With support from California Arts Council, The AjA Project will urgently expand our mission of collective empowerment through participatory storytelling, focusing on youth, emerging artists, and cultural bearers from refugee and immigrant backgrounds in San Diego. In a time of rising stigma and hateful rhetoric against these communities, our work is more critical than ever. Funding will be used to deliver accessible media arts workshops, fellowships, and community exhibitions that challenge exclusion, uplift lived experiences, and foster resilience and belonging. By offering a safe, creative space, we empower underrepresented youth to share their stories, preserve cultural heritage, and strengthen intercultural understanding through artistic expression.
The AjA Project has a strong reputation of delivering high-quality, high-impact programs to young people from diverse cultural, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. This includes in-school and after-school programs as well as participatory workshops in collaboration with cross-sector partner organizations. AjA’s programs support young people to process experiences, understand their social and political landscapes and use the arts as a tool for creative self expression and social change. This year we have provided programming to newly arrived refugees, teen mothers, youth in detention, young people in military families, and youth across San Diego. The work at AjA remains grounded in the power of photography and visual arts as a tool for all youth, regardless of background, to see themselves as agents of change. AjA remains committed to igniting individual and social change from a grassroots, creative approach.

