Visit the institute’s website here: http://www.koi-institute.org

The acronym KOI stands for Kapwa/Kindred Outreach and Information. The KOI Institute serves as a popular education, training, and community research resource, emphasizing cultural organizing frameworks, methodologies, and tools. Located in Chicago, it spearheads Amalna’s mission in the United States. KOI Institute’s goal is to contribute to the building and strengthening of the skills and capacities of community organizers using the racial justice and cultural activist lens, primarily utilizing integrated arts and decolonizing methodologies of the Theatre of the Oppressed.

Kapwa is a Filipino word that refers to the unity of the self with others. According to Virgilio Enriquez, founder of the Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) movement, kapwa is a “recognition of shared identity, an inner self shared with others”. (Enriquez, 1992)*. It implies a moral obligation to treat another as an equal fellow human being, an acknowledgement of community and shared destiny.

* Enriquez, V.G. (1992). From Colonial to Liberation Psychology. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

KOI INSTITUTE’S CORE PROGRAMS

Activist Kapwa Theatre (AKT) Program

This program shall utilize the core organizing principles, methodologies, and tools of cultural-activist work in collaboration with other community organizations and their home-grown concretization of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed for educating, mobilizing, and organizing their communities and networks.

Program activities will focus on using theatre as a means of political activity (e.g., Legislative theatre) where community members engage deeply with their elected officials on issues that are most pressing to them. This program will be implemented in partnership with Chicago-based groups such as the Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts (CIRCA-Pintig), the Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago (FACGC), as well as individual educators, researchers, and students from the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of Michigan.

The AKT program shall build upon the long history of collaborations among these groups and individuals to continue uplifting the voices of the marginalized communities that they have served for decades, particularly the immigrant workers, elderly, youth, women, children, disabled, and LGBTQ segments.

A2-STEM-LEAF (Arts Approach to Science-Technology-Math Learning Enrichment Across Families)

This program shall utilize the core organizing principles, methodologies, and tools of cultural-activist work in collaboration with other community organizations and their home-grown concretization of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed for educating, mobilizing, and organizing their communities and networks.

Program activities will focus on using theatre as a means of political activity (e.g., Legislative theatre) where community members engage deeply with their elected officials on issues that are most pressing to them. This program will be implemented in partnership with Chicago-based groups such as the Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts (CIRCA-Pintig), the Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago (FACGC), as well as individual educators, researchers, and students from the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of Michigan.

The AKT program shall build upon the long history of collaborations among these groups and individuals to continue uplifting the voices of the marginalized communities that they have served for decades, particularly the immigrant workers, elderly, youth, women, children, disabled, and LGBTQ segments.

Technology for Equity in Community Health (TECH))

This program shall focus on promoting technology access and literacy around disability justice and community health especially among the underserved segments of the disabled, veterans, and survivors of war and gun violence. Building upon Amalna’s extensive work in war-torn countries like Iraq (2018-2023) and Ukraine (since 2022), the program shall collaborate primarily with Amalna’s NGO partners in Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S., and Avatar VRXG Consulting, a technology social enterprise joint venture, with expertise on developing virtual reality software for physical and occupational rehabilitation and mental health.