Dorchester Program Coordinator

AARW seeks a full-time dedicated, flexible, and community-oriented organizer for racial justice to join our team. This position will support AARW’s ongoing base building and organizing campaign work in the Vietnamese community, particularly building the leadership skills and organizing capacity of Vietnamese American youth and young adults.

About the Asian American Resource Workshop:

The Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) is a political home for pan-Asian communities in Greater Boston. We are a member-led organization committed to building grassroots power through political education, creative expression, and issue-based and neighborhood organizing. AARW is a dynamic team that works together with our membership to organize around issues that impact our communities’ everyday lives through an anti-displacement framework.

About the position:

The Dorchester Program Coordinator is a full-time role to support AARW’s organizing of pan-Asian young adults by developing and training Vietnamese American youth and young adults in Fields Corner, Dorchester through our cohort-based leadership program, the Dorchester Organizing & Training Initiative (DOT-I). While the primary responsibilities and expectations of the Dorchester Program Coordinator role will be to run the DOT-I program, this will be in relation to developing the organizing and leadership of Vietnamese youth and young adults to support our housing justice and immigration/deportation organizing efforts.

In 2012, AARW launched the DOT-I program, a cohort-based leadership development program with the goal of cultivating the leadership of Vietnamese young adults from the Dorchester neighborhood. This program has taken different shapes over its 10+ year history ranging from engaging Vietnamese residents in a community assessment to identify priority issues, civic engagement work across the neighborhood, organizing for housing justice in Dorchester, and organizing Southeast Asian deportation community defense efforts.

In most recent years DOT-I fellows have been our primary base of youth engaged in our anti-displacement campaigns. In 2022-2023, our 8th cohort engaged in small action projects and expanded their understanding of the issues. Our 9th cohort led a community-wide Anti-Displacement Youth Summit where they wrote and facilitated 2 popular educational workshops about housing justice and anti-deportation issues. We are currently in our 10th cohort; our fellows are focusing primarily on building skills to support our Southeast Asian deportation organizing.

Key Responsibilities:

Lead AARW’s Dorchester Organizing & Training Initiative Program (DOT-I)

• Develop and update DOT-I political education and organizing curriculum for Vietnamese American youth and young adults
• Lead outreach and recruitment efforts for participants for the DOT-I program
• Develop the learning arc and program structure for political education and organizing skills for DOT-I participants, and connecting the learning to praxis
• Facilitate and/or identify external trainers to support with leading the DOT-I sessions
• Conduct 1-on-1s with DOT-I participants throughout the cohort cycle to support their personal leadership development and connection to AARW
• Collaborate with VietAID program staff for the joint summer youth leadership program between VietAID and AARW
• Participate in Fields Corner Crossroads Collaborative’s (FCCC) Youth/Young Adult leadership working group. FCCC is a Dorchester neighborhood formation of other direct service and community-based organizations working together to address the needs of Dorchester residents

Support organizing and basebuilding efforts in the Dorchester Vietnamese community

• With guidance from the Organizing Director and Lead Vietnamese Organizer on organizing strategies and tactics, the Program Coordinator will connect DOT-I participants to organizing efforts for housing justice and immigrant justice/anti-deportation defense work
• Engage in outreach activities in the community that supports our anti-displacement organizing efforts - this will include efforts such as door knocking, neighborhood flyering, making phone calls, and tabling at community events
• Coordinate AARW’s civic engagement efforts, focusing on door knocking and phone banking in the Vietnamese community and youth/young adult engagement

Support organization-wide programmatic and organizing efforts

• Participate in organizational initiatives to strengthen organizing across the Asian American community
• Work in partnership with other organizational team members to do collective outreach, engagement, and programming.
• As a small-to-mid sized organization, all staff are expected to support with administrative tasks as needed

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated commitment to social justice and community organizing
• Commitment to organizing in Southeast Asian communities and an understanding of Asian American community issues and history, as well as solidarity with other oppressed communities
• Commitment to working in a team setting and to multi-directional feedback
• Proactive, action-oriented, and flexible with attention to detail
• Experience in facilitating through a popular education model
• Experience in developing and facilitating political education and skills-building workshops
• Experience with community organizing, base building, and/or youth development
• Experience leading, training, and working with volunteers
• Understanding of community organizing, mobilization, and empowerment concepts
• Ability to prioritize, hold multiple projects at once, and manage time and schedule
• Some Vietnamese language capacity and/or familiarity and knowledge of the Dorchester Vietnamese community and neighborhood preferred

EEO Statement

AARW is a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization committed to equal employment opportunity (EEO). We will not discriminate against staff or applicants for employment on any legally-recognized basis [“protected class”] including, but not limited to: race, color, religion, genetic information, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, age, disability, citizenship status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under federal, state, or local law.