Asian American Heritage Week

In honor of the first ever Asian American Heritage Week, several University of Central Florida organizations came together to host a series of events promoting Asian culture.

Asian American Heritage Week was led by eight organizations: Asian Pacific American Coalition, Asian Student Association, Chinese American Student Association, Delta Phi Lambda Sorority, Filipino Student Association, Korean Student Association, Pi Delta Psi Fraternity and Vietnamese American Student Association.

Asian American Heritage Week, which took place March 14-20, included events each day of the week including a fundraiser at Blaze Pizza, a game show, a dance workshop and a student pageant.

UCF junior Jeff Ryan Miraflor, external vice chair for heritage week, came up with the idea for a heritage week along with two other students, Dennis Giang and

Dennis Giang, internal vice chair for heritage week, echoed Miraflor’s statement. Giang said the Asian American organizations at UCF noticed how other schools hosted more things to honor Asian heritage.

“There was a lot of talk about people coming together to create something to celebrate the heritage but nothing concrete,” Giang said, “The three of us went to Karen about it and we just spearheaded it ourselves.”

The Blaze Pizza fundraiser took place on March 15 from 8-10 p.m. with many UCF students coming out to eat and support Asian American Heritage Week.

According to Miraflor, the money raised from the fundraiser and upcoming events will go directly to funding those events and a future heritage month in 2017. The total from the fundraiser is currently unknown, according to Nguyen, as it could take a few weeks because the organizations are busy with their own events and Blaze Pizza hasn’t reached out to