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| Anita Yap |
Anita has served on the Board of Directors for the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) from 2011 through 2017. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the Portland Community College Southeast Campus President’s Council. She’s served on the Board of Governors with the City Club of Portland, Board member Portland Habilitation Center, Co-chair of the City of Portland Charter Commission, Co-chair of the City Arts and Culture Oversight Committee, Chair of the Portland-Multnomah Food Policy Council and volunteers with various non-profit organizations in the Portland area.
In this Q&A, she shares her insights about the importance of equitable partnerships between government agencies and community-based organizations.
What is your role in the Jade District project?
I live in the Jade District. When APANO became the fiscal sponsor for the Jade District in 2012, I was on the Board of Directors. I became the board liaison to the Jade District and served as the chair of the Community Development Subcommittee and Executive Committee on the Jade International District Steering Committee. I’ve been involved since 2012 as a volunteer, working on the governance structure, community development and organizing as the APANO hired a Jade District Manager for the Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative through the Portland Development Commission.
Why is the Jade District collaboration important for the community?
As Portland’s demographics have changed, and as communities become displaced, I believe that government organizations need to understand how communities of color can influence and lead changes in public policy and public investment.
The Jade District is very diverse, and includes Asian Pacific Islanders, Latinos, African immigrants, and Russian-speaking communities, it is the most diverse zip code in Oregon. In 2014, the Multicultural Collaborative led a community visioning exercise. We involved urban designers and public involvement specialists that culminated in a one-day community visioning workshop that was conducted in five languages.
One initiative that emerged from the visioning exercise was the idea for the Jade Night Market. APANO and Jade staff applied for grants and secured sponsors. Six months later, the first Jade Night Market was held in the FuBonn Shopping Center parking lot and attracted an attendance of 20,000 over four nights. Events included a wide range of cultural performances, music, dancing and great food! The Jade Night Market is now in its fourth year, and is now has a more permanent location, thanks to a partnership with Portland Community College Southeast Campus. This event could not be possible without volunteer leadership from the community.
What has been the most challenging aspect on moving along the Jade District initiative?
It takes a long time to do place-based organizing and engagement. We’ve only been at this for about five years, and this is still very new.
There are other diverse communities in the area that we also need to reach out to. APANO does great organizing within the Asian Pacific Islander communities, and there’s an opportunity to organize with other racial and ethnic communities that can help shape the future of the Jade District.
There is a lot of focus now on the Jade District, and many potential public investments planned for the area. There are transportation projects, zoning changes, multi-family infill projects, workforce initiatives, and many more. The challenge is to keep our grassroots organizing focused on issues that impact our communities, while also keeping track of all the moving parts in state, regional and local government policy initiatives and investment. As property values increase, we are concerned about displacement of our residents and business owners. We are working to advocate for affordable housing and economic empowerment of local businesses.
How did you become involved in this work?
I grew up in Portland, and graduated from Reynolds High School. I left Portland to study Forestry and Natural Resources Management at Oregon State University. I have a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning, with a focus on public and environmental policy from the University of Oregon.
I love Oregon and have lived in many places in Oregon. I lived in Halfway in Northeastern Oregon where I worked for the U.S. Forest Service. I also lived and worked in Bend, Eugene, Corvallis, Lebanon and Salem.
I made the decision to move and raise my family in Portland 10 years ago. With my background and experience in environmental policy and urban planning, I decided that I really wanted to move to a community that is more racially diverse and apply my professional experience in a new way. I experienced blatant racism and sexism during the 30 years that I spent outside of Portland, and I really wanted for myself and my family to live in and experience a more diverse community.
I started doing volunteer work with APANO around 2009, and joined the Board of Directors in 2011. The Jade District initiative was centered on place-based organizing and community development, which aligns with my professional experience and personal interest. I jumped at the chance to be a part of the project as a volunteer.
With my background in public policy and community development, I realized that there weren’t a lot of professional consultants of color who were working in community development and urban planning. I’ve also focused on equity and diverse communities, so I started a consulting business. Eventually, I convened several people who had the interest to put our skill sets together to form the MultiCultural Collaborative.
What are the services and offerings of the MultiCultural Collaborative?
We have a pretty diverse team, and all of us have full time day jobs and work part-time for our consulting business. Some of the services we offer include equity public policy analysis, urban design, affordable housing, economic empowerment, facilitation, strategic planning, and community engagement.
