On March 1, 2012 CERI Director Mona Afary PhD., received an award from the Devata Giving Circle organization for her devotion and commitment to working with Cambodian American families. These families are often under served by social service agencies. Through Mona’s leadership, CERI has become a valuable community resource for many Cambodian American families living in the east bay. In 2011 CERI expanded its services to include youth after-school programs, tutoring, mentoring, school advocacy and our young women’s weekly support group.
For refugee families struggling to survive in impoverished neighborhoods in East Oakland, youth programs provide a refuge from drugs, sexual exploitation, and chronic violence. The support services children receive from CERI often become the deciding factor, determining whether or not a young person will graduate high school and move into higher education.
Mona Afary’s Acceptance Speech at the Devata Giving Circle Award Ceremony 2012
March 1, 2012
My gratitude to you Navin and to the board members of the Devata Giving Circle for giving me this huge honor. I will talk in a few minutes about why being acknowledged by the Devata Giving Circle means so much to me. But first, I would like to talk about why I do what I do and why I find my work with the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) so incredibly meaningful.
It was the work of destiny that I, an Iranian psychologist with no Cambodian language skills, ended up working with the Cambodian refugee population in Oakland. It has been 7 years, since, with the help of my Cambodian clients, CERI’s Board of Directors, a large number of compassionate and giving individuals and a handful of foundations and generous donors, the CERI mental health community has come into existence.
For the last seven years, I have been witness to an ocean of pain , grief, fear ,panic and hopelessness, as well as an ocean of unconditional empathy, generosity, compassion and forgiveness. In this seven year journey my clients, my colleagues, our board and I together have been developing a roadmap to the path of healing from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Now, seven years later, when new members join this community—all of them survivors who have been living in the underworld without ever having gotten any help for their Post-traumatic Stress Disorder—they are welcomed and symbolically carried on the shoulders of the existing members of the community who are walking on the path of recovery. Just being held with compassion and understanding by a community of other survivors who have gone through the same suffering brings warmth to their hearts and the core of their bones. After three decades of living in psychological hell, in a matter of months, these new members of the CERI community are able to leave the underworld and come back to life. They are once again able to laugh , at times so loud that, that their laughter could be heard from the other end of the hallway. It is this community that gives me the strength, courage and determination to carry on with the challenging yet incredibly meaningful work at CERI .
My story with the Cambodian refugee population in Oakland is a love story. Every day as I walk in, as my eyes meet someone else’s, my heart melts. There is joy in that exchange. Joy that comes from sharing one’s most personal life story with the other with utmost honesty and truthfulness, with the understanding and trust that one is not being judged and that one’s core goodness and amazing resilience is being seen and deeply valued.
I cannot think of anything else in my life that I could do that would give me more bliss. This is it. I am blessed to be surrounded by a community that has provided me with the opportunity to experience the meaning of unconditional love to the core of my being.
My hope for this community is that they would just continue on with keeping their relationships with one another authentic. There is something sacred and magical about this way of relating in this community. 
My challenge at this point is with the younger generation, the children and grandchildren of the CERI community. Living in high crime neighborhoods of Oakland comes with the temptation of fast money and destructive power. For this young, innocent , beautiful and vulnerable generation of Cambodian Americans, who do not see a future for themselves, dropping out of school, becoming violent, getting involved in robberies and gangs, and, for the girls, getting pregnant and falling prey to underground sex trafficking, are daily realities.
Transforming their lives requires a roadmap—a roadmap that could integrate the wisdom in the Cambodian culture with the progressive elements of the Western culture. This is why you—the women of the Devata Giving Circle—are so important. All of you are daughters of Khmer Rouge survivors who have worked hard for your present accomplishments and have chosen to give back to your community and play a role in the lives of girls and women in this community. You are setting an example for those tempted and involved in the street life; a new point of reference for the possibility of having a vibrant, thriving and giving life style.
This is why being acknowledged by the Devata Giving Circle means so much to me.
Devata Giving Circle Awards 2012
Navin’s award speech as she presented Mona Afary and CERI with a grant from the Devata Giving Circle:
I have the great privilege of honoring Mona Afary. For those of you who have had the blessing of meeting Mona, you will understand the magic Mona has. Mona’s reputation precedes her. Even before I had met her someone had said: “Oh you’ll love her. You’ll come away from that meeting wanting to touch and hug everyone. “ Sure enough, the first time I met her, I kind of fell in love with her . How could I not? Here was a woman who I barely knew, but already she was holding my hand, calling me sweetheart and hugging me. Mona is so warm. Her actions, her words are so sincere with so much kindness and care. Her warm nature is really her magic… It exudes from her and is infectious. It is what allows her to be effective in what she does. Mona works with the Cambodian American community providing mental health support to a population that is 1) too ashamed to ask for this kind of help 2) severely overlooked in the health field 3) culturally doesn’t always respond to the western mental health practices. Mona’ generous style and caring disposition draws people out, draws them to her, makes them feel safe and comforted. She is trusted and loved and gives trust and love. This is not a small feat given the learned mistrust and fear in the community.
On a personal level, I feel grateful to know Mona. All of us come into this space with the heaviness of our own history on our shoulders. For some of us this history is too much to bear. It is a history dominated by tragedy, trauma and loss. And for those who are like my parents and maybe your parents or maybe your aunts and uncles, maybe even yourselves, in an effort t to cope, to move on, to hold down jobs, to raise a family, and provide a space for their daughters so we can be here in front of you tonight, doing all this, they kind of lost themselves, receded inward, putting everything and everyone before themselves, unsure of how to deal with the void. Silent. Not talking about the pain for it is taboo, too ashamed , something to be dealt with internally. I wish for them, my own parents, my mom, a “Mona.” Mental health issues are prevalent in our community, it is prevalent in our families. If everyone had a “Mona” to talk to, to give love and to receive love from, to have someone that does not judge, this is kind, that understands……..if our mothers and fathers, if our aunts and uncles, if our sisters and cousins, if we, ourselves had a “Mona” by our side, walking with us, holding our hand. Imagine the lightness we would fee, the love and confidence we would have for ourselves, the courage we would have to face each day, imagine as healthy people this community could be and what we would be able to give, share and instill with those that we love and care for.
ROYA 