People Power Movements

Filipino Advocates for Justice (FAJ) is a community-based organization in the Bay Area working to build a strong, organized, and empowered Filipino community. Since 1973, we’ve supported immigrants, youth, workers, and families through a combination of direct services, leadership development, and community organizing. FAJ integrates direct services, organizing, civic engagement, and wellness to meet immediate needs while building long-term community power, including youth leadership development and issue education; worker and immigrant rights support; community outreach, know-your-rights trainings, and mutual aid; voter engagement and civic participation; and wellness spaces and mental health support rooted in Filipino culture and community. We believe services alone are not enough; people need the tools, relationships, and support to organize and transform the conditions they live in.

Our approach is grounded in Bayanihan (collective care and cooperation), Kapwa (shared identity and connection), and Makibaka (collective struggle for justice). Our AAPI communities are navigating multiple, intersecting challenges: rising costs of living and displacement; barriers to healthcare, housing, and workers’ rights; growing mental health needs and isolation; and heightened immigration enforcement alongside broader threats to democracy.

In response, FAJ creates spaces where community members can access support, build relationships, and take collective action. We offer consistent opportunities for belonging that deepen connection while engaging community members in healing and wellness practices. Through both large and intimate gatherings—such as free wellness clinics, staff-led offerings, outings, retreats, collective breathing practices, intergenerational third spaces, and leadership development—we are building the collective capacity needed for long-term resilience and power-building. These gatherings have become powerful containers for cultural reconnection, issue education and community resilience, allowing us to rebuild what was lost through separation and dislocation and reimagining what it means to be in community together, connected, rooted, and whole. Through this work, FAJ has reached thousands of community members, trained youth and worker leaders, contributed to local wins in housing, labor, and civic engagement, and built a growing base of engaged members and partners.

This Give in May, we ask you, Kasama, to isang bagsak with us. Your support helps us invest in third spaces for our communities—spaces that strengthen community-based leadership, deepen relationships, and build the collective power needed to imagine and create what comes next.