Our vision

We are a student collective engaging in consciousness raising and multimedia storytelling using an Ethnic Studies lens.

By creating a space to exchange knowledges and question the norms produced by the powers that be, we can reimagine and organize for a world that prioritizes our collective well-being.

What we do

We learn about our local history from the community perspective by listening, questioning, and unlearning harmful norms. We kindle hope by sharing our stories, allowing us to relate across differences and dream a kinder world into being.

By bridging the critical and the creative, we carve a fugitive space for care, dialogues, and critical learning.

Our story

lauryn chew was inspired by a PhotoVoice program she participated in through Asian American Youth Leaders (AAYL), where students and teachers collectively questioned dominant narratives and brought their stories into conversation with each other and with historical developments.

Hoping to transform our community’s valuable histories into youth-led organizing, she founded OC Focus after being awarded AAYL’s Community Engagement Fellowship in 2023.

We are occupying the unceded homelands of the Acjachemen and Tongva peoples who, in the face of ongoing settler colonialism and violence, continue to resist and care for their ancestral lands as they have for the past 8,000 years. We acknowledge the painful history of violent colonial invasion and occupation of Acjachemen and Tongva land, beginning with the brutal mission system during the Spanish colonial period, followed by Mexico and the united states. We recognize that our stories today only occurred because of land theft, genocide, and the enslavement of Indigenous peoples. Our shared history drives our commitment to envisioning and working toward decolonial solidarity that encompasses justice, self-determination, and belonging for Indigenous peoples.