MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Stand Up to Racism
We at the App Store stand with our family in the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Use these apps to be an ally, learn about the issues, and keep up to date on events as they unfold.
Support the cause
Hate crimes against these two communities in the United States have increased significantly in recent years—particularly acts of violence against women and elders. Speak out against these crimes by calling your elected officials; ask them to address the issue through legislation and to keep discussing and condemning the problem.
5 Calls stays on top of the latest news from Congress, collating information on upcoming bills in one place. Select the cause you support and tap the representative you want to contact—the app will directly connect you to their office and provide you with a suggested script.
Through its Support the AAPI Community Fund, GoFundMe issues grants to trusted grassroots organizations fighting racial inequality and protecting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. To make a tax-deductible donation, search the app for “AAPI Community Fund.”
You can also donate to campaigns around the country for victims of AAPI violence.
Stay informed
NextShark, an Asian-owned and operated news source, has been on the forefront of covering violence and harassment against Asian and Pacific Islander people nationwide.
NewsBreak focuses on hyperlocal news, including municipal and county briefings, breaking headlines for your neighborhood, and emergency alerts. Use the search function to see what’s affecting the Asian community near you.
Ground News lets you compare coverage on topics across the political spectrum from more than 40,000 publications worldwide, organized by how the news outlet may lean politically—left, right, or center. It’s an invaluable resource for seeing how topics relevant to the Asian American community are being reported.
Learn from history
The five-part PBS documentary series Asian Americans explores the ongoing role Asian Americans have played in shaping the nation’s story. Watch and learn through individual accounts and personal histories spanning more than 150 years of immigration, racial politics, and cultural innovation.
Rebel Girls is filled with short, podcast-style audio stories about trail-blazing women from around the world. Listen and learn about modern-day heroes like Japanese tennis champ Naomi Osaka and U.S. vice president Kamala Harris, as well as historical figures like Ana May Wong, the first Asian American silent-film and TV star.
Khan Academy’s lessons on the Chinese Exclusion Act, transcontinental railroad workers, and Japanese internment during World War II will teach you the history we all should know. You’ll find them in the sections titled “Chinese immigrants and Mexican Americans in the age of westward expansion” and “Japanese internment,” which are accessible via search.
Coursera offers online classes from universities around the world. Two to start with: the University of Colorado Boulder’s Anti-Racism I, an introduction to race and racism in the United States, and the University of Michigan’s Community Organizing for Social Justice. Search for these courses on the app’s Explore tab.
Start a conversation
Talking about racial inequality—whether with a friend, coworker, or family member—is often difficult. By providing helpful prompts, Gather can help make the process smoother.
Encouraging friends and family to record honest interviews with one another (later archived in the Library of Congress), StoryCorps is an oral-history project that attempts to create a more just and compassionate world via listening and understanding.
Support developers of Asian descent
HomeCourt uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to create and shape on-court basketball drills. It can measure your release time and the angle of your shot, your vertical leap, and much more. And with post-workout performance charts and video breakdowns, it’s a metrics fan’s dream.
This dog-training app’s lessons range from basics like sit and heel to circus-worthy tricks. There are community photo challenges (because who doesn’t like to share dog pics?), and subscribers can turn to expert trainers directly in the app for answers and advice.
This inclusive and accessible mindfulness coaching app delivers daily doses of self-care through engaging meditations, tips, and timely content like “The Daily Shine,” a 10-minute pep talk that covers everything from anxiety to representation burnout.
A search engine solely dedicated to the best of the best moving images, Giphy’s sizable bank of GIFs will have you covered whether you’re in need of an adorable kitten falling over or a movie star looking suitably shocked.
Sneakerheads, rejoice! Goat will help you find the perfect kicks from an impressive inventory curated by fellow sneaker lovers. The emphasis here is on unique styles from top designers and brands, all verified for authenticity before they get shipped to you.
Hopscotch teaches kids ages 9 and up how to code in a fun, step-by-step fashion. By dragging and dropping blocks to build games, interactive art projects, or animated stories, kids can learn to create (the fun part) without pecking out lines of code (the not-as-fun part).
Zola is a comprehensive wedding planning app that helps you pull off everything nuptial-related: Build a website, kick-start your gift registry, send out invitations (paper or digital), wrangle the RSVPs—everything short of throwing the bouquet. You can also register for experiences such as couples massages and establish a cash fund for big-ticket goals like a honeymoon or down payment on a house.
Brilliant’s bite-size logic puzzles, twisty cryptograms, and playful story problems actually make math enjoyable (we promise). The app teaches logic, science, and coding to everyone from age 10 to 100—and the puzzles are so fun that you might not even notice you’re learning.
In the eight years since its launch, Voice Dream Reader has become one of the most popular apps in the accessibility field, a go-to tool for reading text aloud from web pages, PDFs, and other documents.