Nationalities Service Center is celebrating its 90th anniversary in 2011. Please return to this page in the future for more information about NSC’s rich 90-year history serving immigrants and refugees in Philadelphia.
90th Anniversary Blog
Please Join Us at this Special Milestone Event!
Global Tastes will include an array of international restaurants from our region, serving samplings of their favorite foods to 300 guests. The highlight of the event will be stories shared of those who were successfully resettled by Nationalities Service Center over our 90-year history. This is Nationalities Service Center’s most important fundraiser of the year - raising funds to allow the agency to help the regions immigrants and refugees succeed in their desire to become contributing members of the Philadelphia community.
Click here to see a list of participating restaurants and sponsors.
To buy tickets for Global Tastes, click here.
For more information on sponsorship opportunities, please contact Debi Hoxter, dhoxter@nscphila.org.
Global Tastes - November 10th!
Global Tastes is Nationalities Service Center’s most important fundraiser of the year - raising funds to allow the agency to help the region’s immigrants and refugees succeed in their desire to become contributing members of the Philadelphia community.
Global Tastes will include an array of international restaurants from our region, serving samplings of their favorite foods to 300 guests. The highlight of the event will be stories shared of those who were successfully resettled by Nationalities Service Center over our 90-year history.
Help us honor Philadelphia’s refugees and immigrants who lives were touched by Nationalities Service Center as well as our continued hopes for the future.
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A Message from the Executive Director
NSC has been carrying out its mission since 1921, when we were formed as the International Institute of Philadelphia by a group of concerned women at the YWCA who felt that immigrant women new to the city needed protection from exploitation and unfavorable conditions, and assistance with housing, health care, family relationships, employment, education, and citizenship/ naturalization matters. Consider these highlights of our history:
- In the years following WWI, as nativist attitudes arose, we responded to tensions through intergroup service programs emphasizing respect for differences regardless of language and cultural background.
- Following WWII we carried out a resettlement program of Japanese Americans returning to Philadelphia from internment camps where they had been held during the war. We provided vocational services for Russians, Ukrainians and other Europeans displaced by the war, and in 1956 sponsored Hungarian refugees, providing English language classes and other services.
- In the 1950s we began sponsorship and presentation of the Philadelphia Folk Fair, which continued until 1984. The Folk Fair offered demonstrations of crafts, food, music and dance from more than fifty different nationalities, expressing the ideals of cultural pluralism and celebrating ethnic diversity and internationalism.
- In 1963 our name was changed to Nationalities Service Center. In the 1960s we resettled Cubans, and later responded to the needs of Puerto Ricans who were coming to Philadelphia in search of jobs, education and economic security, and we cooperated with the Urban League and leaders of nationality groups to ease ethnic- racial tensions and improve communication and mutual understanding.
- During the 1970s and 80s NSC carried out significant resettlement of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees, worked with Ethiopians, Angolans and other Africans, and received Haitians and Cubans.
- In 1986 we established a Senior Center in Logan, responding to the unmet needs of immigrant elderly from Southeast Asia.
We have continued to carry out our core mission through the very difficult years following the September 11 attacks and through the current deep recession. Our refugee resettlement work has expanded in recent years to include resettlement of Iraqis, Burmese, Congolese, and Darfuris. Three years ago we established a program of services to victims of torture. We provide vital legal representation to immigrants from Africa, Latin America, the Arab world and Asia seeking asylum, protection from domestic violence, naturalization and legal status through family relationships. We teach English and literacy, and provide interpretation and translation services, to thousands of immigrants from all over the world. Our Senior Center recently established a community garden where immigrant elders grow vegetables and herbs for Center lunches and for their own families.
Our commitment to providing services to all immigrants in the region, regardless of nationality, religion or circumstances, is stronger than ever.
Dennis Mulligan, Esq.
Executive Director