Our Mission

The mission and vision of ACHI is to create social, cultural and physical environment that promotes health and eliminate health disparities. ACHI’s primarily goal is to address unmet social, emotional and physical health needs of vulnerable African Immigrants and Refugee communities. ACHI has a wide scope of programs and services only limited with the available funding resources. Most of our services are developed with a mind of bridging the gap between service providers and clients. For effectively delivering our services we work closely both with our clients and partner organizations. For the convenience of our clients, some of our programs as needed are provided using native client languages and utilizing various progressive cultural activities, which has a big role in developing trust and preparing clients to receive additional help or open opportunity for self-development. Some of the major programs include: Information and Referral services, Public and behavioral education, social peer to peer support system, immigrant elderly and mindful programs, vocational training. We also held various socialization activities, civic and immigration services and inspirational workshops. In general, ACHI services are focus on increasing awareness and understanding of community health using public health principles, developing early intervention and prevention coping mechanisms, providing support on changing or eliminating bad behavior and reducing stigmatization and fear of all forms that are the core causes hindering healing, prevention and progress. ACHI though is a very small organization operates by mobilizing humanitarian dedicate volunteers, which we are able to provide effective services the underserved immigrant communities.

The primarily target population that ACHI focus on are the first and second generation of immigrants and refugees from Africa. However, the program is open to all immigrant and low income populations. We also partner with the San Jose center for African American Service Agency, which we are working on integrating some of our programs to also serve the African American communities. In our weekly small group classes and support system, we entertain in average 15-20 clients weekly. However, we attempt to reach out to more people in our community through our public health education or civic engagement outreach programs such as the Census2020. In Santa Clara County, the primary African immigrant countries of origin are Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. A rough estimates of the African immigrants alone residing in Santa Clara county could realistically be over 10000. Thus, through this program, we expected to reach out to a fairly large number of community members that may need our services and resources.

ACHI embodies a philosophy of community-building across cultures to build both individual and group identity. By defining “health” in a holistic manner, ACHI strives to address issues of community health as well as physical and mental health.

To create social, cultural and physical environment that promote health and eliminate any cultural health disparities through a holistic and cultural sensitive health services that balance physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being.

ACHI’s primarily goal is to address unmet social, emotional and physical health needs of vulnerable African Immigrants and Refugee communities. ACHI embodies a philosophy of community-building across cultures to build both individual and group identity. By defining “health” in a holistic manner, the African Community Health Institute strives to address issues of community health as well as physical and mental health.

What we do

ACHI through a long experience of working with low income, refugee and immigrant communities has identified major problems facing these communities. For these communities, which are our primarily target population, the problems are complex, challenging and of different level depending on individual’s journey of life, cultural background, linguistic and educational level in addition to most that goes through some challenging life experiences. This is specially for the refugee and immigrant population from Africa. Most refugee and immigrants, carrying past traumatic experience also face huge challenge during their initial resettlement as form of cultural shock, cultural and linguistic barrier and limited resettlement assistance. As a result, many go into stress and depression in some cases suicidal or take most of their life time working in a low survival jobs. For some successful, unfortunately, the end up become dependent on warfare assistance. This is also true for previous generation immigrant and low income citizens. The combination of the above challenges and other domestic issues have a direct consequence of the health wellbeing of individuals in this population, which also the cause of huge health disparities seen within these communities. ACHI believes that it is possible to overcome most of problems with complete understanding the cultural and linguistic background and establishing trust as basis before providing cultural competent appropriate services. Thus, the work of ACHI is based on the principles that

· Understanding and eliminating cultural and linguistic barriers can empower individuals to easily adjust to their social environment while developing healthy lifestyle.

· Through evidence based practices, to develop confidence, trust and capacity that individual will be able to seek help for their self-development.

· We work with our partners through a comprehensive referral services to connect our clients to available services.

· We provide educational programs for health and skill development to engage clients maintain healthy lifestyle and also become self-sufficient

To mitigate some common client’s issues and promote socialization, we also provide various individual and group activities including peer to peer support system, civic engagements, senior programs and various socialization activities. In general, the role of ACHI is to increase awareness and understanding of community health using public health principles, develop early intervention and prevention coping mechanisms, provide support on changing or eliminating bad behavior and reduce stigmatization and fear of all forms that are the core causes hindering healing, prevention and progress.

ACHI prioritize a public and mental health needs filling the gap of available services on this issue that are culturally competent and take careful consideration to the sensitive social sigma issues.

ACHI though is a very small organization operates by mobilizing humanitarian dedicate volunteers. With the help of volunteers and dedicated staff, ACHI gradually expanding as needed its services to support the underserved immigrant communities and successfully developed programs and resources that have significant impact to the community.

Our Core Value

· Positive outlook and hope in life

· Confidentiality

· Excellence in Service

· Mutual Respect

· Inclusiveness

· Cultural diversity

Mission and goals

ACHI unique approach is to provide culturally and linguistically sensitive social support system and services. The primary goals are:

• To promote physical, mental, and social well-being

• To develop early coping mechanisms for any cultural shock, mental and other stress related problems

• To provide support for quick re-settlement and integration to their new community.

• To provide prevention and intervention awareness outreach and education to reduce health disparities within the community

Programs and services

ACHI has a wide scope of programs and services to the extent of our funding resources and man power allow. Most of our services are developed with a mind of bridging the gap between service providers and clients. For effectively delivering our services we work closely both with our clients and partner organizations. For the convenience of our clients, of our programs are provided using native language and utilizing various progressive cultural activities, which has a big role in developing trust and preparing clients to receive additional help or open opportunity for self-development. The following are some of the major categories of the programs and services continue to provide since its inception in 2005.

1. Cultural competent Information and referrals: This is the first step for each of our clients, where we perform thorough client needs assessment. Based on the specific needs of the client, we provide necessary information, orientation and referral or recommendation to other service programs in our organization or other local partnering organizations. This is the first step also where we initiate new culturally and linguistically sensitive services in order to accommodate some of the client primary needs when competent services are not available within our local sister organizations.

2. Social support system: In this program, we attempt to connect clients with similar needs through a social support system that is based on the groups native cultures and languages with strong confidentially policy we impose to protect our client's privacy. As most refugee and immigrants goes through a traumatic journey before entering the USA either due to war, abuse, illiteracy and cultural differences, this support system is the most helpful for most of our clients to overcome several of their challenges or obstacles and understand how to safely navigate over the system of their new environment and become self-sufficient. If needed clients will also be referred to counseling and/or social work services. We form social support system as needs arise in various age category seniors, women, parental, professional and youth.

3. Public Health education programs: fitness classes, nutrition education, and chronic illness education. Health education is any combination of learning experiences designed to help individuals and communities improve their health, by increasing their knowledge or influencing their attitudes.

4. Family and parenting programs: Connecting parents of young children with affordable health resources

5. Immigrant Elderly and Mindful Aging project: mindful aging through community gardening

6. Vocational training: Coordinating and sponsoring volunteer-led classes including native language teaching for children, cooking classes, professional meetings, senior programs, computer classes and other