t started off fairly optimistically. Moneek Bhatia and Harish Nandagopal entered the University of California, San Diego in 2001 with the need to talk about South Asian American issues. They joined the Coalition for South Asian People, an organization targeting those very needs. By their second year, the founders of the group graduated and the two decided to head it. However, CSAP collapsed by the end of their third year, and it no longer exists today.

Bhatia and Nandagopal's experience marks the growing trend of activism and organizing among South Asian American youth—which is too often followed by a quick turnaround because many South Asian American youth are lacking the resources and skills to successfully complete their goals. No longer content with participating simply in social events such as dances, cultural shows and religious activities that are regularly organized by South Asian communities across America, many desi youth are channeling their social consciousness into a number of arenas such as CSAP. While many of them are heavily involved in activism targeting issues such as politics, discrimination and gender, they are often drawn to these platforms through a desire to explore their identity in both an American and South Asian context.

"Initially, it was wanting to understand my 'Indian-ness,' or what that meant," Bhatia says. "I did not know what South Asian was until I got to college. For me, it was about being Indian. When I got to CSAP, I realized that South Asia included other countries as well as India, and I started understanding it more as a coalition. I was trying to understand my own identity, and why I don't fit in with people here. It was about what makes us different and trying to be aware of that. When Harish and I entered college, it was 15 days after 9/11. My Dad is Sikh—he wears a turban—and we were hearing about hate crimes left and right. I was being faced with these issues and trying to understand why this was happening and what we could do about it."

CSAP, like any other organization that phases out, did not simply die out arbitrarily a few years after Bhatia and Nandagopal joined. For the most part, a lack of leadership and organizational skills played a huge role in its downfall.

"We did not necessarily know how to organize yet," Nandagopal explains. "We were only sophomores and did not know how to run an organization—we were just put in the position where we had to. Moneek and I were involved in other organizations, but we were never solely responsible for them. This was a challenge that we tried to meet, but it ended up being too difficult."

Yet there is hope in sight. This frustration in not having the skills necessary to organize is increasingly being met by South Asian organizations across the nation. Groups such as South Asian Youth Action in New York City, South Asian Progressive Action Collective in Chicago and Organizing Youth! in the San Francisco Bay Area are giving desi youth the resources and skills they need to become future activists, leaders and organizers.

was largely inspired by the mission and success of Youth Solidarity Summer, a project of the Progressive South Asian Exchange in New York. YSS was founded with a mission to provide radical political education for young activists of South Asian descent, leading to the building of a movement of youth activists engaged in anti-oppression work. It now has an alumni network of more than 250 graduates, many of who are actively involved in organizing for labor, immigrant rights and other progressive causes.

OY! members felt that the events of September 11, 2001, and the resulting increase in hate crimes on Middle Eastern and South Asian people underlined the need to develop a radical political consciousness and awareness amongst South Asian youth. The collective started hosting summer programs in 2004, in which their mission is to build "a vibrant community of South Asian activists who are committed to taking the struggle for global equality and social change back to their communities and to the building of a mass movement."

Other groups, such as SAYA, take a more holistic approach to giving youth the resources they need. SAYA works to develop the skills, talents and leadership potential of South Asian youth living in New York City. SAYA's programs and advocacy efforts work to create broad social and systemic changes that positively impact immigrant youth.

"Many of them [youth] do not have the resources that they need," says SAYA program manager Wida Amir. "What we try to do when we bring them in is give them a lot of individual attention. Our Leadership and Organizing program is designed for them to explore their own identities—to become more self-aware, to work on their self-confidence, and then eventually work on other issues such as social justice. We provide them with workshops, talk about issues and bring experts in."

In addition to helping youth with necessary skills, organizations such as SAYA and OY! recognize that many South Asian youths' lack of inclination toward critically thinking about progressive issues lies in their reluctance to challenge authority.

"There are a number of reasons that South Asian youth choose to not get involved in progressive associations," members of the OY! collective explain. "A few of them are: the fear of immigrants to challenge authority, the lack of connection to other struggles, the burden of being the model minority, the well-to-do-ness of the community and the fear of challenging status quo, carrying over the middle class mindsets of the communities from which most of the migration took place. Also, there is a struggle in how we self-identify, how we relate to other issues facing our community as well as similar issues facing other communities. One problem is that we are not making our identities broad enough when challenging power structures. We challenge them from a Hindu stance (for example), rather than from a broader identity of anti-fundamentalist."

ftentimes, the traditional model of a South Asian family does not encourage youth to get involved in organizing or activism within their community. "The same pressure families used to promote academic success is often transferred to the realm of marriage and family," Lakshmi Rengarajan, a member of SAPAC, says. "The need to please and appease one's parents informs many South Asians' social and community decisions."

These traditional family values have a significant impact in a youth's decision to get involved. Many first-generation parents who have sacrificed a lot to give their children a better life hesitate when they see them challenging these power structures.

The OY collective believes that "some values typical South Asian families instill in their children, such as the rigid adherence to conservative traditions, the fear of challenging authority and the emphasis on making money, can have a negative influence on the number of South Asian youth activists. Most immigrants come to America to make a better life' for themselves and their families, and many South Asian parents cannot comprehend their children's criticism of a system that has provided, as they see it, far greater quality of life than what they would have received in their mother countries."

South Asian activism among youth has become progressively more visible in the past decade. An increasing number of South Asian youth are coming out of the frameworks of inequality and are realizing that they are not alone in wanting to get involved and make a difference. With the help of organizations such as OY!, SAYA, SAPAC and numerous others, youth are learning how to actively organize and be successful leaders.

"They might feel that they are alone," says Amir. "But we are here to empower them and help them realize their potential."