2009 Accomplishments

Over the past fiscal year, despite the economic crisis and resulting rise in demand for our services, we continued to provide vital ongoing services as well as launch several new programs, including a volunteer initiative for our seniors, a new program to provide GED and workforce readiness training to disconnected youth and a new program to prepare native speakers of Spanish and French for job training and placement activities in the home health field. We are very proud to report the following accomplishments from the past year, all of which were possible thanks to our generous supporters. 

Click on the link below to view program accomplishments:

Agency-wide

Adult Education

Credit Union

Early Childhood Services

Home Care

HIV Care Network

Mental Health

Senior Services

Union Settlement College Readiness Program

Youth at Union

• We continued our efforts to reduce minority health disparities in East Harlem through our role two major research efforts focused on diabetes, a National Institute of Health-funded community-based research project with partners Mount Sinai Medical Center and North General Hospital and a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) project.
  
• We provided a wide range of activities for the East Harlem community, including our annual Ethnic Festival, Day of the Dead Celebration, Universal Body Awareness Health Week and our seasonal Farmers’ Market, which provides affordable, fresh produce and nutrition education to thousands of East Harlem residents every Thursday from July to early November—a boon in a neighborhood dominated by bodegas and fast food restaurants.
  
• We are participating in the inaugural year of the New York City Civic Corps, the City’s partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service and its AmeriCorps VISTA program.  For a full year, we are hosting a team of three volunteers who will work with us, building the agency’s already substantial volunteer base into a comprehensive agency-wide volunteer program.

• We provided more than 1,250 Adult Education students with English, basic literacy, GED preparation, computer and citizenship classes, meeting or surpassing all city– and state-mandated outcomes. Nearly doubling in size from five years ago, we offered 47 classes at six sites in East Harlem. We are also providing immigration and educational counseling to students in English, Spanish, French and Arabic.
  
• We are helping area residents begin careers in home care through our new Bilingual Home Health Aide Training Program. Students attend two weeks of job readiness training, health literacy and English skills development, including a minimum of 70 hours of instruction and tutoring, followed by four weeks of Home Health Aide Training at the SKILL Center. Upon successful completion of the program, students are placed in employment at Union Settlement Home Care Services or Partners in Care, another home care agency. Since January, 30 students have completed the job readiness training, and 19 are already working. We plan to expand services this fall.
• We continued to improve the literacy levels and provide support services for East Harlem’s newest population of functionally illiterate immigrants from West Africa and various Arab-speaking nations. This past year, our three-year-old New Populations Initiative serves 43 students and more than 120 family members from Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Somalia Yemen, Pakistan and Egypt. Entering the program at the very lowest levels of literacy, our students worked diligently and, by year’s end, 77% were functionally literate.
  
• We engaged nearly 500 ESOL and GED students in our Writing Through Reading Program, attending workshops, doing their own creative writing and attending special readings by visiting world-renowned authors such as Isabel Allende and Junot Diaz. 

• We provided more than $1.1 million in personal, business, home and educational loans to Union Settlement Federal Credit Union members, helping 293 low-income community residents take steps toward achieving their dreams of opening or expanding an East Harlem business, purchasing their own home or attending college. 
   
• We are raising awareness within the community, including visiting local elementary schools to introduce community members to our services and provide core financial literacy concepts, including outlining approaches to saving for their child’s future. These workshops will be the center piece of a new summer youth program hosted in conjunction with Union Settlement’s Youth Services division and sponsored by New York Credit Union Foundation.   
   
• Thanks to our collaboration with the Volunteers in Tax Assistance Program, we offered free tax preparation services for 1,455 of East Harlem’s struggling residents, for a total refund of $1,722,224, of which 27% qualified for Earned Income Tax Credit. The effort also led to 335 new credit union members.
   
• We launched a Money $mart financial literacy workshop series for participants across Union Settlement’s programs, including parents in our childcare program, senior center members, youth in our after-school programs and Adult Education students. To date, we have held more than 15 workshops, some in English and some in Spanish, on such topics as budgeting and money management, understanding credit and identity theft. The program has served more than 255 residents ranging in age from 17 to 85.  We have opened 50 new credit union accounts.

