what we do
ACHD is an all-encompassing, multi-faceted, problem-solving, community-enhancing organization, dedicated to helping African immigrants and refugees in King County, Washington thrive.
Founded by refugees from the very community that we serve, everything that ACHD does centers around understanding, respecting and celebrating our unique, African cultural traditions.
We have decades of experience between us, learning how to make government programs and systems work in our favor. We created ACHD to be able to build upon our shared, hard-earned knowledge and resources, so that others wouldn't have to walk as far as we did to get to where we want to be. Our ultimate goal is to build partnerships with likeminded organizations from the larger community who can be allies and help us grow, so that we can get to a place of prosperity and opportunity.
At ACHD,
OUR story is as important
as the work that we do.
In fact, our story IS the work.
Like all communities, ours is one of many needs, with each need being as important as all of the others. This is why we take a holistic approach to providing aid and creating critical programs. We call this the Least Amount of Barriers approach. Our goal is to help the African diaspora of King County live lives with the least number of barriers to overcome as possible. We consider ourselves to be a sort of systems linkage between our clients and the Western-based, historically white-centered American systems that weren't designed with their needs in mind. Because we ourselves come from within the diaspora, we are able to anticipate our clients' needs by simply looking around and engaging with our own community. This enables us to provide immediate support AND to plan for our collective futures.
Everything that we do centers around our
community. Some of our programs derive from
direct requests that our community makes of us and
we discuss each new program that we create with
our community before we launch them, building
their feedback into every aspect of
how our programs are run.
HOW WE
WORK
We partner with local government
agencies, other nonprofits and experts
in their fields for funding, execution of our
programs and referrals. Should our comm-
unity members require outside assistance,
we remain by their sides, providing
culturally-relevant case management in
partnership with whichever outside
agencies are able to provide the
help that they need.
Our expertise stems from both our
extensive experience working with other
agencies AND the vast knowledge that
we have about our community's needs.
This enables us to be forward-thinking
and to create new programs as we notice
a need within the community, before that
need becomes too great. It also enables us to find the best local agencies
to partner with.
All of our programs include:
community cafes - where we share our plans
with the community and ask for feedback, tailoring our programs
to fit their needs, wishes and goals
educational workshops - open to the public, but
built specifically for our clients who are already
participating in or enrolled in our programs
one-on-one case management
