By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
The YWCA will mark its 90th anniversary of service to the Princeton community on Jan. 7.
It has been working to eliminate racism and empower women in Mercer County since 1917.
The Princeton Young Women’s Christian Organization (YWCA) began as an organization named the Girls’ Patriotic League to keep idle girls busily employed so they would not have time to look at the boys in the military camp on the Princeton University campus. The girls’ league was organized by the Princeton Women’s League for Patriotic Service and located in the Bickford Building at 148 Nassau Street.
”We kept girls busy at the time of World War I,” said Diane Hasili, chief marketing officer. “We provided a lot of hospitality services and social services, meaning social activities to people during that time.”
In 1918, the Girls Patriotic League became the Mercer County Young Women’s Christian Organization, operating a Hostess House in the Quadrangle Club on Prospect Street with money from the War Work Council and doing additional YWCA work throughout the county.
The fist English language class, a precursor to the English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, were held in the early 1920s. In 1922, a year after withdrawing from the county YWCA, the Princeton YWCA was granted its own charter. A separate Witherspoon Branch was established in 1925 for women and girls of color.
The Witherspoon Branch and the YWCA Princeton merged in 1948.
Ten years later, the YWCA moved to its home on Paul Robeson Place, formerly known as Avalon Place.
Another milestone for the Princeton YWCA was the establishment of the Breast Cancer Resource Center (BCRC) in 1972 as Encore, a rehabilitation program for women who had undergone mastectomies.
”Encore stood for encouragement, normalcy, counseling opportunity, and reaching out, was started and we provided aquatic activities to women recovering from breast mastectomy operations,” said Ms. Hasili. “Over the years we grew from five or six women to more than 1,500 women and families being served annually.”
Encore became an official YWCA program 1977 and was renamed BCRC in 1985.
The Princeton YWCA also helped challenge New Jersey’s stance on abortion, allowing women the right to choose.
”In 1974 the YWCA Princeton versus the state of New Jersey we successfully challenged New Jersey’s stand on abortion rights,” said Ms. Hasili. “To the astonishment of the YW membership, the state maintained that a federal order of 1972 allowing abortion was unconstitutional and it was the YWCA Princeton that appealed to the United States District Court and won the case so abortion is not unconstitutional.”
Child care has always been a focus of the YWCA and it expanded this in 1995 with a childcare center in the Valley Road School for non-English speaking children.
”It provided nursery school and a preschool with an educational component so those children could learn English and enter kindergarten ready and that they would be on equal footing with their peers in the community.”
”A student from that first graduating class has just joined the staff at the YW in our childcare program,” added Ms. Hasili. “It’s really nice to see someone who did not speak English as the primary language at home grow into a beautiful young adult and now she is working with children in our nursery school helping them get ready for school.”
More recently, the Princeton YWCA launched the Racial Justice Institute through a partnership with the Trenton YWCA in 2006.
”We wanted to raise awareness about the existence of racism and prejudice and bias in the community,” said Ms. Hasili. “And to bring people together and create dialogue between different groups of people to eliminate those barriers in Mercer County to create better working and living relationships.”
The YWCA movement began in 1850s England by women who wanted to assist nurses returning to London from the Crimean War with housing and Christian and vocational education, according to YWCA records. This was about 10 years after the formation of the Young Men’s Christian Organization in London.
Within 30 years, the movement had spread to America with the establishment of YWCAs in many cities around the country.
The free 90th birthday celebration will take place on Jan. 7 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the YWCA’s building on Paul Roebson Place. Activities are planned throughout the event.
