CASSA
CASSA is a not –for-profit umbrella organization that supports and advocates on behalf of existing as well as emerging South Asian agencies, groups, and communities to address their diverse and dynamic needs. It is a vehicle for advocacy, research, community development, community mobilization and coalition building with other groups in society to create an anti-racist, equitable and accessible society. CASSA’s overall perspective has always been informed by an anti-racist approach seeking equity and access for all South Asian groups, particularly the most marginalized, and working with other equity seeking groups with the aim to create an overall equitable society.
Mission: To facilitate the economic, social, political and cultural empowerment of South Asians by serving as a resource for information, research, mobilization, coordination and leadership on social justice issues affecting our communities.
Vision: We envision and strive for aCanada free from all forms of discrimination in which all communities are free from marginalization and are fully empowered to participate in definingCanada’s political, economic, social and cultural future.
CASSA’s Values: To create social change by building alliances and working collaboratively with those who share a vision of empowering all communities to participate in definingCanada’s future.
The following values serve as guidelines for our conduct as we implement our mission and work towards our mission:
Social Justice: We are committed to working within a social justice framework which promotes equity and empowerment for marginalized communities.
Anti–oppression, anti-racism, anti-homophobia: We strive to incorporate anti-oppressive, anti-racist and anti-homophobic principles and practices in our work.
Responsiveness: We strive to work through a variety of consultative and participatory structures and practices to ensure that our work is grounded in the realities and priorities of our communities.
Diversity: We recognize and respect the diversity among and within South Asian communities and within Canadian society.
Collaboration and solidarity: We are committed to building alliances in order to work collectively towards common aims.
Accountability: We are committed to maintaining effective governance, measurement and reporting practices.
Organizational Activities:
CASSA is committed to working within a social justice framework which promotes equity and empowerment and advocating on behalf of most marginalized people within the larger South Asian community. Our objectives are:
- Poverty reduction: To promote and contribute to an analysis that recognizes the links between poverty and racialization. CASSA aims to bring together community stakeholders to collectively create and support strategies emerging from this analysis to reduce poverty in South Asian and other racialized communities.
- Coordination of Access to health & Wellness: Promote and contribute to an analysis that is based on social detriments of health, increase South Asian communities’ access to linguistically and culturally appropriate health services.
- Strengthen the community’s capacity to address intergenerational and family relationship issues: by bringing together community stakeholders to collectively create and support opportunities to research, collaborations, professional development/training and advocacy for resources in order to address inter-generational and family relationship issues.
- Strengthening responsiveness: to community stakeholders by creating communications strategies and mechanisms that ensure effective multi-directional communication between CASSA and its community holders as well as its stakeholders.
Since CASSA is a member based organization, all individuals who form a part of immigrant of South Asian community form its client base irrespective of whether they are based locally or provincially. Locally, CASSA has been very active in the Greater Toronto Area keeping considering the fact that majority of South Asian immigrant population resides here. Its projects have focused on youth, women, seniors, internationally trained professionals etc highlighting the issues faced by them. On provincial level, CASSA has been actively working inPeterboroughandWaterlooand will now extend its operations toDurhamregion too in future.
CASSA has undertaken a number of projects in the past in conjunction with its mission to work towards highlighting and building consensus around social justice issues affecting South Asian communities. Some recent ones include Poverty Reduction initiative, Health Equity initiative, Youth empowerment and Welcoming Communities initiative. Each project represented a significant challenge faced by the immigrant communities in Canadalike poverty, inequities in health care, unemployment, childcare, issues faced by women and seniors etc. The Welcoming Communities Initiative deals specifically with identifying different settlement needs and issues in various municipalities across Ontario.
It aims to bridge social, cultural and economic differences that will enhance civic engagement and engage different stakeholders to implement a suitable model which creates an inclusive and welcoming environment for immigrants and newcomers. In the past, through PROMPT ( Policy Roundtable Mobilizing Professions and Trades), CASSA developed policy recommendations and advocated for policy change to improve the access of internationally educated professionals and trades people into their fields of expertise, as well as for the social and economic integration of immigrants. It also incubated organizations such asCAPE (The Council for Access to the Profession of Engineering) and AIPSO (Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario) in order to improve the employment situation of immigrants with professional backgrounds.
