January 2021 Monthly Newsletter

PACC’S Monthly

Newsletter

JAN 2021

We Want to Hear from You! Caring for, listening to, and empowering our local community is PACC’s top priority as both a nonprofit and community center. To help us best serve our community’s needs and know what they are most affected by, we launched a Community Needs Survey during/after the 2020 election.

We spent the last month heavily encouraging our PACC family to fill out our community needs survey, which we offered in English, Arabic, and Spanish. As of now, we have 300 responses. If you haven’t had a chance, we highly encourage you to fill out the survey at www.paccusa.org/communitysurvey

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We Launched Volume 5, Issue 1 of Falastin We launched Volume 5, Issue 1 of Falastin magazine, and hosted a virtual launch party where our contributors were able to read and share their pieces out loud. We had about 15 attendees who all said they appreciated the space to feel more connected to Palestine and keep Palestine’s history and narrative alive. We streamed the event live on Facebook and have had at least 1,200 views. To check Falastin, go to www.paccusa.org/past-issues

EVENTS: workshop wednesday Applying for Health Insurance This month, we hosted a virtual workshop in collaboration with the New Jersey Citizen Action Education Fund titled “Applying for Health Insurance” that helped our community recognize the importance of having health insurance, went over the different types of health insurance available in NJ, and explained what is needed for application processes. We have had at least 634 views on Facebook.

We Held our second Workshop about Drug Abuse in our Community We held part 2 of our 3 part series addressing Drug Abuse in our community; this month’s focus was on dispelling myths about drug addiction including who gets addicted, why, and discussing multiple pathway approaches to recovery.

We had 1,500 views on the workshop.

Another Successful Women’s brunch Thanks to you and our partnerships with Wafa House and The New Jersey Citizen Action Education Fund, we were able to bring another educational workshop to the women of our community through our monthly women’s brunches. In our brunch we had 4 people in person, 10 people online and 11 people via facebook join us and learn about how to register for health insurance and what legal services Wafa House offers. We have had at least 1083 people view our facebook lives.

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social service

Working with our Partner to Provide Financial Assistance for Families in Need Through our partnership with Penny Appeal, we were able to send 120 families a financial assistance application. We were able to help 20 of our clients fill out the application and, so far, at least $25,000 were already sent out to our clients.

Coat Drive for those in Need With the generosity of The Unitarian Society of Ridgewood, we were able to host a Coat Drive at PACC and gave away around 80 coats to people in need. We invited different organizations and spread the word out to anyone that is in need of coats to come by our center and pick one up.

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Programs

We were excited to launch session 2 of our programs this month, both virtually and in person (following all CDC guidelines), all of which have a larger number of registrants than the semester before.

Arabic

Our Arabic program has expanded greatly this month and we have had to open up 2 extra classes (for a total of 6 now) to make room for all our students.

Dabka

Girls and Boys Dabka classes are off to a great start. Classes are at full capacity and social distancing is in full effect. Our top priority is student and instructor safety.

English Conversation Classes

We’re proud to offer beginner level english conversation classes for members in our community who are looking to improve their English skills. We have 12 students so far, consisting mostly of parents and adults from our community.

Arabic Conversation Classes

Our arabic conversation class gives our community members a chance to learn how to speak arabic.

Successful Students Program (tutoring)

Our tutoring/homework help program continues to run smoothly and is one of the appreciated programs by parents who are struggling to help their children with school especially given online learning due to COVID.

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Follow us on our social media! website: www.PACCUSA.org Instagram: @PACCUSA facebook: Palestinian American Community Center tik tok: @PACC_USA Twitter: @PACCUSA