Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with taste!
In this critical moment, showing up for our values means coming together in community. Join us for a joyful and nourishing daytime-family-friendly event in support of immigrant and refugee survivors of violence. Come celebrate with us for AAPI Heritage Month as Asian Women's Shelter and the Asian Art Museum host an exciting cooking competition—celebrating our rich culture, flavors, and community presence! Share your story, and be part of this vibrant culinary showcase!
SF Asian Women’s Shelter and Asian Art Museum host Jook Off, Cook Off - Part cooking competition part celebration, all community. Join us on Saturday May 17th, 2025
WHAT: A comfort food showdown celebrating jook — the beloved rice porridge known across Asia by many names. Come mingle, taste, vote for your favorites, and honor the healing power of food and community. You’ll help determine our People’s Choice awards and also help our special guest judges proclaim the winners of the 2025 Jook-Off Cook-Off!
WHEN: Saturday, May 17 | 11AM–2PM (Tastings & voting close at 1:15PM; winners announced at 1:45PM)
WHO’S COOKING: Sample a variety of creative takes from local community and professional chefs!
Palette Tea House
Likha
Fins & Feathers
Outta Sight Pizza
Abaca
GaiNoi Thai Street Food
Understory
Jook Up Stars
WHERE: Asian Art Museum | Fully wheelchair accessible | Families welcome!
Hosted by Asian Women’s Shelter in partnership with the Asian Art Museum, this event centers community, culture, and comfort.
Only 50 spots left! Don’t miss your chance to savor, celebrate, and cast your vote at this one-of-a-kind comfort food cook-off. First come, first served — grab your tickets now!
Stand With Survivors. Uplift Our Advocates. Celebrate Our Community.
This May, as we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month we’re proud to join the national #GiveInMay campaign — uplifting AAPI-led nonprofits like ours that serve the most vulnerable in our communities.
Through every challenge, you — our community — have stood with us. And in this moment, we lift up the incredible our incredible advocates, volunteers and community who continue to show up, no matter the obstacles. Even as we face devastating funding cuts, a shortage of accessible housing, and the barriers immigrant survivors face in accessing in-language, culturally rooted support — our staff and language advocates keep showing up with compassion and tireless commitment. They work every day to find housing, connect survivors to services, and make sure no one is dismissed because of language or cultural differences.
Because of this community — because of you — survivors are finding safety, healing, and hope.
This May, will you stand with us again?
🌸 Give — your donation helps keep life-saving services open
🌸 Share — help spread the word and celebrate AAPI community care
🌸 Fundraise — rally friends and family to help sustain this work
Every act of care reminds our advocates and survivors: you are not alone. And every donation through Give In May makes AWS eligible for bonus prizes based on donors and funds raised — helping us stretch your support even further! Please join us. Give. Share. Fundraise. Stand with us. 💜
SF AWS’s Korean talk line is open!
In addition to Asian Women’s Shelter’s multilingual crisis line for survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and/or female genital cutting, SF AWS has launched its Korean Talk Line with support from the Korean American Community Foundation of San Francisco! The Korean Talk Line is a confidential phone resource for Korean survivors of violence and those supporting them. Click here to learn more on our new K-PEACE (Koreans Preventing and Ending Abuse through Community Engagement) page.
“Shame dies when stories are told in safe places. ”
Over half a million women, girls, and children assigned female at birth are affected by or at risk of being affected by FGM/C at any given time. Yet few resources exist to support survivors in their journeys toward healing and protecting future generations from this practice. With leadership from Sahiyo, AWS’s crisis line is open to support people affected by FGM/C (Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting) in Asian and other communities. Trained advocates staff the lines and are knowledgeable on FGM/C and the cultural and social connotations in which it continues. They are ready to provide a listening ear, care and support, and work with you to consider physical and/or emotional safety planning if needed.
“I was so happy to know that Sahiyo is collaborating with the Asian Women’s Shelter to support women who suffer from the trauma of FGC and need an empathetic ear. I have worked in the domestic violence (DV) space for a couple of decades, and this is the first time I am seeing recognition of this trauma in the sphere of DV. I am so proud of both organizations and hope collaboration expands with other organizations throughout the U.S. and abroad.”
- Sakina Sharp
“You women are a precious gift to me. Your faces are like a mirror reflecting myself, saying ‘I believe in you. You can make it. You do not deserve to live in fear and violence.’”
Together for love and community,
together against hate and violence.
AWS promotes respect within and across communities. aws stands for love and safety.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being a steady stream of care in the face of violence. You are outrage with vision. You are love with follow-through. Thank you for taking action and showing generosity toward Asian Women’s Shelter and similar organizations working for peace, justice and healing for Asian women, families and communities. We see you and we love you.
You are finding your own survivable balance of seeking and hiding from the news, reeling in your own responses, and imagining the minute-to-minute realities others are living in. You are scared for your parents and grandparents, and worrying about best friends, neighbors and sisters. You are sick from the predictable but unstomachable statements of “he was having a bad day,” from those who proudly promote hate.
We know the heart and soul of our families and communities. We know the grit and defiance in our grandparents and the steel in the backbones of our mothers working multiple jobs for a success they will never see. We move forward with all of us.