May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month!
In honor of Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we want to highlight one of our partner organizations: the New Mexico Asian Family Center. They are NM’s only service provider tailoring its services to be culturally and linguistically appropriate for the Asian community. Their mission is to provide culturally sensitive programs and services creating a Pan-Asian community that advocates for and supports itself.
NMAFC was founded in 2006 by a circle of Asian women who came together to address the lack of culturally and linguistically tailored services for the state's Pan-Asian community. Having started by providing counseling and case management services in a house, NMAFC has now grown to include survivor led and centered services, programs centering traditional methods of healing, youth and community leadership programs, financial education workshops, cross-racial movement building, and civic engagement work.
We believe the solutions to our issues lie within the deep wisdom and experiences of our communities, and that our organizational leadership, as well as our programs and services, should be reflective of this. We are continually striving to frame our work within a social justice lens, and believe that all children and families deserve equitable access to resources and opportunities in order to thrive. All of our services and programs are offered in multiple Asian languages. We utilize phone interpretation and community interpreters for languages not spoken in-house.
Over the years, NMAFC has been an important partner for us in reaching the API community. As a direct result from the trainings they’ve provided, our staff has been able to tailor our services to our API clients.
We encourage you to visit their website for more information about their programs and history. We are grateful for the immense value that NMAFC brings to the immigrant community in New Mexico and our clients.
Published May 6, 2021
Written by Lydia Phillips, NMILC’s Communications Specialist.
