This blog post is adapted from a speech delivered by Isabelle H. Leighton, New Breath Foundation board member, at the organization’s annual fundraiser in May 2025. It has been edited for clarity and flow.
At New Breath Foundation, May is more than Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. It’s a time to reflect on who we are: not as a monolith, but as a mosaic of histories, identities, and lived experiences. It’s also a time to recommit to why we give.
As we gather for our annual celebration, Collective Liberation 2025, I would like to share why I give — of my time, resources, and heart — to the New Breath Foundation as a proud board member.
Lessons Learned in the Central Valley
I grew up in California’s Central Valley in the 1990s, in over-policed neighborhoods where structural violence in the form of poverty, racism, and neglect shaped our daily lives. My friends and I – Black, Mexican, White (BMW), and Asian – played in the streets of our apartment complex, sometimes ending the night watching someone’s parent or sibling get in trouble with the cops.
As a child, it felt like getting in trouble with the police was my fate as well, and all I could do was duck and hide – survive until I could maybe get out. I did move away from my hometown after college, but I carried those early memories with me.
It wasn’t until I was older that I began to understand the racial systems that shaped all of our lives as kids in the Central Valley. Even within the Asian American community, I felt different growing up.
Not Your Model Minority
As biracial Taiwanese Americans, my brothers and I never fit the “model minority” mold. Many of the Taiwanese families we knew came to the U.S. for advanced degrees or engineering jobs. Our story didn’t fit. When I was younger, our circumstances didn’t make sense to me. Why were we poor? I understood much later that my parents – from different cultural backgrounds – each struggled with unaddressed mental health needs, which affected our family’s financial health. Cultural stigma, systemic failures, and lack of resources caused silence, confusion, and shame.
Even though my story never fit the model minority myth, those stereotypes can feel like failing at “being Asian.”
But the truth is, the Asian American community has always been more complex than a stereotype. Our diversity is rarely explored in mainstream stories. I rarely hear stories of our Hmong, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, Samoan, Native Hawaiian, Burmese, and yes, Taiwanese histories, too. As a whole, we have much to celebrate, but we have also faced many hardships – incarceration, deportation, and families torn apart. Our people contribute so much. We are poor and working-class, survivors and leaders. We are not a monolith.
Reconnecting Through Healing
After spending many years in NYC, I moved back to California, to Fresno, and lived just five minutes from my mom. Returning to my hometown, I began to hear about the kinds of grassroots community organizing groups that I didn’t know existed back home when I was in NYC or when I was a child. A few years ago, the New Breath Foundation invited me to join its board. I was so honored and felt this was a way to reconnect with my roots. To find my own way to heal.
As someone who has fundraised for social justice for over two decades, I can honestly say: I’ve never seen an organization like New Breath.
New Breath believes that no one should be discarded. While society often crushes the hopes and dreams of those impacted by some of America’s cruelest systems, like incarceration and deportation, New Breath takes the opposite approach. We choose to invest deeply in these individuals, believing in their leadership and in the power of keeping our communities whole.
Why Giving Matters, Especially Now
There’s a misconception that AANHPI communities don’t give, but the truth is more complex. AANHPI giving often happens in informal, community-based ways. Systemic barriers often discourage us from stepping into philanthropy. We’re taught to keep our heads down, to not talk about struggle, and to quietly succeed.
But now is not the time for silence.
We need our communities to give boldly. The challenges we face – incarceration, deportation, racism, and poverty – are not just individual problems. They are systemic, and they require systemic solutions.
At New Breath, we give some of the largest first-time grants (ranging from $150,000 to $200,000) to AANHPI-led organizations. Our grantees are organizers, healers, and former lifers. They work for family reunification, reentry of formerly incarcerated people back into our communities, cultural healing, and community safety – not through punishment, but through care. Our grantees are visionary community leaders who believe in the power of our people, no matter what we’ve been through. New Breath is proud to invest in such people who believe in the human spirit.
Together, we’re building what the world tells us is impossible: a future where no one is disposable. Even in the face of incarceration, deportation, and the intergenerational trauma rooted in war and forced migration, we still choose peace. We choose hope. We choose healing.
We Give Because We Believe
I give to New Breath because I believe that true hope and healing come from deeply investing in the courageous leaders working toward our collective liberation. It’s through their vision, strength, and commitment that we begin to mend the wounds of today.
Right now, communities across race, ethnicity, national origin, language, and religion are facing the threat of being disappeared, othered, and locked away. The leaders New Breath invests in aren’t just fighting for their own communities; they are also fighting for the greater good. They’re fighting for all of us.
Just like when I was a kid, playing with friends from every background, I’ve always known: we are in this together. Our liberation is bound to one another.
If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll give, too.
Join us. Become a sustaining donor. Build with us toward a future rooted in justice, dignity, and collective liberation.
To our staff, grantees, honorees, and supporters – thank you for walking with us.
Together, we breathe. Together, we rise.
—
Isabelle H. Leighton
Board Member, New Breath Foundation
