Community Organization Spotlight: Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF)
Part I of APASA’s Community Road Map, headed by our External Community Chair, Minah Yang
TW: Mentions of domestic violence and sexual abuse
Hi there! Welcome to APASA’s Community Road Map, a monthly initiative where we have a conversation with an APIDA organization in the greater Los Angeles area about their mission and the community they serve. In honor of October being National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, our first stop is the Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF), a service provider and shelter for survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
I had the absolute honor of speaking with Nat Wadman, the Community Program Director at CPAF. I would like to extend my gratitude to Nat for graciously granting her time to speak to me about CPAF’s mission and the challenges they have faced during the pandemic.
Q: How and why was CPAF founded?
A: CPAF was founded in 1978 by a Filipina American woman named Nilda Rimonte. She questioned whether an immigrant Asian or Pacific Islander who experiences domestic violence or sexual violence could get help anywhere, and if there were any other resources that could actually provide support. She actually didn't find any options or clear pathways to really seek out help. That's why she pioneered the program that we use today at CPAF. It started as a one person initiative, grew to a grassroots organization, and now we are a nonprofit organization that has over 50+ employees, three operating shelters, a growing community program, and a 5+ million dollar budget to support the AAPI community in the greater LA area, so we have grown significantly in the past 43 years.
Nilda Rimonte, the founder of CPAF(source: nurturingchange.org)
Q: How has CPAF changed since its founding? And how has CPAF adapted its programming to serve the community?
A: I think one thing that has become fundamental for our organization is that we really consider the needs of the community. So when the situation changes, whether internal within the community, API community or external factors, such as what's going on in the country, what's happening in legislation, those actually constitute the organizational change, because the needs have changed. So we can no longer have the same program that provides services than three years ago. One of the things that we learn is that once you help people, word of mouth gets out there, so when they see that this agency really considers their needs and also speaks their language and understands their culture. So when they go through the gender based violence, whether family violence, sexual violence, they realize that they're not to blame in the situation, and they have resources where people really listen. From there, when the needs and demand are coming in for our organization, we have to seek more resources because we know that there's a gap in services out there, particularly for this population. So then we seek out more government grants that are city level, county level, and then the federal level to really support that work. Those grants actually help us further establish the mechanism, or what it looks like when it comes to effectiveness and efficiency of our services. One thing that hasn't changed from then until now is the shelter. If you're looking at the entire sector, we are one of the few that actually provide shelter for a culturally specific community and provide culturally responsive services. CPAF is also the only rape crisis center in the area. So when it come to sexual violence a lot of time we have to go through the hurdle of cultural blame and the myths that surround sexual assault, sexual violence, and also how survivors never really report right away when things happen because of the fear, and so on and so forth. What we have done differently from then and to now is we are trying to train other agencies who provide services to be a bit more culturally specific and share some of our knowledge and learning, including language access and a culturally responsive and nuanced support system for survivors.
Q: What is one service that CPAF offers today that people often overlook, or one that is not as well known that you think more people should know about?
A: This is not biased at all, but I'm responsible for the parenting program. I think, like I said in the previous question, you can see we are known for the shelter program, we are known for our 24-hour hotline, so they know that they can call us. We don't want to be only responsive to things that happen, we want to do further prevention, so one of our programs is counseling parenting with non-violence. Our curriculum is not like you coming in and being taught how to raise your kids. CPAF has shifted some of those paradigms around parenting work in a way that in order for you to be able to raise your children and become very compassionate non-violent parents, you have to work on your own trauma. You have to go through those reflective practices, you have to go back to what was your life like in your childhood? What was it like for you when there were unmet needs growing up, and how did you carry some of those as an adult today and then project those to your children? That is a way that you perpetuate that cycle of violence, and you are teaching them that it's okay to abuse power in a relationship. Using power to control certain population, no matter whether it is in a family or romantic relationship, is the root cause of domestic and sexual violence. I feel like this work is often undermined. Imagine that we invested in this work, 43 years ago when we started. There would be a lot of families that do not fall into this whole cycle of violence.
Q: What are some of the challenges CPAF faced during the pandemic?
A: With the pandemic what we realized the first three to four months was a significant drop in hotline calls. We realized that the first three months, April, May, June, July two years ago, the amount of calls dropped and we wondered what happened? When we did further research we realized that with the Stay at Home order, many survivors are staying at home with the potential abuser. So there's no window of opportunity to call seeking help or even go out because potential abusers have control over everything: where they go, what they do, when they eat, and who they contact. We realized that because of that people were unable to ask for help. After those three to four months, what we realized is that it accumulated over those periods, and then all of a sudden, in months five and six the calls came in and were so intense. Also because we are unable to go to the office in person, all of our support, such as counseling or case management, is through the hotline. This caused a significant increase of calls, and the calls are so much more intense that they have a negative impact on our staff as well. Our workers experience secondary trauma because it's so hard. They feel like they are so hopeless and helpless when people call in, but then they don't know what to do, because we don't have enough resources. Imagine that you pick up a phone call with someone crying out for help, but then there's no other resources out there but you still have to maintain hope for conversation. I think that's an additional layer that is coming out from the pandemic, other than that, it is just the lack of resources.
Q: What's in the future for CPAF? How will CPAF try to grow in the future?
A: I think the emerging need in the recent years around housing and the intersectionality of homelessness and domestic violence and sexual violence, as oftentimes the power and financial control abusers hold over survivors tend to make families homeless. One of the things that we are looking at this year is to provide financial assistance and housing assistance to families to ensure that they remain housed and employed. And we will continue to seek to really understand this type of work. We work closely with the government sector to really understand the process and to really tap into the different resources to support the API community. Moving forward, another piece of work that we are trying to do more is helping mainstream service providers become more culturally specific to really understand the specific need of the AAPI community. And hopefully, with those partnerships, we can work together as a community, and you can receive support no matter where you're from.
Interested in getting involved with CPAF?