Channavy Chhay is the current Executive Director at the Center for Southeast Asians (CSEA). She came to the United States in her early teens with her mother, both genocide survivors and refugees from war-torn Cambodia. As a refugee, she struggled with learning English, and trying to “fit in” to American culture. She also witnessed firsthand the hardships that many Southeast Asian refugee families encountered: low paying jobs working long hours in factories, children navigating a new world with very limited resources and elders suffering from trauma, malnutrition and ill health. Channavy came to understand that traditional mainstream organizations could not adequately provide services for many Southeast Asian families, due to significant linguistic and cultural barriers.
Under her leadership, the organization unveiled its new name, the “Center for Southeast Asians” (CSEA). In partnership with the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum and the WK Kellogg Foundation, Channavy secured funding to begin the first ever, comprehensive data
collection and analysis initiative on Southeast Asians in Rhode Island. The SEA-DATA project is now complete, with its issue brief on the community’s overall socioeconomic wellbeing released last November.
CSEA then released the first “Facts and Community Trends” (FACTs) Report, highlighting the best available data on the unique demographics, characteristics and trends in the Southeast Asian community. Channavy envision is to utilize accurate, high quality data in her advocacy to help close employment, health and wellness gaps between the Southeast Asian community and
greater Rhode Island.
In 2014, CSEA was announced as one of thirty organizations in the nation to receive a $500,000 grant as part of a $13.7 million educational investment initiative by the WK Kellogg Foundation. This substantial grant will support the “Families Advancing Racial Equity” (FARE) Program in coordination with the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families and the Rhode Island Foundation. FARE’s mission is to provide resources for activating family engagement in primary and secondary education as well as developing a Southeast Asian Commission to build a more capable and culturally competent professional workforce within the Southeast Asian community. CSEA was featured on the WK Kellogg Foundation’s Impact Highlight in 2017 for the successful implementation of the initiative.
In 2015, Channavy entered a partnership with Khmer Health Advocate in West Hartford, CT and the University of Connecticut Health in Farmington, CT on a 5 years research grant from the National Institute of Health, designed to study innovative strategies to prevent diabetes among Cambodian Americans. CSEA has a long history of collaborating on health issues promotion. CSEA will employ our community health workers to deliver the lifestyle intervention (Eat, Walk, Sleep) and to facilitate the medication therapy management intervention via telemedicine. As of October 2020, the DREAM Study has been concluded and data will soon be release to the public.
Channavy’s personal history and unique perspective shapes her continued commitment to CSEA as an effective advocate for the needs and aspirations of the Southeast Asians community. CSEA is fully dedicated to addressing system level changes and working together with its partners to make each year more successful than the last