As a part of Asian American Health Initiative’s evolving efforts in capacity building, AAHI has formed the Asian American Center of Excellence (AACE). The goal of the AACE is to support Asian American-serving community organizations in developing and increasing their capacity to successfully provide health, wellness, and social support programs and services. The AACE is a premiere resource to Asian American community organizations to improve technical skills related to organizational sustainability, such as data collection and analysis, evaluation, program planning, and partnership building among others.
The services and offerings of AACE will be guided by the World Health Organization’s definition of capacity building:
“Capacity building is the development of knowledge, skills, commitment, structures, systems and leadership to enable effective health promotion…[with] actions to improve health at three levels: the advancement of knowledge and skills among practitioners; the expansion of support and infrastructure for health promotion in organizations, and; the development of cohesiveness and partnerships for health in communities.”
In line with this, AACE’s services include:
- Micro-grants for AAPI-serving organizations to build organizational capacity
- Bi-weekly curated email digest for AAPI leaders
- Networking opportunities for leaders of AAPI-serving organizations
- Data roundtables for AAPI leaders
- Technical assistance workshops
- One-on-One strategy consultations