Indo-American Center in Chicago 20 Years Strong

The Indo-American Center (IAC) is like the welcoming committee for South Asian newbies in Chicago.

The non-profit organization has spent two decades assisting South Asians with citizenship and immigration forms, public benefits assistance, a civics program, adult literacy, computer literacy classes and programs for seniors and youth.

IAC is located in Chicago's West Ridge neighborhood at 6328 N. California Ave. In the past fiscal year, IAC calculated almost 40,000 visitors to its location.

"The typical way that people find out about the organization is through word of mouth," said Kali Cohn, the Development Coordinator for IAC. "We're located at Devon and California, which is considered the heart of Chicago's South Asian population. Many people find out about us from either walking past our building, walking down the street or from relatives. The West Ridge neighborhood is considered a port-of-entry neighborhood, which essentially means that when people immigrate to the United States they come to this neighborhood."

At a Sept. 19 event, the company celebrated its 20th year in business. The event featured keynote speaker Ms. Padmasree Warrior (Chief Technology Officer of Cisco Systems), Master of Ceremonies Mr. Ravi Baichwal (news anchor for ABC7 News) and Leon Lederman (the founder of the Illinois Math & Science Academy, ISMA, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner).

"(The Connecting the Community Event's) main purpose is to raise funds necessary for the center to operate over the course of a year," said Cohn. "This year, we're celebrating our 20th anniversary so we'll be honoring all those who have essentially helped in the creation of the center and continued to support it for the past 20 years."

Most of the classes in the center are free minus a charge for immigration and citizenship help, including brief legal consultation. Depending on the class, IAC visitors will have the option to enroll in a course or participate in drop-in courses. The computer course currently has 11 computers so that class is small.

All but one course is geared towards adults. The youth services program has approximately 50 students per weekday. The after-school and summer camp programs are for children ages 6 to 12, and the cricket league is for teenagers ages 14 to 18.

Although the organization specializes in South Asian immigrants (mainly Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), IAC is seeing an increase in immigrants from Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and from Haiti. On top of diversity, the group also welcomes people of various backgrounds.

"The thing that makes us different, especially within the South Asian community, is that we're a non-religious institution and we support all sort of aspects of the society. Oftentimes within the South Asian community, the organizations are focused on either specific religious sects or a specific regional area, but our center is open to everyone, which makes us very unique."

Donations for the company are accepted online.

Additional Notes: This entry was originally published by the Chicago News & Events Examiner.