API RISE - From Number to Name Fundraising Drive!

API RISE serves and empowers formerly-incarcerated or -detained Asian and Pacific Islander community members to re-enter the free world. You can find out more at https://www.api-rise.org/, or read our mission in the image above. We are raising $20,000 to pilot culturally-competent case management for current and future members who are working through hurdles in housing, employment, and legal fees to stabilize their lives in re-entry. Recidivism rates can be as high as 44% for some members of the API community, and we want to create the ecosystem of supports and services necessary to re-integrate our formerly-incarcerated friends and family into our world.

Every dollar raised by this GoFundMe effort will go to API RISE directly.

One vehicle we've leveraged to bring awareness to our cause is theater. Together with Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristina Wong and our friends at East West Players, API RISE members have devised and performed FROM NUMBER TO NAME: BACK TO LIFE, an original piece of theater directly inspired by their experiences. We hope this 65-minute play -- live-streamed and viewable from anywhere in the world August 5-7 (with an afterlife via streamings and watch parties) -- will change common, incomplete, and harmful narratives that the public might have about folks who have been formerly incarcerated, especially those who are part of our Asian Pacific Islander community.

A SPECIAL IN-PERSON INVITATION

Moreover, for LA-area supporters, we're holding a special in-person screening of FROM NUMBER TO NAME at 7:30pm on Friday, August 19 in Historic Filipinotown, with members of the cast in attendance. To RSVP for this event, donate at this same GoFundME page AND RSVP HERE . For questions about the screening, contact the creator of this GoFundME page: Godfrey Plata, assistant director of FROM NUMBER TO NAME and API RISE advisory board member.

Feel free to spread this GoFundMe far and wide to other potential supporters!