Impact in the Community (English Paraphrase)

Social agency on Watch Turns 110 Years

• FABIOLA POMAREDA/The Race • 2009-06-07

Located on the fifth floor of the Association House of Chicago is the GED program where Carla Burnett is the receptionist. At 39 this smiling woman is proud of what she has accomplished. In 2007 she lost her job and was referred to the Transitions to Careers program at Association House where she learned basic computer and secretarial skills.

The mother of two and- and recent grandmother, Burnett applied for an open receptionist position and was soon hired, “On March 10, 2008,” she recalled with precision, “It was a blessing that they hired to me”, she commented to LaRaza this past Thursday.

The Association House program Transitions to Careers is a program that helps provide individuals with criminal backgrounds job placement for three months along with labor and skills training that allows them to become self -sufficient through employment.

Transitions to Careers is one of the many programs Association House offers. As one of the “original settlement houses in Chicago, established in 1899, it constituted as a center for of aid for immigrants and families.

MUCH WORK

Harriet Sadauskas is the president of the agency that serves to 20,000 families and individuals each year and focuses in five areas of service: Out of School Time programming for children and teens; an alternative high school El Cuarto Año; services for mental health and conduct; and communitarian services with the Center for Working Families, and a food pantry and thrift store.

They also offer several services for immigrants, such as citizenship classes in English and Spanish, English as a second language classes and the program Lee y Seras, that helps parents learn to read to their children as they lean mutually with other immigrants.