Celebrating Social Workers Across the Lower East Side
By Chelsea Jupin
Henry Street Settlement along with the five other LES Settlement Houses held a celebration to recognize social workers from the LES settlement houses . For the first time, all of the Lower East Side settlement houses celebrated Social Work Month together at a celebratory breakfast held at the Educational Alliance’s Manny Cantor Center on Friday, March 27.
Speakers included Alan van Capelle who opened the program and included Henry Street’s Chief Program Officer Diane Rubin—a social worker herself for 35 years!—who said to the packed room, “It’s important that we celebrate the hard work that we all do!”
Social workers from Chinese-American Planning Council, Educational Alliance, Grand Street Settlement, Hamilton Madison House, Henry Street Settlement, University Settlement and United Neighborhood Houses attended, as did CEO and President Alan van Capelle (Educational Alliance), Executive Director David Garza (Henry Street Settlement), Executive Director Melissa Aase (University Settlement), Acting Executive Director Willing Irene Chin-Ma (Grand Street Settlement) and President & CEO David Chen (Chinese-American Planning Council) and Nancy Wackstein, Executive Director of United Neighborhood Houses.
The keynote speaker was Mimi Abromowitz, the Bertha Reynolds Professor of Social Policy at Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, who gave a preview of the soon-to-be-released Settlement House Study, “Overcoming the Odds: The Settlement House Advantage.” These findings echoed this year’s theme for Social Work Month: “Social Work Paves the Way for Change.”
