Founded in 1995, the CCMAA is a statewide, non-profit collaborative comprised of representatives from several refugee mutual assistance associations—African, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Hmong, Laotian, Albanian, Kosovo, and Vietnamese. Recently, the CCMAA extended its services to help Haitians and Bosnians who have come to Connecticut as refugees and immigrants. Through the CCMAA, leaders of each ethnic community work together to enhance the lives of their compatriots by helping them adjust to “American life.”  To date, the CCMAA has organized many programs to assist refugees and immigrants in Connecticut including: English as a Second Language, Referral Visits, Translation Services, Job Services, Services for Victims of Crime, Youth Projects, Cultural Preservation and much more.  Through its staff and collaborative partners, CCMAA has language capacity in all of the languages spoken by the communities we serve. 
 

The coalition serves recent refugees and immigrants who range from the very old to the very young. We serve individuals who have left their native lands – generally not under good conditions – and who have arrived in Connecticut generally without financial resources, without English as a spoken language, without an understanding of American cultural, educational, judicial, medical, or employment “systems”, and (often) without strong family or community support systems.

The CCMAA, focused as it is on providing key social and human services directly to members of Hartford’s diverse immigrant/refugee communities, relies mostly on a part-time staff that is professionally trained in social work and advocacy. However, the agency uses volunteers in its Seniors Program and its Youth Development programs. Of course all of our directors are volunteers and serve without compensation.