By Mary Abbate, Theresa Greenberg, Helena Ku, Dana Lichty, Mike Meade

Girls of the Forest Hill Community House The authors are the staff members of the Forest Hills Community House (FHCH), a grantee of The New York Women's Foundation®, which meets the broad needs of low-income girls and women in diverse Queens community. Through innovative leadership, FHCH, a multi-service settlement house, offers programs and services that help people improve their lives and work together to strengthen their communities. Today, FHCH provides thirty-two programs at seventeen sites to approximately 20,000 Queens residents annually. The programs take place in the most diverse communities in the city with high representations of immigrant families, and youth who are either immigrants or first-generation Americans.

"It was scary coming to the United States. I was worried about how people would look at me, and I was scared of prejudice against Asians." Although she saw more opportunities for women in America than in Taiwan, where she was born, Mai found it difficult to be a young newcomer in New York City. She faced triple discrimination because of her gender, race, and immigrant status.

Mai moved to Queens, where she joined one of the programs at the FHCH. Since its founding in 1975, the Forest Hills Community House has evolved to meet the special needs of recently immigrated women as the borough of Queens has become the most diverse in the country.

To counter the fears and prejudice experienced by young women like Mai, the FHCH runs a program called Access for Young Women for twelve-to eighteen-year-olds. For nearly a decade, Access has promoted leadership and gender equality for teenage women. Participation in the Access program was offered exclusively to low-income teens from Forest Hills and Rego Park until two years ago, when the curriculum was revised and a new program site was added to serve immigrants in the highly diverse Queens community of Jackson Heights.

Forest Hills' Access program helps young immigrant women from countries as diverse as Colombia, Haiti, Israel, Russia, China, Taiwan, and Uzbekistan see beyond their traditional roles at home and participate in after-school programs and extracurricular activities. Access provides an intensive twenty-week leadership development curriculum that includes training in communication skills, problem solving, goalsetting, and critical thinking. Participants identify and analyze gender-specific issues in educational environments, the media, and other institutions. The program also offers informational sessions on such topics as health, technology, budgeting, college, and career planning.

The participants celebrate their work each spring with the Youth Leadership Conference.

Each year the young women tackle topics such as gender equity, body image and the media, global issues for woman and girls, and educational options.

For immigrant women past their early teens, barriers related to gender, language, and immigration are often complicated by responsibilities of parenthood: a job, childcare, transportation, and health care. For them, the Forest Hills Community House provides English instruction, literacy and civics classes, social and recreational programming, personal counseling, housing assistance, legal counsel, and employment services.

In addition to providing concrete services, the FHCH's culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse staff are important role models.

Once Access member, twenty-six-year-old, Bangladesh-born Tahmani, observes," Women in my country are treated almost as poorly as the animals. It is important that we are able to speak out when we have been taken advantage of or mistreated. "While participating in an English program, Tahmani and her fellow students learned more than a new language. They used their experiences as a catalyst for change. Forums where students voice their opinions and projects where they work collaboratively encourage advocacy on behalf of themselves and their community.

Tahmani, for instance, took part in the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride." I was out in front at the rally. If people see me, they will feel they can take part in that kind of program. I want to help other women come along with me."