Advancing community development through strategic collaboration

Established to address systemic inequities, PIP designs and implements evidence-based programs that empower underserved communities and facilitate measurable, sustainable development.

Our Mission

Making Pacific Islanders visible in the data.

Pacific Islanders for Progress is a statewide grassroots advocacy coalition working to change a persistent reality: our communities remain among the most underserved and underrepresented in California's education, workforce, and civic systems — yet are too often rendered invisible in the data and policies that shape opportunity.

We bring together community leaders, educators, researchers, and advocates to advance accountability, strengthen public education systems, and ensure Pacific Islander communities are fully supported to pursue postsecondary education and pathways that lead to their flourishing.

What isn't counted doesn't get changed. Our work begins with insisting that Pacific Islander communities be named, counted, and heard in every system that shapes their future.

Our Story

Built by community, for community.

PIP was founded to address a gap that advocates, educators, and researchers kept running into: Pacific Islander communities in California were being folded into broad racial categories that erased the distinct realities of our communities. The data didn't exist — and where it did, decision-makers weren't acting on it.

Through strategic collaboration with community leaders, universities, and private partners, PIP leverages comprehensive research to optimize resources and maximize collective impact. We work across Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Chamorro, Marshallese, Chuukese, Hawaiian, and other Oceanian communities throughout California.

Our coalition model is grounded in talanoa — a Pacific tradition of open, inclusive dialogue — and accountable to the communities we serve. We organize not just to produce reports, but to build lasting relationships that translate into real power at the tables where decisions are made.

What We Stand For

Guided by community values.

Every part of our work — from research to coalition-building to advocacy — is grounded in these commitments.

Disaggregation

Pacific Islander communities are not a monolith. We insist on data that names each community by name.

Accountability

Institutions must be held responsible for the outcomes they produce for Pacific Islander students and families.

Community Voice

The people most affected by inequity must be at the center of the solutions — not just the subject of reports.

Talanoa

Relationship-building grounded in Pacific tradition: open, inclusive dialogue that builds trust before strategy.

Evidence-Based Action

Advocacy without research is advocacy without power. We bring both to every table we sit at.

Collective Power

No single organization shifts systems alone. Coalition multiplies voice and accelerates change.

Communities We Serve

SamoanTonganFijianChamorroMarshalleseChuukeseHawaiianPalauanKosraeanPohnpeian SamoanTonganFijianChamorroMarshalleseChuukeseHawaiianPalauanKosraeanPohnpeian

PIP's work centers the full diversity of Pacific Islander communities — each with distinct languages, cultures, histories, and needs that aggregate data erases.

Ready to partner with us?

Start a conversation about collaborative opportunities, research partnerships, or joining the statewide coalition.

Get in touch → Join the coalition