ASSIST Community Services Centre, formerly known as “Chinese Community Services Centre” was created in 1977. It was started when Chinese Graduates Association of Alberta (CGAA) funded and supported a one year project to determine and meet the needs of Chinese people in Edmonton entitled “Need of Social Services in the Chinese Community”.

After a year, the Centre continued to operate through the effort of volunteers and donations from local businesses. The lack of continuous funding resulted in hard times in the late 1970s but the work continued. The mass influx of Indo-Chinese refugees (Boat People) to Canada in the mid-1970s, following the end of the Vietnam War, brought more newcomers with settlement needs. In January 1980, the Centre received one-time funding from the City of Edmonton to carry out basic settlement services, information and referrals, interpretation, and translation to Chinese immigrants and refugees. In 1981, the Centre also received funding from the federal government to expand its settlement services. In October 1983, the Centre moved from Jasper Avenue into the same building as the Edmonton Chinatown Multicultural Centre.

Throughout these early years, volunteers played a major role in the work of the Centre. Many members of the Chinese Graduates Association volunteered, along with others, to contribute their talents and time to serve the needs of the Chinese Community. They are recognized on the Board of Directors Plaque (1977-1982) on the recognition wall. Some of them continued and became Board members for the Centre when it was incorporated in 1983.

On January 12, 1983, the Centre registered as a non-profit organization, and became a registered charity on June 7, 1990. During this period, the Centre’s most popular programs were the English as a Second Language (ESL) courses and the Citizenship class. The Centre’s direct services included employment and housing referrals, translation and interpretation services, completion of documents, legal services and other referrals. The Centre also offered workshops on legal issues, family planning, nutrition, and insurance. In addition, other services such as an annual free TAX Clinic were organized with the help of volunteers and we had two full-time staff. Our funding during this period, came from governments, Edmonton Catholic School Board, tuition fees, and donations from the public.

In the mid 1990’s, the Centre received funding from the federal government to offer English classes under the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). We also received funding from both the provincial and federal governments to offer Integrated Services Program (ISP) to provide settlement services to new immigrants. Both are now the most important programs we offer. Among the users of our settlement services in the 1990s were investment immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. By offering courses to new immigrants during the week, the LINC program also became an important addition to the language services we provided which previously had consisted only of weekend ESL courses.

We started to introduce more programs and projects in the late 1990s. For example, building on the success of our “Chinese Parenting” and “Roots and Wings” projects in the 1980s, the Family program developed new programs such as “Nobody’s Perfect” and “Let’s Grow Together in 1997. In early 2000, the Centre also developed two new programs for children and youth: “Towards a New Generation” and “Smart Choices – Recognizing Problem Gambling”. For seniors, the “Golden Senior Wellness Enhanced Program” became a favourite.

Our Volunteer Program was first initiated through a 2 year pilot project (2001-2002) under a partnership including ASSIST, City of Edmonton-Community, Big Brothers & Big Sister Society, and Chinese Wellness Enhancement Committee. The partnerships goal was to secure funding for a Volunteer Development Program to serve their collective needs. The first Volunteer Fair held on Oct 4th 2003 at City Hall raised awareness of volunteer opportunities across the local Chinese community. There was overwhelming community response.

In 2001, our annual budget grew substantially and we offered 10 programs and projects, with 20 employees and even more volunteers serving our clients. While we continued to serve people from the Chinese community, including the immigrants and refugees from Indo China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, we also piloted services and activities to other ethnic communities. As a result the Centre changed its name to ASSIST Community Services Centre on July 18, 2001 to reflect the increasing diversity of our clients and services. We also moved to our current address at 9649-105 A Avenue. In 2003, ASSIST offered our first multicultural program – The Multicultural Breast Health Education Project (MBH) for Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic and South Asian women, which we then extended to include African, Filipino and Latino people. The MBH used the spoken language of each community to provide information, educate, and promote accessibility to support services, to disseminate breast health education and early detection methods among immigrant women.

ASSIST grew significantly throughout this period, particularly over the last 10 years. With funding from the three levels of government, our overall annual operating budget increased from about $580,000 in 2005 to over $3 million in 2017; from 20 staff in 2005 to 72 currently. We started formalizing our fundraising in 2007. With the help of over 50 volunteers, we launched our first Walk & Run fundraising event. Through these now annual events, we have raised more than $20,000 each year.

Following the Alberta economic boom in 2006/2007, more immigrants moved here. The demand for settlement services increased significantly starting in 2008 and continuing to this day. We introduced a new family literacy program “Raising Children Through Songs, Stories, & Books” in 2009 with funding from Alberta Advanced Education. In 2008-2009, we provided more than 10,000 services to clients through our various program and activities. In 2009, to enhance our ability to offer services, we made improvements to our downtown building through funding from the federal and provincial governments, we enlarged the front counter reception area and built more offices and classrooms. By then, we had over 50 staff and over 200 volunteers working as a team to provide services and programs to diverse multicultural communities.

In 2012 ASSIST expanded and opened a second office in the south-west sector of the city; becoming the first immigrant serving agency to serve newcomers living in Edmonton’s southwest communities. Opening our second location was a major milestone for ASSIST in terms of the growth of the organization, staff, funding and programs/services. Programs at south west office are fully funded by ’Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’. With increased FCSS funding from City of Edmonton, our TANG youth program also expanded to the Southwest office in 2016, providing programs and activities to immigrant youth and refugees living in those communities and enabling ASSIST to fulfill our objective of including a more diverse group of ethnic youth in this program.

On average, we serve a few hundred clients every week through our two offices. In 2016-2017, we provided close to 20,000 services to immigrants who came from over 100 countries around the world.

ASSIST is becoming a multicultural and multilingual agency, and has developed a strong multicultural platform of staff, expertise and ethnic networks for helping newcomer families. Our team has over 400 volunteers who enable us to provide our services and programs to diverse communities. ASSIST also forms alliances with other community agencies across sectors to better meet community and public needs.

Presently, we have 13 on-going programs and one project running in the two offices, settlement services and language learning (LINC) for newcomers, programming for children and youth, parenting, family literacy, adult English learning, weekly drop –in activities for seniors, prevention and education on problem gambling and on children’s safety. 2017-18 is a year of celebration. When we look fondly upon the past year, not only did we celebrate our 40th anniversary throughout 2017, it was also a year of awe excitement witnessing the establishment of our new Southwest LINC Centre through the funding support from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The 2- storey LINC Centre that opened late February, provides 8 full-time LINC classes and child care space that started April 2018 for up to 34 children. We now have three client service locations; the original in the downtown Chinatown/inner city core and two in the southwest of the city. Being the only immigrant serving agency and LINC provider, we filled a significant gap in services to immigrants residing in the southwest communities of Edmonton. Having the third location in the southwest is a major milestone for ASSIST in terms of growth of the organization, staff, funding and services. Our annual operating budget has increased from 3.5 to 4.5 million, which represents a 28 % increase in grants and funding from three levels of government, and our staff members have increased from 72 to about 100.

As we look ahead to the next stage of our development, we are excited to be able to improve the look of our downtown building. We are very thankful for the pro-bono services from Jan Kroman and Peter Wong of RPK Architects Ltd which along with matching funds from the city will soon result in a much improved exterior. We look forward to our new look, one that will signal our renewed commitment to move ahead to better serve immigrants and refugees with multiple and complex needs.