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Dong Yoon Kim

Dong Yoon is responsible for NAKASEC’s Immigrant Rights and Civic Engagement programs focusing on outreach and organizing in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast region. As a program associate, he also supports the development of NAKASEC’s coordinated grassroots campaigns. Previously, Dong Yoon was the Development Assistant at the Economic Justice Coalition in Georgia and was part of community development projects and campaigns. He served as a student organizer for the Living Wage Campaign at the University of Georgia where he also conducted education efforts on state legislation that denied access to higher education to undocumented students. Dong Yoon received his B.S at the University of Georgia with a degree in Water and Soil Resources. During college, Dong Yoon also worked in campus dining halls, with a specialty in making omelettes. Having lived in several different states, he has lived in Georgia the longest, and considers himself a Georgian. Dong Yoon is also a big fan of basketball and even tried out twice for the basketball team in high school (he never got selected).

 

Mr. Dong Yoon Kim will be speaking on the issues surrounding the current state of international adoption law. Specifically, his workshop will focus on the case of Adam Crapser, an adult Korean-American adoptee who now faces the threat of deportation. His adoptive parents never completed the paperwork for Adam to become a naturalized citizen. Like Adam Crapser, thousands of foreign-born adoptees raised in the U.S. are vulnerable to deportation as adults due to a failure of immigration law and inaction by their adoptive parents. Read more about Adam Crapser's story here: nyti.ms/1l7BgVS and huff.to/1pLT2iZ

Workshops

Chavi Koneru

Chavi K. Koneru is co-founder of North Carolina's Asian Americans Together (NCAAT), an organization concentrated on civically engaging the Asian American community in North Carolina. Ms. Koneru attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina School of Law, and moved to Washington D.C. following graduation in 2009. During college and law school, she was engaged with several Asian American and multicultural groups on campus such as Sangam South Asian Awareness Organization, Masala Multicultural Organization and the Asian American Law Students Association. While in law school, Ms. Koneru received the Equal Justice Works Summer Corps Award and Hank Tersegno Public Interest Grant to work on voting rights issues with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. Ms. Koneru also worked in the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and specifically with the Asian American population in New Jersey during the 2008 Presidential election. Upon returning to North Carolina, Ms. Koneru began to focus more specifically on Asian Americans in North Carolina as a voting bloc. (See her article: Asian Americans in North Carolina: The overlooked swing vote?) In 2015, Ms. Koneru and co-founder, Ricky Lueng, started NCAAT in an effort to engage North Carolina's Asian Americans, encourage them to vote and to highlight the issues of importance to them in the upcoming election. Ms. Koneru currently works as a policy analyst and is barred in North Carolina and Virginia.

 

During this workshop, NCAAT co-founders, Chavi Koneru and Ricky Leung will be speaking about the Asian American voting bloc with a focus on Asian Americans in North Carolina. With the election drawing near, it is important to be aware of the influence that Asian Americans hold through their collective vote. This interactive workshop will allow participants to engage in a discussion about the issues that are important to them and their communities in elections. Participants will also be assigned fictional candidates and will have the opportunity to work in teams to brainstorm new ways to civically engage North Carolina’s Asian American community.

 

 

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