Today (Thursday) marks a decade of community service, youth leadership, political activism and civic engagement in Virginia by the Hamkae Center.
Over the last 10 years, the local nonprofit has dedicated itself to achieving “social, racial, and economic justice” through Asian American mobilization and advocacy at both the state and local levels, per its website.
“We want to not only help meet the immediate needs of Asian Americans living in Virginia, but we also want to make lasting change,” Hamkae Center Director Sookyung Oh said. “…What we really want is for Asian Americans to be actively engaged in society, in this democracy. If we can create those on-ramps for folks to be able to do that and be a political home, then that’s what we’re striving for. ”
Though it works around the state, Hamkae Center is based in Fairfax County with offices in Annandale and Centreville. Its mission has expanded alongside the local Asian American community, which has grown from 17.6% of the county’s population in 2010 to over 20% — one-fifth of the population.
“Over the years, Hamkae Center has really become much more pan-Asian,” she said. “So if you look at our staff and board, we have folks who are Korean heritage like me…but also Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese. It’s really expanded so that we were becoming more of an Asian American group.”
A Virginia affiliate of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, the group was founded in 2012 as NAKASEC Virginia with the goal of organizing with undocumented Korean Americans, according to Oh.
It was among the organizations that advocated for undocumented immigrants who attended high school in the state to be eligible for in-state tuition rates and state financial aid for college.
“It’s our work with undocumented Asian Americans that we were able to push those changes through the state General Assembly in 2020 and in 2021,” Oh said.
Oh also expressed pride in Hamkae Center’s education-related activism, including its role in leading a “statewide, multi-racial, multi-faith” movement against proposed revisions to Virginia’s history education standards.
On a more hyperlocal level, the Hamkae Center functions as a community resource, offering assistance with citizenship and public health benefit applications. According to Oh, it recently launched an Asian American Small Business Counseling program to help Korean Americans in Northern Virginia navigate complex corporate procedures and language barriers as they kickstart their own businesses.
“To date, I think we’ve supported about four entrepreneurs in starting new businesses, and that’s pretty cool,” Oh said.
To reflect its evolving focus, the group rebranded in 2021 to “Hamkae,” the Korean word for “together.” Oh says the new name aims to “honor [their] Korean American roots” while making it clearer that the organization works with all Asian Americans, not just Korean Americans. Read More
