Asian Americans are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States. In the State of Illinois, this diverse and often over-looked community of 473,000 includes Americans of Bangladeshi, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Pakistani, Thai, Tibetan and Vietnamese descent.

The Asian American Institute was established in 1992 as a pan-Asian not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization. Its mission is to empower the Asian American community through advocacy, utilizing research, education, and coalition building. 

Specifically, the Institute works to:

• improve cooperation and mutual understanding by bringing ethnic Asian American communities together
  

• raise the visibility of the Asian American community and spotlight its concerns so that elected officials, policy makers and the general public will understand
  

• gather and disseminate data about Asian American communities

Our Board of Directors, Advisory Council, Community Leadership Council, Research Advisory Council, and staff are essential to the operations of the Institute.

The Asian American Institute provides fiscal and programmatic management and support for the following projects:

ACON (The Asian Community Online Network) is an Asian American and Pacific Islander community network that connects concerned individuals with other nonprofits and community based organizations. ACON's network is composed of regional and national web/e-mail groups along with community organization websites. ACON also offers a website hosting service which enables organizations to setup and maintain their websites on their own with very little technical knowledge. For more information, see http://www.acon.org/.

SAAPRI (South Asian American Policy and Research Institute) is a non-profit, research institute established in 2002 by a group of committed South Asian American academics and community activists in the Chicago area to facilitate, through the use of cutting edge research, the formulation of equitable and socially responsible policy affecting South Asian Americans. Our fiscal agent is the Asian American Institute. SAAPRI is compiling a report that seeks to explain the significance of the 2000 census figures, with a special focus on Illinois, and the opportunities and challenges they present to all Americans. The report, due to be published in the Fall of 2003 with support from the Asian American Institute and Chicago Public School’s Office of Language and Cultural Education, will help community organizations, political leaders and social activists in the South Asian and Asian American communities to further their agendas and bring about much-needed political, social and economic reform for their constituencies. For more information, see http://saapri.org/