Dear Community Supporter:

I am writing to request your support of The K.W. Lee Center for Leadership’s 2022 annual fundraising dinner and silent auction entitled, “Empowering Community Movements.”  Founded in 2005, The K.W. Lee Center for Leadership is a nonprofit organization (501c3) dedicated to providing youth with the tools and opportunities necessary to become future leaders. Based in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles, the Center offers youth leadership training and educational programs that encourage community organizing. The mission of the Center is to teach and train youth to take proactive steps towards improving and enriching the quality of life in their communities.  

Inspired by the lifetime of community service by journalist K.W. Lee, the Center reflects his passion for community consciousness and his dedication to fostering young leaders.  As an investigative journalist, K.W. Lee began his career covering stories of civil rights struggles in the South and its unsung heroes, and continued for 40 years breaking stories on the plights of the voiceless, misrepresented and exploited masses.  K.W. Lee, the first Asian American journalist to work for a mainstream daily newspaper, is most well known for authoring a series of 120 articles about Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he did not commit and was sentenced to Death Row.  K.W. Lee’s stories sparked one of the earliest pan-Asian community organizing movements in the 1970s called the Free Chol Soo Lee Movement, which eventually won a new trial for Chol Soo Lee, in which he was acquitted of all charges.  The K.W. Lee Center for Leadership, the first Korean American non-social services agency designed to cultivate community consciousness through grassroots community organizing, works to carry out his legacy by training future Korean American leaders in the art of community activism. 

The dinner will be held at the Young Su San Restaurant in Koreatown on December 1, 2022, at 5:30 p.m.   

We hope that you may sponsor our fundraising event by donating an item to our Silent Auction.  Proceeds from the silent auction will go directly to our eight-week summer youth leadership program, Korean American Youth Leaders in Training, which takes place annually from the months of June through August.  In return for your gracious contribution, we will recognize your company in the program booklet.  In addition, the Center will provide a receipt for your contribution, as all donations are tax deductible.

Should you require additional information about our organization, you may also visit our website at www.kwleecenter.org. We are asking that all donated items be sent to the following address:

Attn: Do Kim, President, Board of Directors

The KW Lee Center for Leadership 

853 S. Lucerne Blvd., #104

Los Angeles, CA 90005

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Vice President Janet Hong at (917) 617-9149 or email her at hong.janet@gmail.com. Thank you in advance for your support and we look forward to hearing from you.  

Sincerely,

Do Kim

President, Board of Directors

The K.W. Lee Center for Leadership

Tax ID No.: 20-0188667