Funding_Request_Letter--FINAL[1] - ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES...

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES DEPARTMENT
Dear Friends,
On behalf of the Re-SEAing SouthEast Asian American Studies’ Community and Art Conference planning
committee, I write this letter to ask for your support in funding this community base educational conference that
will take place at San Francisco State University on March 10-11, 2011.
Of the 1,814,301 Southeast Asian Americans counted in the 2000 Census, 705,382 reside in California. Based on
the 2000 Census, California is home to 484,023 Vietnamese Americans; 84,559 Cambodian Americans; 71,741
Hmong Americans; and 65,058 Laotian Americans. Northern California is home to sizable populations of
Burmese (Fremont and Half Moon Bay), Cambodian (San Francisco Bayview and Tenderloin districts, and Santa
Clara), Filipino (Daly City), Hmong (Richmond and Sacramento), Laotian (Richmond and San Francisco’s
Tenderloin), Thai (Berkeley and Mountain View), and Vietnamese Americans (San Francisco’s Tenderloin and
San Jose). In total there are roughly 189,813 self-identified Southeast Asians in the greater Bay Area.
i
The 2000
Census also shows that Hmong, Cambodian, and Laotian Americans have per capita income below $10,000. More
importantly, 26.2% of Cambodian Americans, 45% of Hmong Americans, 22.7% of Laotian Americans, and 8%
of Vietnamese Americans have “no formal education.”
This conference will foreground the large Southeast Asian American communities of the Bay Area, Silicon
Valley, and the Pacific Northwest. It is a community educational endeavor with a special focus on arts and