA... Now that I have confidence, I can participate in a lot of activities and programs and even work together with people from other communities.

We appreciate your support to continue AIWA's important work!