Afghan Communities Support (ACS)
Refugee Programs Bureau (RPB)
ACS Program
The Afghan Communities Support Program (ACS) is a two-year initiative to increase organizational capacity, improve case management and expand education and outreach to support Afghan newcomers in California.
Targeted Population
The program will support recent arrivals in the United States who were part of Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) on or after July 30, 2021, currently reside in California, and have an eligible immigration status. These include Afghan: (1) Refugees or asylees; (2) Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders; (3) Special Immigrant (SQ or SI) Parolees; (4) Special Immigrants (SI) Conditional Permanent Residents (CPR), or (5) Afghan Humanitarian Parolees.
ACS Services
The program will fund eligible non-profit organizations according to three core components: 1) Organizational Capacity Expansion 2) Case Management; and 3) Education and Outreach. Example of activities include staff recruitment and training, intake assessments, service referrals and support for access to housing, and cultural orientation and distribution of educational information on available services.
Eligible Applicants
The CDSS Refugee Programs Bureau will be granting up to $750,000 in federal funds to qualified organizations. The program is open to organizations with a demonstrated need to provide ongoing case management services, outreach, and education to Afghan newcomers. CDSS will prioritize applicants whose caseloads have been impacted by independent arrivals or so-called walks ins.
Funding Announcement
A Public Briefing was held virtually via Zoom on June 29, 2022, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. This briefing provided an overview of the ACS project, followed by a Question-and-Answer Session.
The session was recorded and can be accessed on our Department YouTube channel.
Answers To Submitted Questions
All questions received prior to July 15, 2022 have been answered and can be found in the
Frequently Asked Questions document
.
RFA Documents
ACS program staff can be reached at acs@dss.ca.gov.
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