CHAA offers a rigorous clinical internship for graduate students interested in community mental health. Practicum students and MFT interns from various Bay Area doctorate & masters graduate programs provide collaborative psychological assessments along with individual & group therapy at Oakland Public Schools.  This year’s interns include Justine Fan and Joanne Wong whom we are grateful to acknowledge in these Intern Profiles.

ACHA’s first Benefit Concert on November 4, 2013 – Joyful Heart Through Precious Tibetan Mantras brings you Bay Area’s Joanna Macy and Jennifer Berezan, and features Dechen Shak-Dagsay from Europe. All of the profits from the concert will go towards supporting women and girl’s education in higher studies and towards health programs in Eastern Tibet. ACHA-Himalayan Sisterhood is a grassroots Tibetan women’s group supported through CHAA’s Sisterhood for Wellness and API Connections programs.

CHAA’s Tibetan Community Wellness Advocate, Tsering Yangkey, appeared in an article in Contra Costa Times about a pop-up garden she has helped establish in El Cerrito’s Fairmont Park. As the article notes, some of the most active Fairmont Park gardeners include 10 to 15 Tibetan immigrant families who work with Tsering through CHAA’s API Connections program. El Cerrito, Albany, Berkeley and Oakland have a small but thriving Tibetan community.

As many of you may remember, 10 years ago on October 13th, Chan Bounkeut and her father Gwai were shot through the door of their home and Chan lost her life. Out of this tragedy, the West County Southeast Asian community, public system and community organizations came together to address the issues of violence impacting their and other communities. Southeast Asian young people also played a big role in creating an active youth group that came to be known as Southeast Asian Young Leaders, or SEAYL.

One of the greatest challenges faced by advocacy efforts is the lack of connection between government bodies that make decisions about priorities and resource allocation, public agencies that
provide services and resources, and marginalized communities. The communities that need the most help and who have the most at stake are often left out of crucial policy discussions. For years, non-profitslike CHAA have worked with communities on the ground through direct services

Community Health for Asian Americans (CHAA) and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) are co-sponsoring "A Town Hall – Connecting with Emerging Communities from Bhutan, Burma, Mongolia and Tibet" on Saturday, April 28, 2012 in Oakland, CA.

On Monday, April 2nd, seven innocent lives were abruptly ended in a horrific shooting at Oikos University in Oakland, CA. Monday’s tragic incident was particularly shocking and unprecedented for the Tibetan and Sikkimese communities here and everywhere as we mourn the untimely deaths of Sonam Chodon (Tibetan) and Tshering Rinzing Bhutia (Sikkimese).

We are pleased to announce that the Asian & Pacific Islander Report for the Statewide California Reducing Disparities Project (CRDP) is ready for public comments from 04/06/12 to 04/26/12. Information on the CRDP API Strategy and the draft of the API report are available on the CRDP website (http://crdp.pacificclinics.org/resources).  For comments, please email to crdp@pacificclinics.org by 04/26/12.

For those of you who don’t know, the Himalayan Youth Leadership Summit (HYLS) was held for the first time in the summer of 2011. The support for the event was enormous – we almost ran out of space for all of the workshops and activities organized by our co-hosts and sponsors. Now, we want to build on this success.

A letter read by CHAA’s Executive Director, Beatrice Lee, at a memorial tsok ceremony at the Tibetan Association of Northern California’s community center in Richmond, CA, on April 3, 2012. Two of the victims were immigrants from the Himalayan region (Tibet and Sikkim), and most were Asian (Tibetan, Sikkimese, Filipino and Korean). A Nigerian and Guyanan student were also killed.