Rising Sun Children's Center (RSCC)
koreancenter.org/rising-sun-childrens-center
Laughing, Learning, Living, Loving Every Day
Our community center was established in 1983 as an effort to assist Korean merchants doing business in the low-income neighborhoods of Philadelphia. There were serious misunderstandings and conflicts between the business people and their neighbors. In order to reduce misunderstandings and conflicts, we worked closely with the Philadelphia Urban Affairs. First, we held many neighborhood meetings for the business people and their neighbors throughout the City of Philadelphia. Second, we established an annual Thanksgiving Turkey Basket giveaway program for about 500 families. The Thanksgiving program lasted for 20 years.
Once we began to provide individual direct services for immigrants and business people in 1985, people were looking for various services including job search, guidance for children’s education, English as a Second language, social services, housing and other services. The main reason was that these immigrants and refugees could not get such services at the established social service agencies because of their language and cultural barriers.
For over 25 years since the agency’s inception, we provided many of these services. However, during the past few years, we phased out some of the programs including housing counseling, afterschool tutoring and 5th Street Business development programs.
Currently, the two main programs being implemented are the childcare center and affordable housing. In addition, we are providing social services for the elderly and citizenship education for recently arrived immigrants and refugees. 5. The childcare center was established in 1990 on Rising Sun Avenue, Philadelphia. The childcare center achieved a Keystone Star 4 and enrolls about 100 preschool children. For our affordable housing, we have acquired 57 houses throughout the Philadelphia region, all in low-income neighbors and tenants are mostly minority group members.
Note: The above descriptive information was provided directly to Wikidelphia by the Korean Community Development Services Center.
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