Everyone should have a place to grow – a safe community where we can build good lives.

University Settlement builds stronger communities in partnership with 40,000 New Yorkers on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn every year.

Learn more about this work by watching our new 2023 video, which features our CEO Melissa Aase, Tyheim Floyd (Director of Cornerstone @ Ingersoll Community Center), Angelica Bravo (Director of Data, Evaluation, and Learning), Hsiao-Han “Zoe” Proano Celi (Assistant Director of Education and Child Development, Early Head Start), and Early Head Start parent Ying.

Our programs ensure that our neighbors of all ages, from babies to elders, have everything they need to thrive: food, education, mental health care, the arts, belonging, self-determination, and more.

As a settlement house, our programs don’t exist in isolation – they’re coordinated and integrated to engage the whole person, the whole family, and the whole neighborhood.

In every community encounter we have – every counseling session, every ballroom dance class, every housing court appearance, every language lesson, every voter registration drive – we are building on our neighbors’ strengths and supporting their growth.