August Project Update

Picture from the trip to Art Museum.












Update to Meskhetian Turks collaborative project, August 2005

July 27th: Seniors trip to the NSC’s Senior Center
Four senior Meskhetian/Ahiska Turks were taken to visit NSC’s Senior Center. They were shown the activities organized at the Senior Center, such as ESL classes, cooking lessons, physical exercises and others. It was a great interaction between the Ahiska Elders and elder people from other ethnic background. The experience was lit up by the ethnic Chinese client of the Senior Center who taught Russian as a second language in China years ago. The trip concluded by sightseeing around the city and picture taking by the museum of Art of Philadelphia. The general concern of the senior Ahiskalys was the issuance of Green Cards, therefore, the possibility of visiting their children in other countries.

July 27: Women’s group gathering in North East Philadelphia
The issues like assisting newly arrived families at their initial staged of their new lives, organizing employment preparedness workshop, as well as issues and stages of social adjustment for refugees were discussed at the gathering. The idea of creating a women’s committee group was discussed and supported by the women and it was decided to make the meeting on the regular basis. The women are working to organize another meeting and interested in having speakers come to talk about employment.

Filing for Legal Permanent Residency
Green Card Application process
Translated into Russian, a one-pager of the list of requirements to file for Legal Permanent Residency was mailed out to the families that arrived to the U.S. during summer 2004. The list of civil surgeons will follow up in early September. A legal intern will be assisting the families and the project with compiling the paperwork for the application process starting mid September. The adjustment of status workshop will be organized together with the legal assistant.

August 4th: Children’s trip to Art Museum.
10 children ages 5-12 from North East Philadelphia, Upper Darby and Broomall participated in a trip, which included 1 hour of architecture workshop. It was an educational trip where besides visiting the museum, children were able to learn about different architecture styles, and at the end of the workshop design and make their own building - from paper!

August 20th: Moscow Circus in town!
13 children from Broomall, North East Philadelphia and 6 adults visited Moscow Circus fun performance at Liacouras Center.

Online Project Blogg
Once it’s ready, NSC plans to share the online blogg designated for the project. The blogg will include project updates, pictures from the events, stories, discussions. Should you have any ideas, please feel free to suggest.

Agency collaboration activities
New World Association has been working closely with Meskhetian Turks living in North East Philadelphia. The celebration of the first year since the first arrival of Meskhetian Turks was organized by NWA on August 19th. NSC’s Director of Social Services and Project Coordinator joined the event to congratulate people they’ve been working with for the last year. The collaboration between the two organizations has been beneficial for this group and further cooperation agreement on working with this group was agreed upon.

NSC met with PRIME Lancaster to discuss further possible ways of cooperation and expanding the project services to Lancaster area. A Lancaster community meeting is currently being tentatively planned for September 17th.

NSC’s Project Coordinator Provides services to the community and to the resettlement agencies under the technical assistance of the project. Please refer your possible request by phone or email.

Other planned activities:

The community leadership development meeting and next women’s gathering both will be scheduled later in September in Philadelphia. The issues to be addressed at womenss committee meeting will be: employment, assisting newly-arrived families, social support to each other and application for Legal Permanent Residency.

Financial Literacy workshop in Lancaster dates and topics are to be determined and will be sent as a separate update later in September.

Community Wedding is to be scheduled and you will be informed on the further progress on this matter.


Thank you.

Leyla