Daughters of Vietnamese refugees are using their personal pain to start a non-profit and build a space helping their communities move forward.
Dr. Connie Wun and Jenny Wun are co-founders of AAPI Women Lead, an organization committed to ending violence and uplifting stories of AANHPI girls, women and non-binary communities.
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WATCH HERE"AAPI Women Lead is a movement," Connie said.
It's a movement that came from learning how to survive overseas and at home. The sisters' parents left Vietnam before the end of the war after being forced to leave their homeland and come to the U.S. as refugees.
The sisters said their childhood was anything but normal.
"It was violent at home," Jenny said. "There was a lot of struggle between our parents, culture differences -- there was domestic violence."
As the eldest and living in a home with violence, Connie had to provide for the family, even if it meant doing something that society looked down upon as a sex worker.
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"I am increasingly open about having been in the sex trade and I am increasingly open because there are so many stigmas," Connie said. "I want to make sure that people respect us and understand why we were even in the trade -- and a lot of times it is to get out of poverty."
Connie started advocacy work as a teenager working at gender-based violence centers. She got a PhD at UC Berkeley. It was there Connie said she experienced various forms of sexual harassment. Jenny left her job in the corporate world after also experiencing sexual harassment.
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SIGN UP The cycle of violence repeated itself. So, Jenny went to her big sister and asked "what do we do?"
Jenny used her savings and credit card to launch AAPI Women Lead in 2018.
"I believe in us. I believe in ending violence," Jenny said. "Let's see what we can do and people came."
Last year, AAPI Women Lead released a first of its kind of study on racial and gender violence called 'Naming our rage, building our power.' The organization hired, trained and paid researchers for the study from six different organizations across the U.S. and its territories.
"They collected data, they collected each other's stories, and then they found out the connections between gender violence, climate crisis, deportation, poverty, housing crisis," Connie said. "The more that we're able to build community together, the more that we're able to be together, the more that's a part of our resistance."
"In this research project, it's about us getting to name it ... somebody telling our story on our behalf, and then when we tell our stories, they are not the same," Jenny said.
To learn about AAPI Women Lead's research and programs, click here.
