About

MISSION

Union Settlement creates opportunity in East Harlem by offering comprehensive programs that help underserved residents improve their skills and build better lives for themselves and their families.

VALUES

• Client and Community Focused: Ensuring that our actions are always guided by how we can best serve our program participants and the East Harlem community.
• Compassion: Understanding and having empathy for those we serve.
• Diversity: Embracing and celebrating our different backgrounds and viewpoints, and recognizing that those difference strengthen our organization.
• Excellence: Ensuring that our programs and services are of the highest quality.
• Integrity: Maintaining the highest moral and ethical values.
• Respect: Treating everyone as you would want to be treated – with kindness, care, fairness and humanity.

COMMITMENT

Union Settlement is committed to advancing equity and social justice through our programs, services, advocacy, and hiring practices.

As a trusted and vital community resource since 1895, we seek to change the policies, systems, and practices that perpetuate unequal access to the resources and opportunities that safeguard and enhance the economic, social, and physical wellbeing of East Harlem residents.

STATEMENT

Union Settlement strives to be an organization that is culturally competent and equity-focused, while working to create opportunities for mobility and prosperity for the people we serve in East Harlem and beyond.

We seek to represent a diverse staff, board of directors, and the diversity of our community. We have historically employed a diverse staff, and we embrace representation and participation at all levels. We are strongest when we embrace the full spectrum of humanity, regardless of what we look like, where we come from or whom we love.

We are passionate about seeking social justice, creating access to opportunity, and empowering underrepresented and underserved communities. We stand unequivocally against racism and the systems that have perpetuated racial injustice.

We aim for accountability in our work space and to build our capacity to recognize the dynamic issues of our time with a willingness to continually address and redress them towards the goal of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging for all at Union Settlement.

Union Settlement began in 1895 in East Harlem, an area rich in culture and diverse in immigrant identity but also one of the lowest-income communities in New York City.

Together, our 450 employees and the 10,000 residents who participate in our programs work to make East Harlem a strong, supportive and proud community where dreams are born and achieved every day. We’re working side-by-side with community members to tackle the issues that are important to the vitality of the neighborhood, and to advocate with them on behalf of all East Harlem residents, and underserved communities across our city, state and nation.

Union Settlement helps to realize the promise of this singular neighborhood and contributes to the vitality, diversity and stability of the larger urban community that we all share. We accomplish this work both through providing quality services and coming together to advocate for changes that will make East Harlem even more vibrant.

Union Settlement’s programs provide education, wellness and community-building to East Harlem residents of all ages. Our offerings—from youth and adult education classes, to Meals-on-Wheels, mental health services and programs for senior citizens—span more than a dozen locations across the neighborhood. They are designed to touch every member of a family and support the interdependent needs of every generation and culture in our neighborhood.

Union Settlement equips our neighbors—from babies and teens to adults and grandparents—with connected programs that provide opportunities, tools and support for the whole family, at every stage of life. A Union Settlement family might have a toddler enrolled in childcare, a pre-teen in an after-school program, a teen coping with depression, a working parent in a computer, ESL or job training course, or a grandparent in a seniors’ exercise program. This approach has empowered our neighbors generation-by-generation in ways that demonstrably improve our community.

Together, we are making a real difference. Join us as we work to transform East Harlem, help our neighbors thrive and connect them to the opportunities that change lives.