Organization History & Mission
The MinKwon Center for Community Action was established in 1984 as the Young Korean American Service & Education Center (YKASEC) to meet the needs and concerns of the Korean American community. Since our founding, we have made a profound presence through various grassroots organizing, education, and advocacy initiatives that address important community issues, including immigration policies, voter rights, and cultural awareness. The MinKwon Center places a special emphasis on meeting the needs of our marginalized community members, including youth, elderly, recent immigrants, low-income residents, and limited-English-proficient residents.
MinKwon empowers the Korean American community, and works with the wider Asian American and immigrant communities, to achieve economic and social justice for all. We accomplish this mission by raising awareness of immigrant rights, ensuring access to resources and legal services, raising political consciousness and mobilizing a collective voice to effect systemic change.
Job Description
The Education Fellow would work under the supervision of the Communications and Education Director to create an educational curriculum, which will be the first of its kind at the MinKwon Center. One of MinKwon’s goals is to develop educated civic participants in our community that are:
- Naturalized citizens
- Registered voters
- Understand the issues that impact the community and their root causes
- Understand U.S. and Korean history in the context of current issues
- Possess knowledge of the political decision-making process
The Education Fellow would create the education curriculum that would specifically further the last three outcomes listed above which can be used for our community members, including our DREAMers and youth and staff/board. The MinKwon Center plans to use the education curriculum to ultimately develop leaders within the community.
The fellowship would be roughly divided into two parts: (1) Year One – collection of information and creation of the education curriculum with modules and lesson plans, (2) Year Two – implementation; beta-test the lesson plans and making adjustments and edits, run train-the-trainer sessions, assessment of the project.
Job Responsibilities
The Community Organizer would have the following responsibilities:
- Create education curriculum with discrete lesson plans that focus on history (US and Korean), key issues (e.g. comprehensive immigration reform, housing, etc.), U.S. political system (e.g. legislative process, electoral system, etc.), and other relevant topics
- Project management of the roll-out of the curriculum, including organizing education sessions and/or community forums
- Train-the-trainers so that other staff at MinKwon are able to run these educational sessions
- Support the organization’s work as a whole and participate in organization-wide events as appropriate (e.g. annual gala, organization-wide rallies, etc.).
Job Requirements
- Interest and/or experience in working on social justice and immigrants’ rights issues required.
- Excellent communication skills (written, verbal) required.
- Ability to work well both independently and in teams required.
- Experience in curriculum development highly preferred.
- Master’s degree in education, humanities, social science preferred.
- Familiarity with Korean and Asian American communities preferred.
- Experience in teaching preferred.
- Experience working in diverse communities preferred.
How to Apply
Please prepare a detailed cover letter and resume describing your interest in the organization and the position and email to:
Ju-Bum Cha
Education and Communications Director
NOTE: Make subject line of email “Application for Education Fellow – [YOUR FIRST NAME, LAST NAME]”
