The first time Mina Fedor spoke out about xenophobia she was twelve years old. School had just gone into COVID 19 lockdown and people were talking about the “China virus.” She was asked by her Asian Students Union advisor to address her school at a virtual youth assembly.

Fast forward six months. The elders in Mina’s community were being attacked. Kids were walking to school with sticks to protect themselves. She and her friends were called names. And Mina’s own mom was coughed at in public as she walked down the street not too far from their home in Oakland, CA. Everything became more personal.

That’s when she got the idea, Mina says, to get some of her friends together at a local park to speak out in March of 2021. She didn’t think it would draw a large turnout, but the day of the event, her parent volunteers stopped counting at 1,200! Mina understood she had touched on something vital. It was then and there that Asian American Pacific Islander Youth Rising (AYR) was born.

Since then, AYR has grown into 70 chapters in 15 states (and counting!), and this year their AAPI lesson campaign will reach 54,000 districts, schools, and out-of-school sites through a partnership with Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Every day AYR works to create positive change in communities across the country by advocating for cultural awareness about Asians in America and to dispel racial stereotypes and misconceptions, like the model minority and the perpetual foreigner syndrome.

The organization has received many accolades. It was honored at the United We Stand Summit by President Biden and was part of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. AYR has also been active in supporting an education bill and has been recognized as being a leader in social change activism. Mina was named a Time Magazine Kid of the Year finalist in 2021.

AYR is always seeking new chapter leaders and getting involved is as simple as sending them an email. Kids can write, make art, join public speaking opportunities, conduct interviews, teach the AYR history lesson, and more. You can also follow their work on Instagram @aapiyouthrising. The most important thing, they said when we interviewed them, is trying “to stay informed on current events and understand what xenophobia is.” 

We’ll let Mina and her colleagues Mimi Tuden, Saanvi Mukkara, and Johanna Anita Villanueva take it from here!

Hi Mina! Let’s jump right in. Tell us what it was like on that day you got friends together to speak out about your experience with xenophobia.

Mina: It was a bright and sunny day and I still remember all the speeches. Our youngest speaker was six years old. We read poems and we spoke about our hopes for the future. After we saw the impact of the rally, we decided to keep going. That’s how AAPI Youth Rising came together. 

We realized that small actions add up to make a difference and that, as kids, we can make a difference—one day at a time. That’s still the heart of our mission today. 

Interview continues here…

Mayday, mayday!” conjures images of a boat sinking into the ocean or an airplane falling from the sky. It is the international distress signal used by boats and aircraft and comes from the phonetic pronunciation of the French phrase “M’aidez,” or “Help me!” 

Mayday, spelled as one word, is entirely different from May Day, spelled as two.

May Day is, in practice, the opposite of a catastrophic disaster. Think song and dance, a celebration of agriculture, and all things growing—especially flowers. Originating from both the Roman festival Floralia, a weeklong festival honoring Flora, the goddess of youth and spring, and the Celtic holiday Beltane, celebrating “cross-quarter day,” the halfway point between the spring equinox and summer solstice, May Day is an ancient pagan festival celebrating the coming of summer. 

The maypole is the most iconic image of the holiday. Originally it was created from a living tree, usually birch, carefully chosen from the woods and pulled into the village by oxen adorned with flowers. After it was decorated with ribbons, people danced around the tree to “bring in May” and to pray for a productive crop season. Flowers are another important part of the holiday. Historically, houses and livestock, like the oxen dragging in the Maypole, were decorated with yellow flowers (yellow was believed to bring good luck and ward off Cailleach, the goddess of cold and winter). Cuttings from flowering trees were brought into the home, floral hoops were made, and people wore flowers in their hair. Finally, May baskets, filled with flowers, were left secretly on doorsteps. (A cool riff on that custom: someone would leave flowers, yell “May basket!” and then run away. If the person was caught, they owed the recipient a kiss!)

Dominic Wilcox believes we are ALL creative, it’s just that some of us—let’s face it, mostly adults—have buried our creativity deep under things like efficiency and dependability and maturity. But the London-based designer, artist, and creative genius practices what he preaches. His “No Place Like Home” GPS shoes can literally guide you home. Commissioned by the Global Footprint Project in Northamptonshire (a shoe-making mecca of the world), Dominic designed a shoe that has an embedded GPS system in the heel and mini LED lights inside the traditional brogue shoe holes that light up to direct you. 

Dominic, his shoes, and his awesome creativity are the brilliance behind Little Inventors, an arts-in-education organization that connects kid inventors with grown-up experts who bring kids’ inventions to life. Dominic began it in 2015, when he set up inventing workshops for kids in his native Sutherland county, in northern Scotland. Since then, Little Inventors has become a global project.