Everett Haitian Community Center (EHCC)

The Everett Haitian Community Center (EHCC) is the first and only volunteer social welfare social justice faith-based human rights, civil rights and anti-poverty Haitian-American organization situated in Massachusetts – United States of America focused on the youths, aged, widowed, and orphaned immigrants of all faiths in Everett, Malden, Medford, Chelsea, Revere, East Boston, Lynn;  Woburn and other Greater Boston areas. Created by Ebenezer Family & Children’s Services Inc. a non-profit interfaith-based, EHCC in collaborative fiscal agent partnership of other entities as La Comunidad, Inc. 501c(3) organization, has been responding to the growing needs of our community. Informally serving those in need since 1999 through its mobile house-to-house services on-wheels Program, after the 2010 earthquake, the Ebenezer Family & Children’s Services Everett Haitian Community Center supported the undocumented children and searched for those who were unaccounted for to remind of the need to renew their TPS after the USCIS had encouraged stakeholders to help. By forging cross-sectors relationships with lawyers, law students, legal aid entities, EHCC provided access to assistance on the Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program. Due to gentrification in Somerville, EHCC helped and advocated for the increasing influx of the immigrants that came to Everett and surrounding cities.

Later-on, it has been housed and supported by La Comunidad, Inc. With the closure of the Community Action Agency, Tri-Cap in Malden, there has been a service gap especially in the area of housing, energy fuel assistance and many former clients of Tri-Cap were not aware of the closure or where to receive services that used to be provided by the Agency. The Everett Haitian Community Center was flooded with low-income families who needed help. EHCC helped them through the transition to access and navigate services from ABCD. With the homeless and jobs crisis of undocumented families and students in the Everett School System Malden, and Greater Boston, the Everett Haitian Community Center developed support services to help members of the community through the times of crisis transitions with additional collaboration of CAPIC staff – addressing issues with city officials to discuss homeless crisis, housing assistance and overall service gaps in a structured comprehensive manner and bringing the attention of undocumented homeless students in the context of fair housing civil rights to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) as an overlooked / undeserved population and area that warrants serious and compassionate attention.