Title
Recognizing Anne O'Callaghan on her retirement as the Founder and Executive Director of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians.
Body
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan, a naturalized U.S. Citizen, was born in Ireland and emigrated to America in 1970; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan has been a prominent advocate for immigrants in the Greater Philadelphia region for nearly 40 years; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan received her training and certification at the University of Dublin (Trinity College) School of Medicine and the Oswestry and North Staffordshire School of Physiotherapy; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan was a physical therapy practitioner for twenty years and an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan later founded a software development company serving the home health care industry; and
WHEREAS, By 1999, the Philadelphia area was home to a large Irish immigrant population, some of whom needed community assistance in finding work, housing, education, food, and even how to travel back to Ireland if a loved one had died; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan was well-known in Philadelphia's Irish immigrant community, and respected as a thoughtful person with good reasoning skills and the power of persuasion to find appropriate help; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan was asked by community leaders to provide informal assistance at an immigration center being opened in Upper Darby to assist this community; and
WHEREAS, Anne O'Callaghan then volunteered her time and lent her skills to assist immigrants of all backgrounds in obtaining the vital information they needed to establish their new American lives; and
WHEREAS, To support this work, Anne O'Callaghan began to use her fundraising and development skills to raise awareness and support among the local philanthropic community for this work; and
WHEREAS, In the course of her volunteer work, she identified a need for the region to have a centralized emplo...
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