CONTACTS:                                                                      

Louie Gong, VPMAVIN Foundation Board of Directors/ Joseph SakayMAVIN Foundation Board of Directors

Email: [email protected] 

Website: www.mavinfoundation.org  

Seattle-Based MAVIN Foundation LAUNCHES national Online “Mixed Heritage Center” (Seattle, WA, December 20, 2021) –

The MAVIN Foundation will launch the “Mixed Heritage Center” (MHC), the first-ever comprehensive website of existing and emerging information and tools for the mixed heritage community in the United States, at 8:00 p.m. PST on Tuesday, December 4, 2007. The MHC will be online at www.mixedheritagecenter.org. Funded by The K&F Baxter Family Foundation, the MHC will educate the country about the social, health, and political needs of mixed heritage individuals and families, and create an online multiracial community that will be a vehicle for learning and research. 

“We want to this site to be a one-stop educational clearinghouse on multiracial and transracial adoptee issues,” said Louie Gong, MAVIN Foundation Board of Directors member and co-coordinator in the Mixed Heritage Center’s development. “Through this broad-reaching, holistic, and well-researched initiative, we are addressing complex issues impacting multiracial communities and building on the MAVIN Foundation’s work to develop a national mixed race agenda,” Gong added. 

In 2000, 6.8 million people checked multiple boxes to describe their racial and ethnic heritages on the U.S. Census. Data from the Census showed that about 4 percent of children in the U.S. are of mixed heritage, compared with 2 percent of adults. In the state of Washington, 6.8 percent of children and 2.5 percent of adults reported being of mixed heritage.  

Joseph Sakay, MAVIN Foundation Board of Directors president and MHC co-coordinator, said, “Despite these striking trends, mixed heritage individuals remain largely invisible in school curriculums, on health forms, and in diversity programs. The MHC will provide resources for educators, families, health care professionals, and political leaders to better meet the needs of this growing community.”  

The MHC is a partnership between the MAVIN Foundation and the Association of Multi-Ethnic Americans (AMEA). The MAVIN Foundation is the nation's leading organization that builds healthy communities that celebrate and empower mixed heritage people, transracial and transnational adoptees, and families. Its projects explore the experiences of mixed heritage people, transracial adoptees, interracial relationships, and multiracial families. The foundation was established in 2000 and has developed projects that include publication of the Multiracial Child Resource Book, the Generation Mix National Awareness Tour, documented in the film Chasing Daybreak, and an online Blood and Marrow Transplant Guide for Washington families. AMEA is dedicated to advocacy, education and collaboration on behalf of the multiethnic and multiracial community.