With an estimated interracial marriage rate of 60 percent, the Nikkei community has become increasingly rich and diverse. The average Nikkei under 30 years of age is more likely to be a person of mixed heritage than a monoracial Nikkei. She may have a last name of Lee, Johnson-Aizawa, Yamamoto or Garcia, and her connection and level of volunteerism in the Nikkei community will undoubtedly vary depending on her experiences with Nikkei student and community-based organizations like yours. Although diversity is widely recognized as important to student organizing, what does it really mean for the way your organization operates? Why is it important to you and how can your organization develop an inclusive environment? How can Nikkei, on both an individual and community level, develop meaningful opportunities for Hapas to participate and shape the community?

Kimiko Roberts of Hapa Issues Forum, a non-profit organization that has been providing multiracial diversity trainings for the past 9 years, will be putting on an interactive workshop that will discuss these very issues and provide suggestions for student outreach and programming that are relevant to your student group.

This workshop will center around discussing and coming up with models for opening up communities to sexuality/queer issues. To create a more free-flowing discussion, the workshop will be student-run, starting with small group breakout sessions. During the breakout sessions, students will participate in role-playing activities to help identify instances of bias against homosexuals as well as how to deal with sexuality in general. After the breakouts, students will coalesce in an open forum to discuss homosexuality in the Nikkei Community, and how the Community can embrace these issues. Discussion questions include: How can queer youth interact with the rest of the JA community? Is there a Homosexual JA community? What are the views of Issei, Nisei, and Sansei etc. parents/friendsı on homosexuality? What is the future of the homosexual Japanese American?

When they originated several decades ago, the Japanese American Basketball Leagues were created to address the growing need to build a sense of community among Nikkei. In the present, many have said that the Leagues have shifted to become more competitively oriented‹ moving away from the Leaguesı original purposes. Speakers will introduce the past and present goals of the leagues and how these goals have addressed or ignored the growing diversity of the Nikkei Community. In between listening to the speakers, participants will have an opportunity to discuss the directions the Leagues are taking, as well as formulate a mission statement to align the Leaguesı purposes with Nikkei Community needs.

Japanese on a Global level: In this workshop, students will explore the experience of Nikkei youth in Latin America. In particular they will look at models of youth organizing developed in Peru taking the example of the youth group, Movimiento de Menores AELU. The mystique and methodology of this group has spread throughout Latin America. With this model, they will discover that youth-lead participation and change in oneıs community is not just a possibility but also a reality.

Romy Chavez and Steven Ropp

High School-aged youth must contend with a unique set of issues when considering how they can have an impact on the future of the community. Parental permission, transportation, financing, and the perception that they are too young to have valid opinions, are among the challenges, which affect a High School youthıs ability to have a voice within our community. The High School workshop will explore the ways in which high school aged youth are currently involved in the Japanese American community and identify issues that are specific to this age group. During the workshop, participants will determine ways in which they can increase their involvement and have a greater overall impact on the community.

Jon Osaki, Japanese Community Youth Council

Japanese American history has always been looked at through the lens of the Interment Camps. For a while, Nikkei fell under the stereotype of the "quiet" Americans who reluctantly entered the camps without a word of protest or resistance. To Nikkei today, being raised in an era of activism, passivity represents something negative, synonymous with giving up or giving in. One wonders how modern Nikkei can appreciate a history to which they can hardly relate.

In this workshop, Professor Lon Kurashige, Professor of History at the University of Southern California, will give a presentation and host a discussion on new research and perspectives in Japanese American history and how it relates to the youth today. The workshop seeks to inspire enthusiasm for new Nikkei scholarship as well as to determine where the scholarship of Nikkei history is headed.

Having planted its roots over 100 years ago, the Nikkei Community in the United States has completely assimilated into American society. Yet, with the term, Nikkei, derived from "Nihon" (Japan), one wonders to what degree traditional Japanese culture survives in the Community today. Chris Aihara from the Japanese American Culture and Community Center of Los Angeles will discuss the value of preserving culture and how others in the Nikkei Community have addressed this task.

Chris Aihara of the JACCCC will moderate a panel of speakers and performers including, Hirokasu Kosaka- a Buddhist priest specializing in classical art, Zen archery, and painting, Brian Yamami-a Taiko drummer, Nobuku Mimoto-an older generation artist, and Traci Kato-Kiriyama- writer and performer from the production group hereandnow. Participants will have ample opportunities to interact with the speakers and performers and also to dialogue among themselves on the value of preserving Japanese culture.

San-, Yon- or Go-, What's in a -Sei? Generation Gap in the Nikkei Community Do you sometimes feel like your parents don't understand you? Does the fact you don't speak Japanese fluently ever come up within your family? Is there a distance between you and your grandparents? Can there be a generation gap between you and your family members? This workshop will take a briefly explore the historical perspective of Japanese immigration to the United States as a means to contextually understand the different periods of time in which different generations were raised.

Daren Mooko of the Pomona College, Asian American Resource Center, AA Youth and awareness

San Francisco's Japan Town and Los Angelesıs Little Tokyo, like many other ethnic centers represented for Japanese Americans a place they could call home. Yet, as time passed, Japanese Americans began to move away from the "J-Towns," leaving these once bustling areas as shells of their former selves. Dean Toji and Reverend Mark Nakagawa will be speaking on the origins and history behind the Japan towns and their roles in the Nikkei Community. After a quick introduction, the workshop will shift into a discussion on why Japan towns are disappearing and what businesses are still prospering. The discussion aims to teach the participants how they can take an active role in and how they can meet the changing needs of their local "J-town."