Organization

Cambodian Association of America (CAA)


The Cambodian Association of America (CAA) is a nonprofit social service agency in Long Beach, California, incorporated in December 1975.[1] It grew out of the Cambodian Students Association, formed by Cambodian students who came to California through exchange programs in the late 1950s and 1960s.[2][1] It was the first Cambodian mutual aid association organized and incorporated in the United States, and it calls itself the oldest and largest Cambodian organization in the country.[2][3]

History

In the 1960s Cal State Long Beach hosted more than 100 Cambodian exchange students in a USAID program that taught industrial skills. One of them, San Ramjek, arrived in 1962 and that year served as president of the Cambodian Student Association, which he dated to 1959.[1] When the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, former students formed committees to support the first wave of Cambodian refugees. They visited the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton in Southern California to bring food and other supplies to the refugees there.[2][1][4] The group first took the name Cambodian Association of Southern California. In December 1975 it was incorporated as a nonprofit and renamed the Cambodian Association of America.[1] Kry Lay was among its founders.[5][6]

In 1975 CAA became the country's first Cambodian refugee-assistance organization.[7] During the first years of resettlement, it helped families with schools, medical care, welfare and visits to the doctor, working alongside the United Cambodian Community.[7] In 1978 people who left CAA founded the United Cambodian Community Inc. (UCC) as the same type of organization. The two groups competed for grants for many years.[7] The Internal Revenue Service has recognized CAA as tax-exempt since November 1986.[8]

Kry Lay later served as chairman. With his help, CAA built a strategic plan, applied for grants and raised its annual budget from $350,000 to $3 million in just over a year. The new funding let it serve thousands of people each year, including other Asian communities, Latinos, African Americans and Whites.[6] In 1995 CAA was among the local donors to scholarships given at a graduation party for 250 Cambodian graduates from five Long Beach high schools, held by the newly founded Khmer Parent Association.[7]

Around 1998, community leaders began a campaign to register Cambodian refugees as citizens so that they could vote, and about 1,500 refugees became citizens by its end. In 2001 voter registration centers were being set up at both CAA and UCC.[7] By 2001 the two groups had begun working together on several projects, including the campaign to name part of Anaheim Street as Cambodia Town.[7] The Press-Telegram named CAA among the community's two largest organizations in its series "Beyond the Killing Fields," which ran from December 2 to 9, 2001.[7] ACTA credits CAA with helping to establish the Cambodian community in Long Beach and to promote small businesses along the Anaheim and Atlantic corridors, the area known as Cambodia Town.[3]

In 2013 an ACTA Living Cultures grant supported the creation of the first Cambodian Lakhon Sbaek Thom, or large shadow puppet theater troupe, in the United States. Students learned puppet handling and dance movements under Yon Pich, an elder who knows Cambodian folk theater, and the master musician Ho Chan and his ensemble directed the pin peat music. The grant paid for 18 Sbaek Thom puppets and stipends for the master teachers.[3]

Programs

CAA provides social, health, outreach education and employment services to low-income children and families in Long Beach, in their own languages and cultures.[3] Its services range from citizenship help and job placement to mental health counseling.[6] For the Cambodian community of Los Angeles County it offers counseling, domestic violence services, family support, health insurance help and substance abuse services.[9] Its Atlantic Avenue branch runs outpatient and intensive outpatient treatment for substance use, with staff who speak English, Spanish and Cambodian.[10]

By 2001 CAA ran a job program that helped clients write résumés and build computer skills, drove clients without cars to job interviews and paid part of their wages when businesses hired them. The program had record numbers of interviews and job placements.[7] A federal Office of Refugee Resettlement grant of $11.4 million, run through CAA and UCC, paid the full salaries and benefits of refugee trainees for six months or a year. Over three years it placed 448 refugees in jobs, and 60 percent kept them. Because the program was only for people with refugee status, those who had become citizens could not join it.[7]

The Healthy Minds Program, a partnership with the Long Beach Asian Pacific Mental Health Center, received funding from The California Endowment in 2001. Its case workers were to canvass the community to assess and address mental health needs.[7] CAA and UCC also worked with the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services on health projects, from anti-smoking campaigns to immunization programs.[7] In May 2026 CAA's United Mental Health Promoters held a peer-to-peer senior wellness outing to El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach.[11]

Finances

Contributions make up almost all of CAA's revenue, 96 to 100 percent in each year from 2016 to 2024. Its federal filings show revenue of about $2.7 million to $3.7 million a year from 2016 to 2023. In 2024 revenue rose to $6,081,262, with expenses of $4,037,158 and net assets of $5,048,960.[8]

Leadership

2001
  • Him Chhim, executive director[7]
  • Kimthai Kouch, associate executive director and chief financial officer. CAA earned many grants during his time there.[7]
Later
  • Kimthai Kuoch, executive director (2021) and chief executive officer (2024)[6][8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Cal State Long Beach, Cambodian Student Society
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 AAPI History Museum, Seeking Refuge
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Cambodian Association of America profile
  4. ↑ Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, thesis on Cambodian refugees in Long Beach (PDF)
  5. ↑ Historical Society of Long Beach, Cambodian American profiles
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Long Beach Post, Kry Lay, one of the founders of Long Beach's Cambodian community, dies at 79 (July 2021)
  7. ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 Press-Telegram, "Beyond the Killing Fields" special report (December 2 to 9, 2001, PDF)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Cambodian Association of America
  9. ↑ Los Angeles County, Services Locator: Cambodian Association of America
  10. ↑ Los Angeles County, Services Locator: Cambodian Association of America, Long Beach
  11. ↑ Cambodian Association of America, Facebook

Sources

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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:15.