LMC honors API roots

A. R. Broom, twitter.com/AlexanderRBroom

The Los Medanos College Asian Pacific Islander Heritage committee will be hosting an API Heritage Day Wednesday, April 25 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Room L-109.

“The Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Day event is open to all on campus. It is an event to celebrate Asian Pacific Islander (API) culture and community building,” said Melissa Pon MESA Counselor at LMC.

In the two and a half years that Pon has worked at LMC, she noticed there were no events celebrating Asian Pacific Islander Heritage and culture and decided to change that.

“This event has hopes to bring together our campus community of API students, staff, faculty and campus friends,” said Pon.

Teresa Archaga, said activities and offerings such as guided origami, a Chinese calculator tutorial, food from different regions and a dance performance by one of LMC’s counselors can be expected at the event.

In addition to those, Archaga said, “There is going to be music. There might be some Chinese character drawing lessons, Chinese checkers, some popular Asian games, there’s different kinds, including puzzles.”

Part of the inspiration to put on the event was the large portion of students on campus who identified as Asian Pacific Islanders.

“We found, when we were doing some research on populations on campus that about 20 percent of our students recognize as Asian Pacific Islander or those regions,” said Archaga.

The event is being put on by the API Heritage committee in conjunction with Student Life.

“We have a small planning team that has been volunteering their time to plan the event. Student Life staff have been great to collaborate with on this event,” said Pon.

Pon said the main goal she hopes the event will accomplish is a strengthening of the sense of community.

In addition to community building Pon said, “One of our goals with the API Heritage Day event is to attract students who are interested in starting an API Club on campus.”

“Once we find students who are interested in creating an API Club and being club leaders, we can then collaborate more with student organizers on events,” Pon continued.