Journalist, editor, and educator
Kristine Villanueva is a journalist, editor, and educator passionate about harnessing people-powered media to reinforce and expand community-based information networks. She is the mind behind the People’s Handbook for Diaspora Reporting, an interdisciplinary, crowdsourced reporting guide and newsletter that centers diaspora community information needs. As a reporter, she writes about community, food, and how people organize. She has worked in news organizations such as ProPublica, Resolve Philly, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and more. She has also served as the Vice President and National Board Representative of the Asian American Journalists Association, Philadelphia, and taught engagement journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism for four years. She now teaches in the Community College of Philadelphia Department of English. Her experience in engagement journalism also includes leading digital, social media, newsletter, and SMS texting strategies to reach disenfranchised communities. She has also led nationwide crowdsourced, collaborative investigations. In her off hours, she likes to paint zines, go to punk shows, and cuddle her cat, Perseus (aka Percy).
Recent Projects:
People’s Handbook for Diaspora Reporting
A long-term, interdisciplinary crowdsourced guidebook on best practices in covering diaspora communities in the U.S. utilizing a newsletter to crowdsource questions, suggestions, share the process, critiques, and ideas. Crowdsourcing through forms, community calls, and building this guide over time helps ensure that standards are responsive to the needs of the industry, are constantly evolving, and are open to critique and discussion. Partner organizations include The Objective and Open News.
Phillypino Oral
History Project
The Phillypino Oral History Project is a community-based oral history and photography project capturing the rich narratives of Filipino immigrants who have lived in Philadelphia for at least ten years. The project focuses on memory work that delves into participants’ experiences during martial law, the implementation of labor export policy, the People Power Revolution, and more. As the project lead, I conducted interviews, developed the exhibition guide and exhibit copy, trained community participants in trauma-informed reporting techniques, and co-curated an exhibit at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s central branch. See the digital exhibition guide here.
News Ambassadors
News Ambassadors is a program that strengthens local news through solutions journalism, community engagement, and collaboration to reduce polarization and uplift common ground. Comprised of several local news collaboratives nationwide, students fill local news gaps by learning solutions journalism, community-engaged reporting techniques, and how to collaborate with local newsrooms and community organizations to maximize impact. Students also have the opportunity to be paired with counterparts in demographically dissimilar areas to expand their scope of learning. See the News Ambassadors newsletter and Instagram.
Recent bylines
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On most Saturday mornings, there’s a bit of hidden magic happening in the kitchen at the Old Pine Community Center near Fourth and Lombard streets. The Asian Food Collective turns the kitchen into a cultural hub by cooking all kinds of Asian cuisines together. For the collective’s members, cultural exchange through food brings an element of joy in building community. Plus, they get to feed their Philly neighbors while they’re at it.
“If you’re alive, you eat. If you eat, you deserve food,” said Hanna Kim, founder of the Asian Food Collective. “I feel like something that I try to cultivate in this space is a community of care. So something that I really emphasize is, when we are cooking together, I want you to eat the food.” Read the full article here.
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Claire Toomey, a recent Drexel graduate with a B.S. in software engineering, is no stranger to campus food trucks. Between her schedule packed with classes, internships, and meetings as the Drexel Esports president, she, like so many students, relied on mobile mom-and-pop operations to get good food quickly, conveniently and inexpensively. In time, the people in those trucks became part of her community.
“When I first came to Drexel, the food trucks were probably the biggest and best draw for me,” says Toomey. “I come from a super small town in the Poconos where our food options are limited to McDonalds and Subway, so it was great to just have these diverse food options like Halal food, Chinese food, all these amazing food trucks.”
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From nostalgic family recipes served in intimate mom-and-pop shops to modern reimaginings inspired by American diners and Japanese convenience stores, Philly’s Asian breakfast scene is percolating with a wide range of diasporic expression. Savory-sweet meats, bánh mì topped with eggs, ube-tinged pastries, congee — it’s what many Philadelphians are craving first thing in the morning, and, over the past year, a growing number of restaurants have opened to meet the demand.
“I think that people’s tastes are diversifying,” said Raquel Villanueva Dang, owner of Filipino restaurant Baby’s Kusina and Market in Brewerytown. “And we’re excited to see that.”