Mission, Vision & Values
We’ve renewed Our Mission, Vision, and Values!
Thank you for supporting us in going above and beyond the goals of our 2017-2020 Strategic Plan. Reflection and renewal is vital to understanding how the work with our communities changes. Please see our new Mission, Vision, and Values below!
OUR MISSION
ARISE combines leadership training with community organizing to mobilize Southeast Asian and other Rhode Island youth of color for education justice.
Southeast Asians (SEA)—specifically Cambodians, Hmong, Laotians and Vietnamese—are among the most economically disadvantaged people in the United States and struggle from long-term poverty, language and literacy issues, and post-traumatic stress disorders associated with their forced migration to the United States. SEA students also experience poverty, cultural tensions, and language barriers which hinder their educational and academic success; these educational experiences are often overshadowed by the aggregation of educational attainment data. To learn more about ARISE's "Three Reasons for Action," explore our Fact Sheet.
OUR VISION
ARISE envisions a healthy and thriving Rhode Island fueled by engaged and empowered young people.
OUR VALUES
SOLIDARITY: We believe that Black lives matter. We believe we must all do our parts to end anti-Blackness and act in solidarity with all oppressed groups’ fights for liberation.
JUSTICE: We believe that we must address root causes of systemic issues in order to heal from them. We believe in restorative justice as a means of transforming ourselves and the community.
INTERSECTIONALITY: We believe that everyone has the right to be their whole selves. We honor multifaceted identities, communities, histories, and struggles.
“Although an impressive number of Americans whose ancestors are from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (‘Southeast Asian Americans’) have achieved tremendous success in education, a disproportionate number have found it difficult to succeed academically. Yet their difficulties are largely invisible to policymakers, who tend to look only to the aggregate data on Asian Americans—data that suggest that, as one large undifferentiated group, Asian Americans are doing quite well. They are considered to be doing so well, in fact, that they are called the “model minority.” For example, in 2000, 25.2% of Asian Americans aged 25 and over held bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared with 15.5% of Americans overall. In contrast, among the various Southeast Asian American groups, the percentage with bachelor’s degrees ranged from 5.9% to 14.8%—proportions that more closely resemble those of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, than those of Asian Americans in aggregate.”
