LEWISTON — Six years ago, its first office was the inside of a van. Then an office provided by the Trinity Jubilee Center, then space on Bartlett Street.

Today, the Somali Bantu Youth Association of Maine has moved into a spacious suite in the B Street building on Birch Street.

Its new home has 3,800 square feet that includes a professional-size reception room, a conference room, multiple offices, a large classroom and a small kitchen.

The public is invited to see the new space during an open house from 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, April 18.

“We are so excited. We are growing,” said Executive Director Rilwan Osman, 30, co-founder of the association. “’How did you get this?’ That’s what everyone is asking,” he said with a smile.

He said he quit his day job and became a paid staffer, along with a few others.

In the fall, the association went from being a volunteer community group to a professional nonprofit offering case management for mental health services. “It was really a big jump for us,” Osman said.

The new location is where Advocates for Children was housed. That agency has moved to Canal Street. The B Street building space is rented to the Somali Bantu Youth Association by the Lewiston Housing Authority.

Contracted through MaineCare, the association employs Osman, four case managers and several part-time workers, Osman said. “We provide case management services for children and adults who need help.”

A licensed clinician oversees the case managers, meeting with them every Monday, he said.

“When we started, we never thought we’d get a lot of people,” he said. Once the agency was opened, needs emerged. “We should have done this before,” he said.

He shared an example of help the agency is providing to immigrants struggling with English. A Somali Bantu mother of an adult with a mental illness was faced with no longer being the legal guardian because she couldn’t properly administer medication. “They were trying to take her away,” Osman said.

Working with lawyers, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, “we worked with her,” explaining what the hearings meant. “We educated the mom, showing her how to manage the medication,” Osman said. The mother was able to become the legal guardian. “We are still working with her,” Osman said.

The association still has its volunteer community programs paid for through donations and grants, staffed by volunteers.

Adults are offered literacy help through “survival English classes,” parenting classes and classes to help immigrants become United States citizens. In the past two years, the organization has helped more than 500 people become naturalized citizens, Osman said.

Family services include helping parents with job applications, connecting them to service providers, filling out forms and offering computerized tests to help adults practice General Education Development tests.

Youth programs include after-school homework help Monday through Friday, cultural retention programs and juvenile justice workshops offered every August. In the juvenile justice workshop, Somali Bantu youths hear from judges, police and probation officials about the legal system.

Soccer leagues are offered for boys and girls. In Somalia, playing soccer was not encouraged for girls, who are playing in greater numbers. There is also a girls’ empowerment program, and youth cultural dances are held each month.

Osman and Jama Mohamed founded the Somali Bantu Youth Association in 2008 from their van after noticing that too many youths faced with adapting to a new culture started smoking, getting into fights and committing crimes. Many arrived with little education. Discouraged, some dropped out of school.

A meeting was held, youngsters were asked whether they wanted to belong to a Somali Bantu group offering soccer and help with schoolwork. They said yes.

Within two years, the group had established soccer leagues, tutoring and counseling with guest speakers, including police who talked to youths and parents.

For Somali Bantu boys, soccer was the carrot. To play, they had to be respectful and not fight or swear. In 2010, Lewiston police said the group’s work was paying off. Educators praised the tutoring volunteers provided.

Today, Osman estimated, the Somali Bantu population in Lewiston-Auburn is about 5,000. The community is happy with the association’s new location, he said. It’s encouraging even more participation in programs.

“Everyone is excited,” Osman said. “It’s walking distance in the downtown. It’s accessible.”

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Somali Bantus are a minority ethnic group culturally and physically different from other Somalis. They tend to be darker and have broader features. Most farmed for a living and were not literate in their language.

In Africa, many Somali Bantu youths and their parents were tortured or raped, or they saw a family member being tortured, raped or killed. Because of that, some have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Somali Bantu Youth Association of Maine.

Most Somali Bantu families now have at least one member who can speak English, and the children are learning to read and write. But having parents who can’t read means parents are limited in the support they can give their students. The association was formed to help, organizer Rilwan Osman said.

For more information, http://sbyam.org.

To read a 2010 story: https://www.sunjournal.com/city/story/924472?quicktabs_2=1

To read about Rilway Osman’s background: https://www.sunjournal.com/node/655431