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Dear Friends,
As 2022 comes to a close and I reflect on the past year and what lies ahead as we begin our 40th year, I want to share how grateful we all are to you. Your commitment and support make it possible for us to help thousands of East New Yorkers and their families. I am in awe of all that we, CHLDC and residents together, have made happen in the past year.
This year in July we opened our long dreamed of community center! The primary focus of the Cypress Hills East New York Community Center is providing educational opportunities and direct services to community members. For over a century, settlement houses and community-based nonprofits have built and operated community centers in their neighborhoods: creating gathering places, centers of education and economic advancement and arts and cultural institutions and now we have done the same for Cypress Hills and East New York!!
The Cypress Hills East New York Community Center is truly a model development with an industrial teaching kitchen/kitchen incubator, computer lab, amphitheater, gym, fitness room, healthy food cafe and multi-purpose rooms for job training, adult education, college access and persistence services, and a Kingsborough Community College satellite campus. We are offering incredible job training programs leading to credentials and employment in the construction, culinary, IT, health care and transportation sectors. Kingsborough Community College will be sponsoring credit bearing courses and industry-recognized training programs at the center. Cypress Hills is also providing emergency relief to asylum seekers and people in our community who don't know where their next meal is coming from or who are facing eviction or foreclosure. Recently, we hosted a Thanksgiving Meal for needy families and a resources event for new arrivals at the center. We are supporting entrepreneurs to grow their small businesses through digital literacy classes and the kitchen incubator. And that's just the beginning!!
The Community Center has tremendous potential to support our community in finding roads out of unemployment and poverty, ways to access and succeed in higher education and secure training for living-wage careers. We are offering comprehensive youth development programming that will support young people in exploring interests and developing skills and exploring interests in music, arts, health and wellness, community service and leadership.
In the face of the daily and oftentimes overwhelming challenges that our residents encounter, together we continue to feed, educate, empower and advocate for so many who depend on us 365 days a year. Can you continue to support our mission and help us expand current programming and support services and help us create much needed startup programming in 2023 at the new community center? We need more programs for teenagers and arts and cultural activities as well as additional programming critical to support the community's recovery from the pandemic.
As we look forward, the CHLDC will focus ever more closely on maximizing our impact and carefully assessing our progress. I am excited about the even greater heights we will scale in the years to come.
May you and yours enjoy a healthy, peaceful and community focused start to 2023. Thank you for your ongoing support and partnership.
To learn more please visit www.cypresshills.org or join our efforts by donating HERE.
Thank you for your generosity,
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