About Us and Our Community

History, Mission, and Purpose

In the early eighties, fluxes of Cambodian refugees arrived in the United States. A relatively small number of the refugees were placed and settled in Oregon. In finding comfort and support, thirteen families banded together to form a support group where they could help one another to heal their suffering and assimilate with the American culture.

In 1989, the thirteen founding families had formalized the support group into a 501(c)(3) organization and named it the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon (CACO). Since then, for over a decade, the community were sluggishly changing and growing. While the individual adults were able to come together to cope with their past, present and future, the children, youth and families as whole were not doing quite as well. With the proliferation of low quality television programs, mindless video games, ubiquitous chat rooms, etc., many of the children were not doing quite well in preparation to become productive Americans.

Recently, CACO has established a clear direction to unite people of common interests, preserve the past and empower the present and the future.

By means of the common interests, people come together to heal the past, live the present and invest in the future. This is a community where people (especially the children and youth) learn about worldly experiences brought first-hand from Cambodian and other Southeast Asian countries. CACO hopes its bank of worldly experiences motivates people (especially children and youth) to live responsibly, happily and productively.

CACO preserves the past by passing on its heritage, culture and language to newer generation and friends of the community. Last year CACO successfully implemented three Cambodian language and culture courses with approximately sixty students (four of whom were non-Cambodian).

CACO empowers the present and the future by means of various programs that primarily aim to encourage the children and youth to curb television, video games and internet chatting. This past year, CACO formalized the CACO Youth. The members of this group have been mentored and motivated to live healthily, responsibly, happily, athletically and productively. CACO Leadership Program has been producing numerous leaders.

With the support of the Cascade Pacific Council of Boy Scouts of America, CACO has recently rallied over four hundred people for its 10th Annual Summer Camping at Camp Meriwether. This is a record high considering there are approximately only 4,000 Cambodians dispersed through out the entire state of Oregon.