February Update

Dear all,
Another update for the Meskhetian Turkish Collaborative Project from Nationalities Service Center is ready for your attention. Please find below the list of activities held during the past two months, as well as activities planned. Thank you.
On December 30th NSC held the New Year’s celebration evening for the Meskhetian Turkish community. It was a great gathering of the community with ethnic food, live ethnic music (from Lancaster, PA), dancing, games, and prizes. It was a great family fun, and people had a chance to enjoy the celebration among the community. People arrived from Northeast Philadelphia, Broomall, Upper Darby, and Lancaster. You can look at pictures on our weblog: www.ahiskaturks.blogspot.com. Some important issues about community organizing were raised, like unification and not the division of the Meskhetian Turkish community should be happening and few of the guests from the community spoke about the future hopes in the United States.
On Januray the 8th we held the financial education and home ownership workshop conducted in Turkish by two professionals at NSC. They were speaking about the importance and ways of keeping up good credit history and how this plays out in the future. Participants were able to ask questions about home ownership and mortgage, credit history and credit score.
We continue to get inquiries about the adjustment of status application process. Information about the adjustment of status is available in Russian and is mailed out upon request to the families.
We are planning a Citizenship workshop combined with the celebration of the International Women’s Day (March 8th) on the 11th of March, at NSC. The workshop will talk about the benefits, requirements and the process of obtaining the U.S. citizenship. It will also talk about the process of adjustment of status that many in the community are facing now. The workshop will be done in a very interactive and playful way by NSC’s Americorps VISTA volunteer, Kristina Koenig. The celebration after the workshop will be dedicated to the International Women’s Day that is celebrated by the community, and will have games, charades, dances, and hopefully some great ethnic food. The flyer in Russian for the event is attached.
On March 18th we’re planning to conduct a financial education/homeownership workshop for the community in Lancaster. The workshop will be similar to the one conducted in Philadelphia and will be conducted by the same Turkish speaking professionals.
We are receiving requests for technical assistance from the agencies, and the interagency collaboration is working great. NSC project coordinator is receiving a number of calls from agencies, volunteers and members of the ethnic community in different states with requests for information and various forms of assistance. Project coordinator is planning a trip to another resettlement site for Meskhetian Turks in Vermont in order to provide technical assistance to the agency and ethnic community there.
NSC is working with IRC, New York in obtaining the technical assistance on the project’s leadership development part and the collaboration’s been working great.
For the school spring break we’re planning to have the teen youth outing to Lancaster, children’s trip to “Please Touch” museum, and a community picnic.
The idea about obtaining marriage licenses has proved to be hard to logistically arrange with working families, however, we’re keeping the invitation open for assisting available couples in obtaining their marriage licenses in the future.
As always please feel free to share this information with anyone who you think would be interested, and please get back to us with your questions or comments.
Thank you.
Leyla Dursunova