ORI’s leadership development program operates at three levels

1. Grassroots leaders (youth, elders, first generation immigrants, working people) gain civic/political education, leadership skills, and language access to engage in civic processes and local decision-making.
2. Community organizers receive coaching, mentoring, and organizing training to coordinate campaigns, coalitions, and leadership development for community members.
3. Organizational and ecosystem leaders (boards, executive directors, coalitions) receive governance and organizational development support to sustain leadership and collectively influence policy

Toward realizing our mission

ORI works in close partnership with NAKASEC, one of the few progressive national Asian American networks that:

• Supports a multi-state grassroots base engaged in community organizing, civic engagement, and leadership development
• Has been seeding grassroots bases in additional states as a strategy toward building power
• Focuses primarily on immigrant justice
• Consistently brings multigenerational grassroots leaders together within multiethnic and multiracial coalitions to win the liberation of all peoples.

Our Story

ORI was founded by Asian American veteran movement leaders with 25–40 years of experience in leadership development, organizing, and organizational capacity-building. Three of them serve as board of directors and two serve as staff members. Drawing on decades of practice, they recognized that this moment requires more than episodic training or reactive advocacy. It requires long-term investment in leadership as community infrastructure, embedded within organizations, sustained across generations, and aligned across movements shaping the social and economic determinants of health.