• We provided early childhood education programming to more than 500 East Harlem children.
   
• We continued to achieve with our NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene-funded asthma tracking and training activities in childcare and Head Start facilities throughout East and Central Harlem to combat high rates of pediatric asthma. In the last year, we have enrolled 3,297 children and provided asthma awareness training to 153 staff members and parents. Over the past three years, we have enrolled nearly 6,000 children in the program and trained nearly 900 parents and staff members. 
   
• We expanded music enrichment for our children. Twenty-two youngsters at our Union Washington Childcare Center are learning the basics of violin, even performing for families and staff at our annual Moving On Ceremony. Going forward, thanks to a grant from the Helene Marks Early Start Foundation, we will be offering Start the Music,an introductory music program for 18–20 of our three-year-old children. Through lively sessions, they will learn basic rhythms and movement and take part in age-appropriate hands-on lessons with musical instruments and singing.

• We collaborated on a series of World AIDS Day events, including the “Present and Future Leadership Combating the AIDS Epidemic” Community Forum co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health, Office of Civil Rights, State Senator José M. Serrano and Iris House. Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer presented the keynote address. More than 80 people, including many living with HIV/AIDS, attended and several were recognized for their dedication and their leadership among the community and their peers. 
   
• We led a successful Manhattan HIV-AIDS Profile Conference, filling the Dempsey Center with 180 attendees. This year’s event, titled Doing More With Le$$, focused on the challenges of HIV/AIDS prevention and access to care during tough economic items. Supported by State Senator José M. Serrano, the New York City Council and the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS in New York City, the event featured two keynote speakers, Joe Pressley from Harlem United and Jose Calderon from the Hispanic Federation.

• We provided care for an average of 297 elderly or disabled clients. Our attendants provide basic health care and companionship and assistance with daily activities, such as cooking, cleaning and shopping, helping clients citywide avoid institutional care.
   
• We continued to earn high client satisfaction rates. In the last three years, we have had only five substantiated client complaints, all of which were dealt with immediately through our Quality Assurance and Improvement Committee.
   
• One of our long-time attendants, Edna Pumarejo was honored for her 15 years of dedicated service to her clients with a Home Care Attendant of the Year Award at the Home Care Council of New York City’s 2009 Annual Awards Dinner.  One of our workers, Debra Orr, was also just recognized as one of the Aides of the Year by Comprehensive Care Management.

• We served an average of 500 clients through our mental health services, approximately a quarter of whom are age 12 and under, with another 14% age 20 or under.
   
• We completed a successful second year of our Senior Center Mental Health Program, which brings bilingual social workers directly to our senior centers to conduct group and individual counseling designed to help our members deal with issues related to aging, depression, anxiety, bereavement and death/dying. Our current client caseload is 41 clients at our senior centers and an additional 69 at Johnson Counseling Center for a total of 110 seniors served. In the past year, we have also conducted mental health screenings for more than 60 seniors.
   
• We offered more than 35 Wellness Workshops at our senior centers, covering such topics as Grief & Sadness, How to Talk to Your Doctor, Dealing with Anxiety and Practicing Relaxation Techniques. Led by our onsite social workers, these workshops are drawing an average of 11 participants, or a total of 378 participants over the course of the year. 

• We continued with our much-loved and sorely needed Dinner Project, which provides a supplemental sandwich and piece of fruit to our 310+ Meals on Wheels clients, many of whom were subsisting on one meal a day. In our most recent survey, 95% of clients reported feeling “less hungry” thanks to these extra items—up from 91% last year. In addition, 95% reported “eating better” and “feeling healthier” thanks to the sandwiches. Several clients reported the project’s positive effects on their diabetes, weight and high blood pressure.
   
• We launched a new effort to combat diabetes in our community. Thanks to a grant from the Communities IMPACT Diabetes Center at Mount Sinai, we have begun a new Jefferson Gets Healthy Program for tenants at East Harlem’s Jefferson Houses, a large public housing complex. The initiative includes an exercise program for seniors at Asphalt Green Fitness Center, an evening fitness class at Jefferson Houses Community Center, a healthy cooking class and a series of nutrition workshops with a special focus on diabetes prevention and control. Since beginning in February 2009, we have served approximately 70 participants through this array of services.
   
