A San Jose State senior started a pay-what-you-can tutoring service in March to help students in English and writing and to spread awareness about the rise in hate crimes toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
Annlyle Diokno, a psychology and sociology major, said she started the nonprofit “Tutor for Love” after the March 16 mass shootings in Georgia in hopes to serve marginalized communities that might not have access to or can’t afford educational resources.
On March 16, eight people were killed, six of whom were Asian women and one was wounded in a series of mass shootings at three spas in Georgia, according to the March 26 New York Times Atlanta Shootings live updates.
“My way of fighting back was not by physically fighting, but by fighting behind the screen and by educating people on what is going on and what we should be doing,” Diokno said in a phone call.
Diokno said she also felt compelled to take action because of the rise in hate crimes.
“As an Asian woman I was fearful for not only my own life but the lives of my friends, my mother, my grandmother, my aunt,” Diokno said. “All these female Asians in my life who I love and I care about.”
Anti-Asian violence has been increasing nationwide since the start of the pandemic in 2020, according to Stop Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Hate, a San Francisco database created in March to record hate crime incidents.
There were 2,808 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination reported between March and December of 2020, according to a Stop AAPI Hate report. Out of these reported incidents, 1,226 took place in California, 708 in the Bay Area, 292 in San Francisco and 58 in San Jose.
Diokno said she uses 10 minutes before her session to inform students on current issues and provides ways in which they can be allies to the AAPI community.
“The way that I structured the program is in the first five-to-ten minutes, I give the students a little background of what's currently going on in society,” Diokno said.
Public health senior Sharon Quach said she appreciated the action Diokno has taken.
“I learned that one person can make a difference and even just take that initiative, something as simple as tutoring to make a difference,” Quach said in a Zoom call.
While there’s no obligation to pay for her tutoring service, the money given to Tutor for Love is donated to the Filipino Community Center in San Francisco.
The Filipino Community Center is a nonprofit that provides a space for Filipino families to access services, receive support and build community.
Diokno’s aunt, Anna Diokno, said while a lot of people donate money to services to help the AAPI community, her niece donating her time and knowledge to the community is invaluable.
“It's very very important that we talk about [and] bring awareness to people because I don't think when people are born, they automatically start hating other people,” Anna Diokno said over a phone call. “So the more awareness we bring to the community, the better we become.”
Diokno said Tutor for Love is only the beginning and the work she’s doing now is what she hopes to make a career of in the future.
“Your ignorance can be deadly, especially if you're not aware of what is going on in our society and if you're staying silent about it,” Diokno said. “That could be really deadly for a lot of people. which is why I want to spread awareness and public consciousness about the situation that is going on.”
