The Asian community makes up 1.5 percent of the population in Iowa, making them what Kim Poam, president-executive director and founder of the Iowa Asian Alliance, calls the “missing minority.”

Iowa State isn’t any different, having an organization for nearly every other ethnic background but only recently realizing the Asian community wasn’t represented.

The IAA supports 15 groups, speaking different languages and practicing different religions, but in a lecture Wednesday afternoon Poam said she feels they share something deep and connecting.

“I think what they have in common is the desire to improve themselves; the desire to get better and to grow,” she said. “We all want better jobs and better educations and better schools for our children and those desires are what ties us all together.”

Poam first came to America in 1980 as a Cambodian refugee. She grew up in Oskaloosa and understood what it was like to be cut off from everything familiar. She created the alliance in April 2002 to serve the Asian community.

“One of the first things we wanted to do was to bring together the diverse Asian American community that exists in this state under one umbrella,” Poam said.

The group is meant to offer a support system to an often misunderstood group, Poam said.

She said she remembered receiving a call from a few Asian business owners who were required to pay a fine because they had tried to sell fish they had caught in one of the public lakes or rivers to area grocery stores. This practice is commonplace in many places in Asia and they were unaware that they couldn’t practice the same traditions in Iowa.

“I remember one professor who later came to me and told me how isolated she felt,” said Evie Myers, associate director of the Equal Opportunity and Diversity Office. “She had gotten sick and there was no one from her community to go with her, so she had to go to Mary Greeley by herself.”

At Iowa State, only about one in 50 students are Asian.

“I know I felt isolated until I started making connections and networking with people,” said Eugenio Matibag, director of Asian American Studies and the Center For American Intercultural Studies. “They need a place to go to be able to identify themselves as Asians.”

Matibag said that the program helps raise visibility and gives their culture and heritage recognition. He said it would make the campus a more welcoming place.