The Corp and the Georgetown University Asian American Student Association (AASA) launched a fundraiser to raise money for a local Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) LGBTQ group.  

All proceeds from The Corp’s sale of the Rainbow Fish drink, a flavored iced green tea, will go toward the Asian and Pacific Islander Queers United for Action (AQUA DC), a Washington, D.C.-based volunteer advocacy organization that supports queer and transgender members of the AAPI community through coalition building and support events. The fundraiser will run from March 16 to 31. 

Sales generated from the fundraiser will go toward AQUA DC’s operational expenses.

The Corp’s affinity group CorporAsian, a community space within the organization that supports The Corp’s AAPI members, helped organize the fundraiser. 

The frequent underrepresentation of AAPI LGBTQ community members in society was the primary motivation for the fundraiser, according to AASA co-president Keven Zhang (SFS ’22). 

“The LGBTQ experience is not something that’s usually super talked about in Asian American circles as much,” Zhang said in an interview with The Hoya. “This is choosing to look at a group that doesn’t always have the best representation. I think it’s going to just make people more aware of the whole thing.” 

AQUA DC supports increasing AAPI LGBTQ representation, Zhang said.  

The Corp and AASA decided on donating their proceeds to AQUA DC because of its focus on mental health issues, according to AASA co-head Emeline Ahn (COL ’23).  

“I think generally, mental health — there’s a huge stigma against that, but especially in the Asian community with generational problems,” Ahn said in an interview with The Hoya. “And also AQUA DC is a more local organization so we thought that our contributions, whatever we ended up giving to them, would be more impactful.” 

Representation of AAPI LGBTQ community members has often been overlooked in favor of the representation of non-white LGBTQ community members. Additionally, while LGBTQ and AAPI students often face unique challenges, little research has been done about the intersectional challenges LGBTQ AAPI students experience in their day-to-day lives. 

The Corp’s Vice President of People Operations Taotao Li (SFS ’22) said LGBTQ members of the AAPI community often feel stigmatized and struggle to find community. 

“Non-straight identities are very stigmatized, and are very stigmatized within the AAPI community and they often struggle to express their true selves or find a community within the AAPI community,” Li said in an interview with The Hoya.  

Li said the fundraiser supports The Corp’s values. 

“This is in line with The Corp’s mission of ‘students serving students,’ but also giving back to the Georgetown and D.C. community in ways that we can,” Li said.

In the past, AQUA DC has organized community programming events including hiking trips, book clubs, game nights, support groups and speaker engagement events. 

The Rainbow Fish drink was chosen for the fundraiser because it best captured the goals of the event, according to Ahn.  

“It was symbolic of the organization that we’re supporting. But also that the weather’s getting warmer, we knew when around the timeline we wanted to roll this out and so we thought to boost proceeds, it would be a good iced tea drink,” Ahn said. 

Li recognizes that in the past The Corp has received criticism for neglecting to reach out to student groups beyond hiring outreach events. 

“A very valid criticism that we’ve gotten in the past is, ‘You kind of reach out to groups to do hiring outreach events, and then that’s kind of it,’” Li said. “So we’re hoping that this, in some form, constitutes a meaningful follow-up to more durable relationships with campus groups.” 

AQUA DC did not respond to The Hoya’s request for comment in time for publication. 

Although The Corp and AASA have not worked with AQUA DC before, the groups look forward to strengthening their relationship with the organization in the future, according to Zhang. 

“We knew that they were super active and we could see where exactly money would be going towards, which we really liked,” Zhang said. “We’re hoping to keep doing stuff with them in the future.”