A nonprofit focused on advocating for immigrants and the working class plans to open a community center along Little River Turnpike in Annandale that it hopes will become a hub for workforce training, youth programs, legal clinics and other social services.
We Are CASA hopes to partially open and offer some services inside the 11,000-square-foot Fairfax Welcome Center by the end of 2027, Jossie Flor Sapunar, the group’s national communications director, told FFXnow over email.
“We Are CASA builds community power, and this location factors into that,” Sapunar wrote. “We wanted to center our new welcome center intentionally, in the heart of a diverse, working-class Black, Latino/a/e, Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and immigrant community. That way we can be close to and with the people we organize, serve, and reach.”
The building needs extensive renovations and a redesign, so those will not be complete until the end of 2027. In its first two years of service, the group expects that the center will serve about 3,500 people.
When it’s finished, a dedicated new Workers Center inside the community building will offer “vocational training, workforce development, connection with employers, worker education, and organizing,” the group said in a press release.
We Are CASA views the new community center as “a long-term investment in communities that have too often been asked to navigate uncertainty, opening doors to critical programs, protections, and economic empowerment.”
Sapunar noted that the central location of the Fairfax Welcome Center will help the group reach Annandale residents who were born in other countries and have limited English-speaking abilities or lack health insurance.
“Annandale is home to roughly 18,000 people born in other countries, representing more than 43% of the community,” she said. “We Are CASA serves families that will overcome barriers by having trusted resources nearby.”
Started in a church basement by activists who opposed U.S. interventions in Latin America, the group says it has about 192,000 lifetime members across 46 states. In addition to Virginia, it offers programs in Georgia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
