In October of 2010 CERI organized a trip to Cambodia with 13 clients. Most of the clients had not visited their homeland since they were forced to flee from Pol Pot's genocidal regime. [Read more]

CERI featured in the book

The Power of Collective Wisdom and the trap of collective folly
by Alan Briskin, Sheryl Erickson, John Ott and Tom Callanan
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The Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI), in Oakland, California, is a powerful example of community, mediated by love. The fact that it evolved as a response to the wounds generated by war, torture, and genocide makes it a telling illustration of what power lies in the group.  read the article

Mona Afary, Clinical Director of CERI featured in the book

UNDER THE DRAGON - California's New Culture

by Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg

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Mona concentrated on the tone of Lay’s voice. She did not understand the Cambodian language, but neither was she completely comfortable in English. She had grown up speaking Farsi—the only language that conveyed to her ears the deeper, wilder sea of feeling that churned beneath words. Lay spoke in a somber monotone about his long months shackled to fourteen other prisoners in an underground punishment cell, the terrible stench of the slop bucket, the weekly beatings that shattered his ribs—and how the soldiers pursued him in his nightmares, even now, two decades after leaving Cambodia.  read the article