The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has chosen to highlight Asian Pacific Americans as one of the three themes for the 2010 Folklife Festival. The Festival will be held from June 23 through July 5, 2010.

But organizers need to receive donation pledges by November 1, with payment received no later than January 2010. If they do not get commitments of at least $80,000 by November 1, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife will scale down the APA portion of the Festival, or defer the program to another year. None of us wants this to happen, so please do everything you can to make this historic event a reality.

The Folklife Festival is considered the premiere annual event in Washington and is attended by many lawmakers, opinion leaders, business leaders, and their families. Each year, about 1.5 million people attend the Festival, 6 million visit the website, and 40 million hear of it through national and international media coverage.

We encourage all APA communities to contribute generously to this historic event. However, for the larger groups (Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Korean), we hope that you can raise $40,000 each from your network of nonprofits, individuals, and corporations.

A few nonprofits made commitments of $1,200 to $5,000, and one recently retired federal worker made an individual contribution of $10,000–so we believe that these goals are well within reach.

Donors should contact APA Program Director Dr. Franklin Odo at odof@si.edu or they can email Development Consultant Francey Youngberg at Francey.youngberg@verizon.net or call her, (202) 487-8160. Francey looks forward to working with you on your fundraising goals.

For programming questions related to the Festival, you can contact the curator of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s 2010 Program on Asian Pacific Americans, Phil Nash, at p.nash@nashinteractive.com or (301) 263-0217.