A Safe Place for Healing. For Understanding.
For Nurturing and Learning.
SAHARA, meaning “support” in Hindi, was established in 1991 by a dedicated group of five clinical social workers and two physicians who came together to meet the underserved needs of the South Asian community in Southern California.
What began and was sustained for 14 years entirely through volunteer service and that significant investment has grown into a fully staffed agency supporting youth, older adults, and domestic violence support for survivors.
SAHARA’s staff discuss services and precautions during the Covid-19 Shutdown
OUR MISSION
SAHARA serves survivors of all forms of abuse within the South Asian community in Southern California with culturally sensitive and linguistically specific services.
At SAHARA, we firmly believe that every human being regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, deserves to live a life of dignity and respect. The SAHARA family is committed to serving the growing number of South Asians in Southern California by providing them with services, support, skill development, resources, information and culturally sensitive and multilingual assistance that they need.
Our services are available to all of the Southern California community, however our target population is the most vulnerable and marginalized South Asian community members, which include people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.
SAHARA Monthly Events
SAHARA has many events throughout the month, some of them are:
Support Group
It takes place every Tuesday and includes psychotherapy, psycho education, yoga, meditation, art therapy, self-defense classes, open discussions and so much more.
Chai Time for Older Adults
This takes place every second Thursday of the month. A circle of sharing where we get together to support each other, have fun and talk about how to manage stress.
Citizenship Clinics
Once a month we hold citizenship clinics at our office where we provide:
- Eligibility check for LPR’s
- Application assistance
- Fee Waiver
- Legal review
OUR PROGRAMS
Comprehensive programs carefully designed to provide a path to self-sufficiency, healthy aging, and building the next generation of leaders is our promise to the community. Through intentional and consistent community engagement our programs and services reflect the evolving needs of the diverse community we serve.
Community of support
