About Us

YURI creates educational resources and experiences for cultural institutions, teachers, and PK-12 students. With a specialty in creating curricula on Asian American histories and stories, we aim to teach the power of coalition building in order to create understanding across diverse communities. By expanding the historical narrative, we believe knowledge can create bridges rather than division. We develop pedagogies that deepen comprehension of our society, cultivate empathy, and encourage learners to draw connections between history and the present.

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Knowing history gives communities the wisdom for building bridges today.

UCLA Asian American Studies Gidra Photo Collection

Our project is named after Yuri Kochiyama, a lifelong activist who embodied the meaning of coalition building. As a young girl who was incarcerated with her family and approximately 120,000 other Americans of Japanese ancestry, she understood the meaning of injustice. This experience shaped her compassion to lead and work with communities of various backgrounds in their struggles for change. Her collaboration with Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, advocacy for Puerto Rican independence, the pursuit of redress and reparations for the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and support of the ethnic studies movements in universities and colleges are all an inspiration to us. Yuri forged connections and built bridges between communities.