Fostering Unity, Celebrating Diversity
Executive summary of OCCA profile
The Oromo Canadian Community Association (OCCA), founded in 1985, is dedicated to supporting Oromos in Canada. We celebrate our rich heritage and provide essential services to help new immigrants integrate and thrive in Canadian society. Our volunteer-driven organization offers programs in cultural preservation, education, social integration, and more, striving to fulfill the community’s diverse needs and aspirations.
The Oromo Canadian Community Association (OCCA) is a non-profit community association founded in September 1985 by Canadians of Oromo origin and new Oromo immigrants. The Association is committed to offering a range of activities that can be tailored to meet Immigrant Oromos’ needs. OCCA believes that Oromo community is rich in heritage culture, talent, creativity and drive and it is there to preserve and build upon that. At the same time OCCA provides more intensive service and assistance to help Oromos integrate with the Canadian Society and take advantage of the mainstream service.
The constitution of our community association is developed with founding visionaries that envisaged a well performing community association. The management offices and responsibilities listed are detail and rich in the types of services it promises to offer. According to constitution our community should have the functional units that are responsible for sponsorship & settlements, culture & art, youth & sport, social events & rally, heritage language & ESL, tutorial & after-school, career & placements, family & health education, literature, media production, human right group and outreach programs. Only few of these services are running at the moment contrary to the primary vision.
The OCCA has 11 member volunteer board which sets policy and guidelines for the operation of the Association. The board is elected from the membership of the Association at the Annual General Meeting. Decisions of the board are implemented by the executive committee of the board, the executive director and the staff of the OCCA.
Overview of community needs analysis
The isolation of our members is the problems that our programs is intended to combat and its negative impact on family, women, children, youth, seniors and individuals with disabilities. The major component of our programs is thus, to bridge the gap between the community and mainstream services. Service will provide individuals who have found it difficult to be served by mainstream organization due to language and cultural barriers. These clients will fall within following target groups: new immigrant, visible minorities, women, youth (youth at risk) and social assistance recipients.