STOCKTON, Calif. — At San Joaquin Delta College, they are celebrating new initiatives in light of Filipino American Heritage Month that are designed to help students succeed.
Debra Louie, a counselor and professor at Delta College, said many students of Filipino and other south Asian descent are first generation and low income students.
"Sometimes, they're really not noticed in terms of their needs, in terms of educationally, in terms of academically, in terms of culturally. We just felt underserved, not really having much attention or resources put on them," Louie said.
She attributes part of that to the "model minority myth." It refers to the perception of universal success among Asian Americans.
"People kind of want to put things in neat little boxes and move on and not realize, well, there's some other things that need to be addressed," Louie said.
Louie said the numbers on campus also help tell that story.
"90% of Vietnamese are low income. 92% of the Cambodian students are low income," she said.
However, more money and resources are coming to help. Delta College received a nearly $2 million grant to fund programs serving first-generation and low-income Asian American and Native American students as well as $16 million in ongoing state funding to support such programs.
"Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, they're not one monolithic group," Louie said.
Over the weekend, Delta College hosted a Filipino Heritage Festival where they renamed a building after a prominent local Filipina American and Stockton native, Dawn Mabalon. She was scholar and a historian known for her book Stockton's Little Manilla.
Louie said that feeling of being seen and being recognized can go a long way in encouraging students to get involved on campus and to graduate.
"Students could get a sense of strengthening of their identity, who they are, where they came from, some of the struggles of generations before building upon that identity," Louie said.
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