Maine Association For New American

MANA is an immigrant-led organization that promotes social & personal of immigrants through:

– Raising awareness of individual and collective trauma and how they affect our lives

– Expanding people’s resilience building strategies by exploring various resources

– Providing trauma-aware, multilingual transportation services to address social determinants of health

– Connecting people with their peers across cultures

MANA coordinates multilingual outreach and educational programming for immigrants and their families to facilitate further resilience-building, including ways to manage trauma. Immigrants coming to Maine have often experienced adversity either in their places of origin or in the process of immigrating, and sometimes to this day. However, we do not see this as proof of being “broken” or “traumatized.” We instead highlight the strength one requires in order to survive these experiences. This is facilitated by providing linguistically and culturally tailored workshops and programs under the banner of Resilient New Americans.

Raising awareness of how these experiences can affect their lives today is important in ensuring that each and every person can thrive, both personally and professionally no matter what they might have or have not experienced. The educational programs create spaces to understand how collective trauma affects individuals differently, how to recognize it, and how to live with it effectively. Presenting alternate ways to approach these experiences allows individuals to leverage the resiliency they have already cultivated to enrich their futures.