NAPA began as a conversation between two people who could not sleep. Jeanette Moy of Sigma Psi Zeta and Janelle Hu, former Executive Director of APIA Vote, were at Duke University in the spring of 2004 attending the Chinese American Intercollegiate Conference (CAIC) as guest speakers. Placed together as roommates, that placement turned out to be a fateful one. Janelle wanted to get APIA youth more active in voting and civic engagement. She had spent the CAIC conference walking around and registering people to vote. However, this was a lot of work for one individual to do.

Jeanette, having been very active in her sorority, realized that the Asian Greek community was an excellent source of youth who could vote and encourage others to vote. She approached Janelle about organizing a youth campaign that would utilize Asian fraternities and sororities to register people to vote...

Previously, Jeanette had talked with Brian Gee of Pi Alpha Phi about the many issues facing Asian fraternities and sororities, and that some sort of umbrella organization was needed to help address these issues.

Following the CAIC conference, Jeanette spent the summer recruiting other organizations to join in the project of registering people to vote. By August of 2004, 12 organizations had expressed various forms of commitment to the project of APIA Voter Registration.

On its end, APIA Vote provided free T-shirts, brochures, and many other resources to help the Asian Greek community register people to vote. A power point was created by the leaders of the Asian Greek community to educate members on proper techniques of voter registration. Additionally, Jeanette went to the alpha Kappa Delta Phi National Convention and presented on coalition-based campaigns and the need for registering people to vote.

The results were amazing. Some chapters hosted candidate forums to discuss issues related to voting. Moreover, many chapters did the grass-roots work of actually going out and registering people to vote. One main concern was that people would be double counted, since many students were part of more than one campaign. However, this issue was dealt with by very careful scrutinizing of who was registered. In total, over 8,000 people were registered by members of AGA organizations.

With the first project a huge success, the next project fell into the lap of our organizations. The Asian Tsunami devastated parts of Indonesia, India, Thailand, and many other Asian countries. Our organizations each committed to raising money to send to charitable organizations that were assisting in the relief effort. One organization raised over $1,600 just from one event.

After a successful Tsunami Relief Campaign, the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) presented AGA with an opportunity to attend their National Convention in Las Vegas in the summer of 2005. AGA readily accepted this offer. Attending the conference were members of alpha Kappa Delta Phi Sorority, Inc., Alpha Phi Gamma Sorority, Inc., Delta Phi Lambda Sorority, Inc., Pi Alpha Phi Fraternity, Inc., Pi Delta Psi Fraternity, Inc., Sigma Beta Rho Fraternity, Inc., and Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority, Inc. At the conference, members of the aforementioned organizations had an opportunity to meet with other APIA youth leaders and learn useful skills for working for change on their campuses.

At the conference, AGA also had the opportunity to meet and discuss how to further promote communication and cohesion among Asian fraternities and sororities. The meeting saw the discussion of many ideas, such as maintaining the AGA name and who should be the new chair. After much discussion, it was decided that AGA should change it’s name to the National Asian Greek Council to show people that this was a united and national effort among Asian fraternities and sororities. Also, Alice Siu of Sigma Psi Zeta was chosen as the next chair of NAGC.

The end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 was a time of internal development for NAGC. The member organizations felt that in order to effectively work together, some structure and organization was needed. Melissa Montenegro of Delta Phi Lambda and Akash Kuruvilla of Sigma Beta Rho worked together to help develop an effective and working constitution for the organization.

In order to continue its effort to help the community, NAGC members decided that supporting the ECAASU conference at The George Washington University would show APIA youth that Asian fraternities and sororities were committed to helping the community. NAGC donated enough money to earn a Silver Sponsorship from ECAASU, and its ad was featured in the ECAASU brochure. This, along with tabling, greatly increased the publicity of NAGC to APIA college students as well as educating them about our various organizations.

Additionally, it was decided that the name NAGC implied strong governance of organizations, which was not the goal of its members. Thus, a new name was decided on: the National Asian Pacific Islander American Panhellenic Association (NAPA). With the debate over a name finally settling on NAPA and the development of aworking constitution, NAPA approached the summer of 2006 with 9 dedicated organizations that were willing to help be guiding lights of success and cohesion in the Asian fraternal world. Alpha Kappa Delta Phi Sorority, Inc., Alpha Phi Gamma Sorority, Inc., Delta Kappa Delta Sorority, Inc., Delta Phi Lambda Sorority, Inc. Kappa Phi Lambda Sorority, Inc., Pi Alpha Phi Fraternity, Inc., Pi Delta Psi Fraternity, Inc., Sigma Beta Rho Fraternity, Inc., and Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority, Inc. form the base from which a strong and united Asian Greek community will be developed.