The Early Learning Program expands two-fold! It is now able to offer its services to families in need all year long. Early Learning Specialists can visit with children and their adults during the summer, not just during the school year. In addition, the program now provides access to a medical professional so that families to ensure their young children are hitting important physical milestones. This means that more families can receive expanded much-needed services to help their children be on the same playing field as their more affluent peers. ASC is able to bring back some in-person events, including the annual gala. 2022’s Embrace, Build & Advance Gala was the agency’s first in-person gala in nearly three years. The organizations also celebrates its seventh year of the CoRe gaming initiative, a segment of the Behavioral Health Program that helps young people grow their interpersonal and communication skills through video games. In May of 2021, Dr. Pela Terry, Ed.D. is selected as Atlantic Street Center’s newest Executive Director. She arrives at ASC with thirty years of professional experience having worked in both the mid-west and the east coast. Under her first year of leadership, she establishes the Being an Anti-Racist Organization (BARO) Group, a makeup of ASC colleagues that spearhead agency-wide anti-racist roundtables and educational opportunities. As the COVID-19 pandemic causes immense hardship for our community, ASC successfully moves all its services to virtual or socially-distanced platforms. In July 2020, long-time ASC supporter and former Board Member Terry Pottmeyer, J.D., assumes the role of Interim Executive Director while the Board conducts a nation-wide search for a new leader who can help ASC recommit to its mission and anti-racist goals as an organization. In May 2021, they find that leader in Dr. Pela S. Terry, who comes to ASC with decades of experience in nonprofit management and social justice in New York State. ASC becomes the first agency in Western Washington to offer the nationally organized ParentChild+ (formerly Parent Child Home Program), which provides high-risk families with educational support for young children, giving them new books and toys, and sending trained staff to help parents teach their children in the home. 25-year ASC veteran Edith C. Elion, MSW, is appointed Executive Director, after starting as a Mental Health Therapist in 1977, and becoming Associate Director in 1988. She is the first African-American director of the organization. ASC, in collaboration with the Rainier Beach Community Center, holds its first Juneteenth celebration in honor of the abolition of slavery. This event becomes a cornerstone of the agency’s programming every year, gathering the local African American community in a celebration of heritage and history. Franklin D. Raines — Rhodes Scholar, CEO of Fannie Mae, and one-time budget director to President Clinton — decides to give back to the agency that supported him as a neighborhood youth and donates $250,000 to ASC. The money is put towards the construction of a new, modern building, right next door to the existing Center, which is named for Raines at its dedication in November of 1999. Throughout the 70s, various small projects are given to UW Social Work students, many of whom are later hired on as staff. Some student members of the Black Panther Party start a successful free breakfast program, but after the FBI begins an investigation into the Party, the students voluntarily resign in order to protect the Center’s federal funding. ASC shifts its focus once again, this time towards services for troubled youth. Social workers from UW and many agencies around town are brought on part time. The National Institute of Mental Health awards ASC a major grant, which is put towards an influential and highly regarded seven-year study on the effectiveness of social work with at-risk youth. The agency also develops the first computerized case-study records system in the country. The community has been continually growing and shifting over the past 22 years. After recommendations by the Community Chest’s Health and Welfare council, the Settlement changes its name to Seattle Atlantic Street Center and shifts its focus away from religious practice and towards group work, recreation, and social work. In response to ever increasing needs, the Settlement moves from a small house in Rainier Valley to its new brick building on Atlantic Street— Now ASC’s Charlotte Howland Building, named for the deaconess who served as superintendent for 20 years at the original settlement house. Much like it would again in another 100 years, Seattle is experiencing massive growth. The city’s population has grown almost 800 times in thirty years, and demand for services has increased with it. Two young Deaconesses of the United Methodist Church, nurse Jesse Gasser and teacher Mary Jane Hepburn, found the Deaconess Settlement in response to the needs of the burgeoning Italian immigrant population in Rainier Valley. They offer medical, educational, spiritual and social aid to local families.
SERVING OUR COMMUNITY FOR OVER A CENTURY
History of Atlantic Street Center
2023