Especially for our government contracts, our model of change is building capacity in the system to understand how to engage effectively with diverse communities. Our model is to empower the different community groups to determine the best way to conduct community engagement and inform public policy and public investments. We have folks within community organizations working with us to develop agendas, and to recruit and facilitate people from the communities. We do this both in English and in-language. Our role is to facilitate the community’s input to inform government agencies’ policy for decision making.
Over the past few years, we’ve worked with a large number of clients. We’ve worked with nonprofits like APANO, Hacienda CDC, Verde, Reach CDC, Rose CDC among others. Among government agencies, we’ve worked with the City of Portland, Metro, Portland Bureau of Transportation, City of Gresham, City of Tigard, Oregon Department of Transportation, TriMet and more.
We worked with Metro to provide input on their equity strategy with community groups. We convened racially diverse community-based groups and subject matter experts who have experience in housing, transportation and environmental policy. The community groups provided input on their views of how they thought Metro served their communities. Based on their input, we recommended that a Metro councilor attend a focus group to hear directly from the community about their issues related to equity.
Government agencies need to understand that in order to get the feedback they want from community, they need to make an investment. Our model of change includes having our government clients allocate funding to pay community organizations that work with us. We provide stipends for participants, offer refreshments at meetings, and pay facilitators from the community to help convene and facilitate the meetings, sometimes in language.
In terms of the success of the endeavor, what are you most proud of thus far?
The MultiCultural Collaborative recently held a three-day design workshop focused on green infrastructure, air quality and other environmental concerns hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The workshop focused on soliciting feedback about how to address environmental health and air quality issues in southeast Portland, particularly within the Jade District. There’s a need to raise awareness around environmental health disparities stemming from exposure to air toxins, lack of walk-ability and accessibility in the community of the Jade District.
The project was funded by an EPA Sustainable Communities technical assistance grant through APANO and the Multnomah County Sustainability Department. The “Greening the Jade ” project was one of only five projects across the country to receive the grant. The MultiCultural Collaborative was selected to facilitate the planning discussions and develop urban design visions for the community.
Our urban designers were able to conduct focus groups in-language. One of our team members, Suenn Ho, convened a group of Chinese families in Cantonese and come up with recommendations from that particular community. One of our interns, was able to help us to conduct the focus group in the Vietnamese language and bring forth the Vietnamese community’s input about the proposals.
Why is MultiCultural Collaborative’s approach important for Oregon?
My background is working in city, regional and state governments. The model of public outreach or citizen involvement are typically conducted through an old model of participation. It only works well when people speak English and have the time to participate. That definitely shuts out a large amount of the population.
The three big things driving change are politics, demographics and the economy. At this particular moment in our social climate in Oregon, communities of color feel disempowered on a certain level. At the same time, there is also a lot of advocacy from within governments about how to do things differently.
The more progressive public agencies realize that. Part of it is pressure from community advocates and realizing the shift in demographics. It also comes from realizing that the organization must reflect the community in terms of the people working there and the people elected to serve. The economics of public investment is challenging governments to evaluate public engagement and policy development in a different way.
How do you ensure that the MultiCultural Collaborative provides culturally relevant services to diverse communities?
We admit that we’re not the experts. My four other partners are all people of color, and has had lived experiences in racism, oppression and colonization. We are really aware of not only our privilege in doing this work, but also some of the nuances that other communities face.
Our focus is empowering communities to share their voices in policy and investments. We engage diverse communities to speak from their own experience as we work secure their input; we’re just the facilitators.
From an equity standpoint, we need to be cognizant that systems and institutions are set up to benefit some and not others. Generally, government institutions have been set up long before there was any thought about who is being served. Who was in the room when these agencies were formed? My guess is that there probably wasn’t any effort toward community engagement with constituents, as far as developing policies that serve everybody.
Equity is about looking at how we can provide access, power and leadership to communities that have suffered from underinvestment and underrepresentation. Equality isn’t equity: it’s important to look at the historical context that has led to inequalities in access to public investment, representation in leadership, and influencing public policy.
What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Helping government agencies understand that when working with diverse communities, the old models of engagement and public policy aren’t working anymore. Having worked in government, I realized the inherent inequities in the patriarchal models of engagement. Change can happen and we need to make sure that the changes dismantle the systemic inequities for a just and equitable future for us all.
