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>> STUART MEIKLEJOHN: It's all true, Maxine, so send us home on a high note.
[clapping]
>> MAXINE ROCKOFF: Thank you so much, Stuart, for your very gracious and generous introduction.
And thank you for the many years you led Union Settlement as its Board chair.
Let me also acknowledge the presence here tonight of Dan Paduano and Rob Quaintance.
I am about to join them as Former Chairman of the Board of Union Settlement Association.
[clapping]
Stuart mentioned the Information Technology Initiative, in which I was involved, in bringing
the Internet to the settlement houses in New York City before the Internet as we know it
today existed. That was 20 years ago.
I reached out to the people who were on the Advisory Committee, people who worked in the
office,
and there are people scattered throughout this audience who were instrumental in helping
to bring technology
to the underserved communities of New York City, and I’d like it very much if you all
would stand.
[clapping]
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Woooo!
[clapping]
>> MAXINE ROCKOFF: The funding program for the Information Technology Initiative came
from the Clinton - Gore Administration.
The Clinton - Gore folks said there was going to be a “digital divide,” we’d better
find out about it, we’d better do something about it.
Let’s create "on-ramps" to the "information superhighway" in poor neighborhoods. And they
funded the work that we did to “wire up” the settlement houses.
It was very painful because the Internet as we know it today did not exist.
We had to wait for seven months for our frame relay network to be installed.
But we taught people how to use computers. And the computer centers that are in settlement
houses today are what we called “neighborhood-based family rooms.”
And then I would like to thank all of you who are here
– friends and family and colleagues – I won’t name all of them –
who have gathered here this evening to support Union Settlement’s important work in East
Harlem.
When I joined the Board in 1985, I was apprehensive about East Harlem.
Before I moved to New York in 1980, I had gotten to know East Harlem from the windows
of my parents’ apartment. They had an apartment on Fifth Avenue at 108th Street because my
mother had taught in the public schools in New York City.
And I was afraid to walk east; I looked south - toward the Upper East Side.
And then, when my friend, Harriet Warm, whose daughter is on our Board, and who is a former
Board chair,
introduced me to Union Settlement, it became my privilege to join the Board of Union Settlement
and I’ve gotten to know the people in the community.
I have to thank Gene Sklar, who was the Executive Director of Union Settlement at that time.
He had a bus tour that he had really gotten down pat and he took me around to various
facilities.
And I'm sure that David Nocenti has learned a lot from Gene.
If any of you here would like to come up to Union Settlement and see what we do on the
ground, that would be terrific, and I'm sure that David would be very happy to make that
happen.
I’ve gotten to know the neighborhood and many of its residents – at the Garden on
104th Street, with plots that are carefully tended by people who come across the street
from the New York City Housing Authority building. And at our Ethnic Festival, to which I invite
you all. It will be all day Saturday, May 19th.
And of course from participating as a Board member, as Vani said.
Our programs have been funded categorically since Lyndon Johnson created the Great Society
in 1965. The program categories were defined in terms of population groups – seniors,
children, people with disabilities, adults…
But Union Settlement has been providing services in East Harlem since 1895, and the programs
and services were oriented to the whole family,
and they still are today.
Thanks to Walter Montgomery and his team from RLM Finsbury for our wonderful logo with the
grandmother, the two children, and the father. We’ve heard that the mother is home in bed
sick. But, [laughter]
see how they’re moving forward.
(We had a board retreat and the program directors from the various programs played the roles
of the people in the programs that were taking care of those individuals in the family, and
so that’s where we learned that the mother was home sick.)
Anyway, the point is that we take care of the family.
And we have a wonderful program that we have initiated that I’d like to mention. It was
founded by my dear friend Marylen Mann, who started the OASIS Institute 30 years ago
[clapping]
to give people over 50 good things to do. And one of the programs that she started is
the OASIS Intergenerational Tutoring Program.
And we are doing that in East Harlem.
We are training seniors, many of whom live in the East Harlem area and are from East
Harlem, to tutor kids
– kindergarten through third grade – who are at risk for not learning how to read.
They work twice a week. They go to the schools. They go to the elementary schools.
We started with four schools, and now there are six,
because the program is so popular with the Superintendent of Schools in East Harlem,
and the principals of the schools thought it was so important.
And the program is as effective for the seniors as it is for the children,
and that’s what’s important here.
An article about the program, by the way, was just published in The Gerontologist, which
is a well-regarded medical journal, so we call this an evidence-based program.**
The categorical funding that has been the mainstay of Union Settlement’s programs
for almost 40 years
is drying up.
Scott Stringer just mentioned that. We’ve all seen it happen day-by-day.
I hope you will recognize that the value of Union Settlement is not just to the individual
participants, but to their families
and to the community – to the safety of the community, to the social capital in the
community, to the wellness of the community, to the spirit of the community, to the willingness
of people to help one another because they know each other, and they want and are in
a safe neighborhood –
makes the neighborhood a better place to live, and a better community in New York City.
It is because of the work that Union Settlement does, and your support for that work,
that we so desperately need your help - and are grateful for your support.
Thank you very much for being here this evening.
[clapping]
>> Audience member: Indistinguishable
[clapping]
>> ANDREW SIFF: Thank you and congratulations Dr. Maxine Rockoff. Very impressive speech,
and a warm reception welcomed her...
**Correction: The Gerontologist article was about OASIS’s Connections Technology Program.