For three weeks, dozens of students from the Puget Sound region came together and celebrated the International District, community-building, leadership — and made a lot of friends along the way. Photos by Ina Dash    

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By Erik Wagner SYLP student Identity is an interesting thing. Struggling to find our identities can be difficult. In fact, it can be completely miserable and utterly confusing. How do we find our identities? But before we discuss this, we must define what identity is in the first place. The dictionary defines identity as “the [...]

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By Vicki Tang SYLP student The words “Dude, stop being so Asian” have become typical words in a young Asian American’s vocabulary. However, most people don’t think about what the expression really means. Of those who do, almost no one thinks about its implications. Being Asian literally means belonging to or having ancestry from the [...]

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By Jessica Lee SYLP student Born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam, she came to the United States all by herself when she was only 17 years old. With no extra money and knowing no Vietnamese people in the States, she learned to speak English and graduated from Nathan Hale High School only two years after [...]

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By Karen Liang SYLP student Words can be extremely powerful, and when they are used negatively, they can be harmful. There are many offensive words out there these days, but one racial slur that has been with me for a while is the word chink. The word chink can be used to offend someone. You [...]

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By Kabrina Wright SYLP student The Summer Youth Leadership Program, or SYLP for short, is a program organized by the Northwest Asian Weekly Foundation, a nonprofit organization of the Northwest Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post. SYLP is a three-week program designed for Asian American teens to find out what it means to be Asian [...]

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By Stina Shen SYLP student The three weeks of SYLP Was not what I expected it to be! I started nervous as hell, But it went really swell. I’m sure participants would agree. Through a ton of awkward ice-breakers, I found me some kindly friend-makers. We promptly got down To exploring Chinatown. We became master [...]

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By Kevin Fong SYLP student You might be wondering, what is the Summer Youth Leadership Program? Well, it is an amazing program filled with fun learning experiences. There are so many things that happen in this program that it is almost impossible to name them all. You get to learn about what it takes to [...]

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By Alex Tien SYLP student Editor’s note: Alex Tien chose to write a fictionalized news story based on some true facts for his SYLP essay. Sixteen-year-old Chinese American Bob Chang attended the Global Starcraft League (GSL) in Korea and won the GSL Code S, which shocked the whole Starcraft (video game) community. During the final [...]

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By Ivy Wong SYLP student Everybody has a dream, whether we are young or old. For some, it is to become a professional sports player. Others may want to become a teacher. Some might want to be a therapist. Today, inspiring Asian musicians who dream of achieving global fame like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber [...]

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By Sarah Tu SYLP student Too often, we overlook the opportunities to reach out and do something nice for someone else. Simple acts of kindness or appreciation that could have far reaching effects are thus kept hidden from view. Saying “thank you” is stifled for fear of self embarrassment or because we are too self-centered, [...]

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By Tony Le SYLP student Change. It happens to all of us. Whether it be a change in hairstyle or a change in character, everyone changes. Change will not always be a good thing, nor will it always be bad. Sometimes, it may be so slow and subtle that it will occur without you noticing. [...]

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By Addison Wright SYLP student This year, I participated in the Summer Youth Leadership Program, which is run by Northwest Asian Weekly. I am going to be a senior at Newport High School next year. I play tennis and I dabble in other sports as well. It was really fun to get to know people [...]

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By William Zhou SYLP student I was one of the older students in the Summer Youth Leadership Program, but age didn’t stop me from meeting new friends. About two months ago, when I graduated from high school, I realized that I probably won’t see some of those people ever again. However, SYLP is sort of [...]

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By Michelle Wagner SYLP student When people first meet or see me, I’ve been told that it’s usually difficult to tell what ethnicity I am, and eventually, people ask me about it. I’ve been told that I look Caucasian, Mexican, anything except Asian. To answer the question, I am half Chinese and a mix of [...]

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By Daniel Luke SYLP student Over the past two to three decades, the rapid growth of modernization across the globe has caused much more value to be put into the educational system and technology. Living side-by-side with this fast-paced society, things became very hectic. However, if we look beyond the past 20 to 30 years, [...]

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