Events

2014 Assembly of Westchester: Working with Immigrants

More than 60 participants representing non-profit service providers and advocates working with the Westchester immigrant community were in attendance at a meeting hosted by Casa Purchase. Among the topics discussed were the executive actions of the Obama administration to provide immigration relief.

Don Bosco Center Kids at Purchase College

It didn’t take long for the school kids to decide: They were going to go to Purchase College.

Twenty-six children from the Don Bosco Community Center in Port Chester visited the college on Oct. 25. On the bus ride to the SUNY campus, adult chaperones from the center talked with the children about what college is. Many were unfamiliar with college, and the bulk had never been to one.

But after a brief tour of the campus and the library, a pair of students came to a decision over lunch in the Dining Hall.

“I’m going to Purchase!” said Kaylee Cruz, 9. “So am I,” her friend Olga Carcamo, 8, said.

Leandro Benmergui, director of Casa Purchase, an Outreach Center for Latin American Studies, had arranged the visit. He asked the girls when they wanted to start.

“Next semester?” Kaylee said optimistically.

“I think it’s fair to say our kids left with dreams of ‘Early Decision’ to SUNY Purchase and the more general vision of college in their futures,” said Don Bosco’s Ann Heekin, one of five chaperones on the trip.

At the Library, students were impressed by the range of materials that Library Director Pat Callahan described. Books, 4,000 films, 8,000 music CDs, computer labs, sound mixing studios and even a comic book collection. The kids enjoyed looking through the library’s vast collection of books on art.

After lunch the Don Bosco kids visited the Neuberger Museum of Art, for most, their first visit to an art museum. Docents led the kids through discussions of several paintings in the collection. Standing in front of a Jackson Pollock, one boy said he’d seen a book about the artist. He had, earlier that day at the Library.

At the end of the visit, Ross Daly, chair of the School of Humanities, told the group that Kaylee and Olga had decided they were future Purchase students.

“Does anyone else want to go to Purchase?” Twenty-six hands shot up in the air. “Of course, you can go to any college you want. It doesn’t have to be Purchase,” Daly said.

One very young boy leaned over to his friend and said softly, “Not me. I’m going to Purchase.”

CASA Purchase

2014 Assembly of Westchester: Working with Immigrants

CASA Purchase past events

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