Dear Friends and Supporters,
To kick off Women's History Month, Womankind is proud and honored to celebrate a major milestone: 40 years of service!
In 1982, a student from Hunter College's School of Social Work rallied a small group of impassioned community activists to address the lack of services available to Chinese immigrant women experiencing domestic violence in New York City. History was made when the New York Asian Women’s Center (later renamed to Womankind), was born—an organization for Asian women by Asian women during a time when nothing of its kind existed on the East Coast.
Since our founding, we have grown tremendously, but stayed close to our roots, working with and for marginalized communities. In doing so, we have proudly served as a bedrock for New York’s Asian communities. Our highlights include:
The vision of our founders and all those that followed have guided the organization forward—through good times and challenging ones. This year alone, we've lost one too many members to utterly senseless violence including Michelle Go and Christina Yuna Lee. For every incident of anti-Asian violence that we hear about, many others go unreported on the news and social media. And as we share this milestone news with you, war is raging in Ukraine—an experience that many in the immigrant and pan-Asian diaspora are painfully familiar with. As we reflect and look to the future, we reaffirm our commitment to anti-violence, anti-oppression and anti-racism work as central to our mission, vision, and goals:
Womankind has persevered through the ups and downs of 1980’s America to today. We could not have done this work without the commitment and passion of staff, board, supporters, and volunteers—past and present—including you. Thank you for your contribution to Womankind’s history. We ask you to join us, not only in celebrating our big 4-0, but also in building for the next 40 years! Please be on the lookout for our 2022 events and announcements as we mark this milestone year in service of survivors of gender-based violence.
With great joy,
Yasmeen Hamza
Womankind CEO