The Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia’s mission is grounded in the “charism of unioning love,” and through it, the welcoming of one’s neighbor.
Thanks to a dedicated network of volunteers, the SSJ Welcome Center in Kensington — one of 11 ministries sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph — is meeting both the growing needs of newcomers traveling the pathway to citizenship and the expanding needs their neighbors in Kensington are experiencing.
“We meet the neighbor, the newcomer to Philadelphia, and we try to accompany them through English classes, citizenship classes, and limited legal services with immigration, as well as just through outreach,” said SSJ Welcome Center Executive Director Olivia Sharkey.
“Outreach right now looks very different than it did 23 years ago (when the Welcome Center opened), because the climate of immigration is looking very different,”
The Welcome Center lives out the sisters’ charism “to bring all into one,” she said. “For us, we live by the philosophy of ‘We accompany every dear neighbor without distinction.’”
Sharkey says that accompaniment happens through what she calls a “small but mighty” team of eight staff and more than 50 volunteer teachers who offer about 200 students options for English and citizenship classes, both in-person and online.
“We have a student who works seven days a week, and he never misses a class because he attends via Zoom. As he is working, he has his phone with his Zoom (connection) right there,” Sharkey said.
“We have individuals who attend class and will have their camera off for about 20 minutes so that they can breastfeed their child, and then they put the camera back on. It’s meeting a need in a way that fully in-person classes wouldn’t be able to.”
She adds that many students have pivoted to online learning because of current events surrounding immigration, and the SSJ Welcome Center in Kensington can meet the demand because of the number of volunteers available.
“We’ve seen some of our students need to shift from in-person classes to online classes due to fear in the political climate of leaving their home, and also going to a center that is known to be supporting immigrants,” Sharkey said. “We’ve been trying to balance that. It helps them to have that waiting bank of teachers who are ready to say, ‘Great, I’m ready to jump in and meet that need.’”
Sharkey explains that the Welcome Center’s ability to pivot to virtual learning is one of many facets of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s welcoming and compassionate charism that has impacted Philadelphia for 178 years.
“Charism is the gift of the Spirit, and the Spirit is always on time,” said Sharkey.
“Now more than ever, our world is in need of unity. That’s what our charism is, this idea of unioning love, this ever-working process. Like unioning, it is active, it is continuous. We continuously ask ourselves at the Center,
‘What more can we do to bring about unity? How do we meet the need of today?’”
They recently celebrated their 360th student to achieve U.S. citizenship, a woman named Yanick who came from Haiti.
“We’ve accompanied this family throughout a variety of ways at the center through her husband’s citizenship in English classes, but also her son is now recently enrolling in college,” Sharkey said.
She adds that English students are now much more empowered to make a living, more able to sit in parent-teacher conferences and medical appointments.
“It just shows the resilience and persistence and the amount of time and years it takes for a family to go through this process,” she said, “but also the various opportunities that can provide a family in being able to root here and root for themselves, but also root for their future generations and what they’d like to afford their children.”
Sharkey says that as conditions in Kensington have changed over the past 20 years, the SSJ Welcome Center has pivoted to meet residents’ needs to build wholeness as well.
“When it is our Kensington neighbors, especially those who are experiencing addiction or being unsheltered, we then try to take a look at the basic needs that we’re able to assist with in that moment. Then we try to look at our community partners,” Sharkey said.
“We try to be mindful that there are deep needs in Kensington right now, particularly with those who are unsheltered and those who are addicted,” she added. “Those are two very different ministries, but we try to be ‘both-and,’ because our site physically is in Kensington.”
All of the Welcome Center’s work, Sharkey believes, builds human connections in the light of Christian faith. “We all want to be seen and heard, to meet somewhere else where they’re at and say, ‘I see you, I hear you,’” she said.
“We recognize that we can’t do everything, but when someone comes to our door, the first thing that we ask is just, ‘What’s your name and how can we help you?’”
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