(Posted 2022 November)
The Korean Community Service Center (KCSC) was founded in 1974 by a pastor and his congregation to help new immigrants from Korean acclimate to their adopted country.
In the early days, according to Pyowook Han, director of Family Services and Quality Assurance at KCSC, that looked like picking up people from the airport, providing translation and interpretation assistance, helping them enroll their children in school. “It was very basic needs for people who didn’t speak English,” he says.
Since that time, grants have enabled KCSC’s growth into the largest bilingual and bicultural Korean social service agency in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, providing social services, education, advocacy, and resources to other Asian immigrant communities living here. Currently, the center provides services to roughly 1,000 Korean and Chinese Americans a month at multiple office locations—its headquarters in Annandale, Virginia, and branch offices in Centreville, Virginia, and Gaithersburg, Silver Spring, and Ellicott City, Maryland.
“Before we more focused on people with problems,” Han says. “We still do that work. But now we focus on prevention as well.”
That expanded focus sometimes includes explaining the protective order process; helping with Green card renewal and citizenship applications; providing transitional housing; going to medical appointments; and counseling.
KCSC also provides cultural competency training for providers. “In Asian culture domestic violence and sexual assault are taboo topics,” Han says. “Victims do not want to talk about it. Bystanders do not want to get involved. They think it is a family matter, so it is better not to get into it.
“That’s why we work with community leaders, especially pastors. We have 300 churches we work with very closely and try to educate them as much as we can about domestic violence and sexual assault. We give them the right information, and then they can refer clients to us if someone needs help.”
Even then, sometimes folks don’t want the services. “So, we do healthy relationship seminars instead to do outreach in ways they can accept,” Han says. It’s all about community outreach, he says. And all about KCSC’s mission to promote the well-being and quality of life of Asian American community members.
“If they do not know about us, they are not going to contact us. We participate in DV Network meetings and coalition meetings to raise our voice, letting people know who we are and the kind of services we do. We work with the Domestic Violence Action Center. I know they have a Korean staff member in house, but if the client is still having a hard time accessing services, we work with them. Any time they need our support, they can contact us.”
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