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ARU Youth Center
ARU Youth Center
Since early 2023, the Youth Center has served as a safe and welcoming space for refugee and immigrant youth and families in the greater Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area, especially for the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community. Here, you can find resources for voter registration, the public library, and language access in schools for youth and families, as well as physical activities and board games like table tennis, badminton, chess, and UNO.
Whether you want to hang out with friends, need a private place to study with Wi-Fi, or are looking to connect with community resources, the Youth Center is a space for our community in Central Pennsylvania.
CAMP For Emerging Leaders
CAMP For Emerging Leaders
Camp for Emerging Leaders (CEL) is Asian Refugees United's (ARU) year-long leadership development and community organizing program for Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees in the diaspora. Since its launch in 2018, CEL has brought together emerging leaders, artists, activists, organizers, advocates, and community members from across the United States to reconnect, build relationships, and strengthen collective leadership for personal and social transformation.
Connect, Reflect, Enact (CRE)
Connect, Reflect, Enact (CRE)
A multi-part project integrating body knowledge and art creation to hold space for deep reflection on wounds both suffered and inflicted through systemic oppression existing in Asian communities here and in the homeland.
Through 6 sessions, developed and facilitated by Dohee Lee, an artistic director, cultural practitioner, performer, ritualist, and educator, participants will engage in art practices that connect and explore the body as land, a site of deep holding and transformation. Along with reflection, dialogue, and learning from local farmers and Indigenous and Black leaders, this project will culminate in a community land ritual with a goal of building community power and unity.
Justice + Belonging is a multi-year collaboration with CRE and the Asian Prisoner Support Committee to engage currently and formerly incarcerated and detained community members in movement, storytelling and other arts practices, to help them heal from trauma, re-connect to their Oakland communities, and envision non-carceral approaches to increase safety and justice for all people.
Justine's Testimonial (CRE)
Justine's Testimonial (CRE)
Justine CRE.mov
QTViệt Cafe Collective is a creative cultural hub dedicated to Queer and Trans Việt (QTViệt) liberation through ancestral practices, the arts, and inter-generational connection.
We strive to nourish, heal, and uplift Queer and Trans Việt (QTViệt) narratives through ancestral practices, the arts, and inter-generational connections. These practices and rituals, art expressions, and inter-generational healing are more than what we do - we embody them because these are who we are and want to be. We create culture by healing from the hurt, nourishing our souls with purpose and meaning, and uplifting and centering our lives and those we love and love us.
What we've been able to build - all the projects, events, and ways in which we've moved as a hub - interweaves the three elements of how we do the cultural work that we do. Our ancestral practices continue because our elders support and affirm the younger generations. Our art forward can't live without the honoring of our histories and engagement with our elders. And our inter-generational connections attempt to align, clarify, restore hurt, and manifest love. These three elements are intended to interconnect with one another towards our path and vision for queer and trans liberation.
In partnership with Oakland United School District, we invite and gather Asian American/Pacific Islander, LGBTQIA+ identifying students who are committed to better understanding themselves, storytelling, meeting other LGBTQIA+ identifying youth and adults, and building their creative artistry. Students will learn from community artists and prospective mentors through sessions focused on topics including intergenerational healing and sexuality & gender.
Art & Storytellers: Mero Geet, Mero Yatra
Art & Storytellers: Mero Geet, Mero Yatra
Mero Geet Mero Yatra is a storytelling performance of Bhutanese refugee youth. The youth explore the personal and collective community journey of their displacement, identity, re-connection to their body and homeland, and ancestors through the mediums of singing, body movements, stories, traditional dances, drawings, memories, poems, and other forms of art and connection.
In Spring 2022, youth meet with Lead artists Manose Singh and Dohee Lee virtually to share and explore their and their ancestors’ stories, and in the summertime, they come together in person to score a storytelling performance to share with the community. This performance is the story of healing through owning our stories through art. This is an ongoing project and will be premiered in 2022.
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