Empowering Southeast Asian American communities throughout California
WHO WE ARE.
The SEAA Collaborative is made up of 15 Southeast Asian American-serving organizations across California. Our coalition collaborates and coordinates to ensure a collective SEAA voice on local and statewide advocacy toward education, health, and immigrant and refugee rights for all SEAA communities.
OUR PURPOSE.
We support and advance the following for SEAA communities in CA:
Increasing education attainment,
Advancing health equity through expanding access to affordable and quality health care,
Expanding pathways to citizenship and ending deportation, and
Increasing visibility of all SEAA narratives through data equity.
Partner Spotlight:
Q&A with Sambo Sak, Community Outreach Specialist at Families in Good Health
Sambo Sak is the Community Outreach Specialist at Families in Good Health (FIGH), a multilingual, multicultural health and social education program for the Southeast Asian, Latino and other communities in Long Beach. Sambo chatted with Phun H, SEARAC Communications Associate, about his work at FIGH, what he’s learning through SEARAC’s California Policy Seeding and Leadership Cohort, and his hopes for the 50th anniversary of Southeast Asian resettlement.
Photo courtesy of Sambo Sak.
“It was not until working at FIGH that I learned about the stories that are not in books or videos. A lot of leadership has been done by survivors of the Cambodian genocide, and many of our elders and leaders struggle to process the trauma. I grew up in a time when we were not united, and I questioned whether to be involved in this work. But I realized my power in uniting people together and helping uplift one another. My power is building community.”
Meet the Cohort:
Launched in July 2024, the CA Policy Seeding and Leadership Cohort is a 9-month applied learning experience for staff at SEAA Collaborative member organizations interested in growing as advocates for their communities at the state level. As we look toward celebrating the SEAA community’s 50th anniversary of resettlement in the United States, the Cohort is guided by the question: How do we plant the seeds for new policy solutions or campaigns for Southeast Asian American (SEAA) communities to thrive in CA?
We thank the California Endowment for their support of the Cohort.