Queens Community House is a non-profit human services organization offering a wide array of programs and services for residents of the borough. A fixture in the borough for the past three decades, the QCH serves around 20,000 per year, ranging from children to senior citizens and everybody in between. Among the various activities to be found are citizenship programs, a small employment program, computer labs at each of the twenty centers, banking services for immigrants, and homelessness prevention programs.

 “We have outstanding service,” states Yvette Dilworth, the Director of Development. “We may not necessarily respond to a single crisis in a person’s life, [but] we have the ability to provide for many crises in a person’s life and help people live their life a little less stressful. We are able to be an outstanding resource for someone, so even if we cannot provide the actual service, we are definitely a resource. We collaborate very well with other organizations strengthen the offerings that are available to people in general. We help people in their day-to-day lives, which sort of gets a little underestimated. It’s important people know that we’re here.”

Irma Rodriguez started to work with the QCH in 1983. Today, she serves as the Executive Director Designate, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the organization, and ready to take the position of Executive Director from O. Lewis Harris when he steps down in July 2010 .

“I used to say that I left jobs when I got bored,” Ms. Rodriguez says, “or had learned everything there was to learn. This is the sort of place where things are changing all the time. We start new programs, we go into new communities There’s always something happening, so it’s very hard to get bored here. It’s interesting because I’m not the only one. We have many people who have been here over twenty years, and we have people on staff who started out as project participants and went away to school or come back and took jobs, so we have a lot of people who work here who are from the community that we serve.”

One such person who wound up returning to the QCH is Mike Zevon, the Assistant Director For Teen Services. Mr. Zevon first got involved with the program in 1984, participating in football, basketball and softball. Today, he work at the QCH as an outreach worker, as well as taking classes online and being a stay-at-home father.

“When I am at work,” Mr. Zevon reflects, “I focus on the job at hand. When I leave, I try separate myself, but it is not easy. The young people mean a lot to me, and if things are tough for them, it resonates in my mind.”

The QCH opened in 1975 as a community center. Back in 1967, New York Mayor John Lindsay announced a program to bring low-income housing to middle-class communities. “Scatter Site Housing,” as it was called, was unsuccessfully attempted in Corona, and it was met with local resistance in Forest Hills. Mayor Lindsay appointed a little-known attorney from Queens to mediate the dispute: future governor Mario Cuomo. In the end, the size of the buildings were reduced, current community residents were given priority to the units, and apartments were set aside for senior citizens. Another part of the compromise left to the creation of Forest Hills Community Center, which started with three staff members. Today, the organization has over 400 full and part-time staff members, with twenty sites throughout Queens, which is reflected in the renaming of the organization in 2007.

“It became sort of strange to have the whole organization identified with one particular community,” Ms. Rodriguez says, “when, in fact, we were in so many places in Queens. That’s really what prompted the name change, to make the name match who we were as an organization.”

While the QCH has managed to help many people, challenges still manage to pop up. Lack of space tends to be an issue in the Forest Hills headquarters. “We’re a happy bunch,” Ms. Rodriguez quips. “Even though we’re overcrowded, we always manage to get a lot of stuff done.” And like most non-profit groups, fundraising is always at the forefront.

“We are trying to financially build a very secure funding base,” says Ms. Dilworth, “so that we can really insure that we have services forever beyond us even being here. We will all retire eventually, but we want to make sure that the legacy of the organization is secure. We secure over 20,000 people, and we want to make sure that we continue to do that. We intend to build a community within all of the communities that we serve, and to respond to the needs of the community. For so many years, something new happens. When something new happens in the world, it very often will affect a non-profit like us.”

As an example, Ms. Dilworth remembers the deconstruction of the Soviet Union, and the influx of immigrants that came to Queens. “We have a very large immigration population that we’re working with now,” she notes. “Needless to say, whether it’s the driver’s license issue or welfare reform as it was at that time . . . each time one thing is happening either in government or in the world, it really has an impact on our programming and the population we serve.”

While the world might affect the QCH, one does not have to look far to witness the effect of its existence.

“Without the involvement of the Queens Community House as a participant,” says Mr. Zevon, “I may not be here today. Growing up, I was surrounded with a bad atmosphere. Drugs, crime and violence were common in my neighborhood and in my home. The Community House provided an option to that life and gave me a place to get away from it all. In the process of participating in athletics, I was gaining valuable knowledge about life and how to make myself into the best that I could be, so that when I was older I would be okay, and I am. I owe my happiness today to the Community House. Today, I have a wife and a daughter, both of whom I love so much. Without the Community House, I may not have had that.”