• We worked to breach the digital divide by providing quarterly computer classes to 60 East Harlem seniors. Led by a teacher from Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), we offered beginning and advanced class in the fall, winter and spring and the classes were so popular we had waiting lists every time.  Thanks to the classes, we have witnessed not only impressive skills attainment but also a sense of empowerment among our seniors. We also made the computers accessible to students during non-class hours so our seniors could practice their skills on their own.
   
• We provided nearly eight trips every weekday for 20+ East Harlem seniors through our city-contracted Senior Transportation Program. In addition to providing an array of individual and group recreational trips, the program enhances many aspects of our senior center programming, enabling us to take an average of 20 seniors twice a week to Asphalt Green health and fitness facility for exercise, six seniors to their employment or volunteer work sites and 100 seniors to the Farmer’s Market. The program serves seniors at 15 centers in East Harlem and Central Harlem, including our five senior centers. We are currently providing 130% of our contracted trips.  

• We helped more than 200 low-income, predominantly minority students graduate from high school. Our graduating students have received acceptances from such schools as the University of Chicago (on a full scholarship), Polytechnic University, New York University, Carnegie Mellon, Brown University, Cornell University, Skidmore and Farleigh Dickinson.
   
• We brought students on 12 campus visits to Swarthmore, University of Pennsylvania, Marist College, Bard College, Manhattanville College, New York University, SUNY-Oneonta, Yale University, City College’s Grove School of Engineering and St. Johns University. We also took students on an overnight visit to Cornell University, where students met with one of the scientists working on the Mars Rover program, toured the NanoScale Science & Technology Facility and the Wilson Synchotron Lab.
   
• We cultivated the leadership skills of 25 young students in our Leadership Academy, with an additional 20 participating in various leadership activities. Over the course of the year, students volunteered with the Alzheimer’s Association, including helping out with the annual Memory Walk, served Thanksgiving meals at a community center and conducted a toy/book/blanket drive for a local homeless shelter. They also worked to launch a community garden and planning and implement a major community event, Universal Body Awareness Week, in May. More than 150 East Harlem children, teens and adults attended more than 20 hands-on workshops offered by Academy participants, staff and our community partners.

• We launched Reconnect and Rise, a rigorous program of educational, vocational and support services designed to help young men ages 16 to 24 who have left or been pushed out of school and are struggling in the job market. Ninety-five young men have taken part in our pre-GED classes, workforce readiness training, job placement and counseling services. Forty-seven students completed the full workforce readiness program. Thirty-six students took part in internships or jobs. On average, thanks to tutoring and coursework, students increased their Tests for Adult Basic Education scores by 1.5 grade levels. Four students have already attained their GEDs.
   
• Thanks to a grant from the MetLife Foundation, we began the Legacy Program, a new community service initiative for students at Isaac Newton Middle School for Math & Science. A cohort of 22 students developed student-driven projects to reform the school dress code and begin a recycling program at the school. At the end of the first semester, 88% reported increased levels of confidence and direction, as measured through surveys. Eighty percent improved in at least one-half letter grade in either Math or English.
   
• We delivered services to 288 undercredited young people at Cascades High School, a transfer school in Lower Manhattan. Our Reaching for Tomorrow Program provides a comprehensive program of internships, job development, employability skills workshops, college exploration and career readiness. This past year, we provided tutoring and Regents Exam prep to more than 80 youth, employment readiness workshops to 130 youth and college advisement to 150 youth. Nearly 160 students engaged in internships and 97 students applied to college and all were accepted to at least one school, including St. John’s University, State University of New York-New Delhi, Long Island University, Lehman College and Hunter College. 
   
• We provided employment and education achievement services to 60 teens in our Union Works Program, including placing them in employment and career-building internships and providing ongoing mentorship and guidance. Last summer, 94% of participants were employed. Eighty percent of our high school seniors graduated on time. Among those, a stunning 95% (18 of 19 students) are now enrolled in secondary school and the remaining student is employed and will enroll in secondary school next semester. Given that the program only serves students with one or more educational deficits, these results are particularly gratifying.