For over 50 years, Donna Lee Kelsh, born in Manchester, Connecticut, devoted herself to helping newly arrived immigrants to this country, especially refugees and political asylees including Soviet Jews, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Afghan, African and Kosovar and recently Ukrainian. She focused her efforts on helping them learn the English language which is necessary when navigating in a new environment and building a new life in the US. She did that through the creation of language learning centers, training centers for ESL teachers, programs for job placements and a team of paralegals that assist in the immigration process with the help from Columbia University, NYU, LAC and New School. 

 

    Throughout 49 years of her career, she has made her impact in the classrooms, non-profit organizations such as YM-YWHA and YMCA, and in colleges such as Marymount Manhattan College and College of Saint Vincent. During her time at the YMCA she initiated a unique program serving the entire New York City literacy community called CAFÉ GLOBAL. It oversaw construction of a full-service café as well as an on-the-job food service training program. In addition, she initiated a TRAINING RESOURCE HOTLINE, a city-wide hotline for access to information about free skills training programs, HIV/AIDS preventive education workshops for basic education, and the enrollment of ESOL students in city-wide literacy programs. While she was working at Marymount Manhattan College, she co-founded Institute For Immigrant Concerns, which became a non-profit organization in 2013 and is still operating. IIC provides English Literacy Programs that accept all immigrants.  Her responsibilities were to overlook IIC's operation, and she was in charge of grant and fundraising events.  With her for over 40 in this field, was Mark Brik, who assisted her as education director for many of the programs that Donna initiated and operated. 

 

    Apart from the programs she created, she published a training manual that was cited in an article by the Literacy Assistance Center and received several awards for her community service, program innovation, and program excellence. Her awards included a grant for EFL and she engaged in cross-cultural seminars in the Czech Republic. 

 

Other honors include: 

• finalist in Peter Drucker Foundation Award for Program Innovation

• Literacy Recognition Award, LAC

• YMCA Discovery Award for Program Excellence

• Gold Medal Awards, West Side Association of Commerce

 

    Donna was a fierce advocate for immigrants, refugees and asylees, yet she was kind to the staff and students who participated in her programs. She was a tough lobbyist with politicians while working to get funding for her immigrant centered programs. Her efforts on behalf of immigrant communities also garnered numerous articles in the Times and she was mentioned on TV.

In addition to her work for immigrant communities, she was also a lover of art, a collage artist and a civil rights advocate. She has supported and donated to Doctors without Borders, UNICEF and the ACLU. As a resident of Chelsea for most of her life, she was very involved with the Chelsea community. She will be missed in her Chelsea community and as a major force in the immigrant literacy community. 

 

If you would like to make a donation in memory of Donna, please

• use this link: https://www.instituteforimmigrantconcerns.org/get-involved

• or mail your donation to

Institute For Immigrant Concerns

116 W 23rd St FL5,

New York NY, 10011                                                                              

 by Freddy Jacobs, ESL instructor, IIC