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Irish Diaspora Center

News, People

Irish Diaspora Center Hosts Mindfulness Event

It has been an incredibly difficult time for many, if not most of us. The covid-19 pandemic has triggered bouts of stress, anxiety and even depression for people who normally might not be subject to those mental health issues.

As we begin to emerge from the worst of the pandemic, maybe now is a particularly good time to take a candid self-assessment and explore ways to give our emotional health a boost.

The Irish Diaspora Center, working through its CHAT committee—it stands for Community Help Awareness and Trust—is hosting “Mindful in May,” an open-air event providing a day of opportunities to do just that.

May 21, 2021 by Jeff Meade

News

Join a Virtual Town Hall for the Irish Community

How will Brexit affect U.S.-Irish relations? Are there any new insights into business ties between the States and Ireland? What issues are affecting the local Irish and Irish-American community?

These concerns and more are up for discussion Wednesday, February 17, in a virtual town hall meeting sponsored by the Irish Diaspora Center.

Ireland Consul General Ciarán Madden and U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-5) will be on hand to answer questions in a discussion moderated by Professor Joseph Lennon of Villanova.

The town hall is an outgrowth of a conversation with Rep. Scanlon at last year’s open house for the Irish Diaspora Center in Havertown, according to center executive director Emily Norton Ashinhurst.

“We had our grand opening at the new center on March 1, and she came and joined us,” says Ashinhurst. “We talked about the potential for her getting a town hall going, to talk to the Irish community. She is part of the Friends of Ireland Caucus.”

February 12, 2021 by Jeff Meade

News

Wrestling with Anxiety, Depression or Other Mental Health Issues? Here’s How to Get Help

When it comes to anxiety, depression, addiction, self-harm—and even thoughts of suicide, the act of suicide or the emotional aftermath afflicting survivors—no one is immune. Any of those issues can affect anybody at any given time.

During the pandemic, this has been particularly true. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports “considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19.”

Research also reports higher rates of mental health concerns among Irish and Irish-Americans compared to other ethnic groups, says Emily Norton Ashinhurst, executive director of the Irish Diaspora Center in Havertown, Delaware County.

“I think that’s something that we all need to face,” Ashinhurst says, “and we need to recognize that getting help is not a failure. It’s actually setting yourself up for success.”

January 22, 2021 by Jeff Meade

History

The Great Hunger and the Dust Bowl: A Tale of Two Tragedies

On the one hand, the Great Hunger in Ireland and the Dust Bowl in the United States would seem to have little in common. On the other hand, well … you’d be wrong.

True, The Great Hunger, or An Gorta Mór, in the 1840s—commonly known as the potato famine, but it was more complicated than that—resulted in the death by starvation of a million Irish people, and the emigration of a million more. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s, while incredibly tragic, resulted in the deaths of comparatively few—roughly 7,000—but also resulted in new migration patterns amounting in the tens of thousands of Americans, many of them to California, and unparalleled poverty.

But it’s not as simple as that, says Bill McCray, volunteer with a background in training and development and facilitator of a new two-week virtual Irish Diaspora Center study group called “The History of An Gorta Mór and the Dust Bowl.”

The group meets by Zoom Tuesday, July 28, at 7 p.m. and Tuesday, August 4, at 8:30 p.m.

July 10, 2020 by Jeff Meade

Genealogy, History

Who’s Your Granny: Owen Kaney, 19th Century Irish Philadelphia Ancestral Character (and an Irish Diaspora Center FB Live Video)

Genealogy, for the deeply rooted, is far more than the mere act of collecting names and dates. At its best, and in its most gratifying moments, it is about the connection to people long gone but without whom we wouldn’t be here to discover them. We don’t just find them in a census, we make their acquaintance. And when we’re especially fortunate, we reincarnate a character who has been languishing for generations in an ancestral attic.

Sometimes, of course, we do feel lucky just to find a name and a date. Elusive ancestors can be a real pain. But when the names and dates lead to photos, and newspaper articles, and old love letters, we’ve hit the jackpot. And I get as excited over other people’s ancestors as I do my own. Take, for example, the fellow in the photo at the top of this article.

His name is Owen Kaney and he was the great grandfather of my stepfather-in-law. Born in Philadelphia on April 22, 1843, to Irish immigrant parents, he is without a doubt a great ancestral character. And I don’t know nearly enough about him; for instance, I haven’t figured out yet where in Ireland his parents were from, and I don’t know much about his life before the Civil War. But I do know that before his death on February 26, 1888, he crammed a lot of living into his 44 years.

April 17, 2020 by Lori Lander Murphy

Genealogy, History

Who’s Your Granny: Old Family Notes May Be More Treasure Than Trash and An Irish Diaspora Center FB Live Video

I just want to begin by clarifying that there is a vast and vital difference between the definition of “hoarding,” and the act of saving really good old family stuff. But, on the other hand, there can definitely be a fine line between that which is considered trash and that which is celebrated as treasure to the hardcore genealogist.

Because anyone who has spent time searching for that elusive paper trail on a mystifying ancestor knows the frustration of not being able to break through the brick wall. Sometimes the records are missing or lost, or records weren’t kept at the time and in the place we’re looking. Sometimes we don’t even know where or when we should be looking. We put aside that ancestor or that line and decide to come back to it later. And then, occasionally, through the miracle of modern technology, we find our family’s answers online in a distant cousin’s tree.

This is one of the reasons I tell researchers to never give up. You never know what’s out there, what’s been hidden away in an attic or a basement that is now ready to see the light. Genealogy has entered an era when people are willing and able to share old photos, stories and even scraps of paper that have been passed down through generations.

April 10, 2020 by Lori Lander Murphy

News

Irish Community Relief Effort: Coming Together While Staying Apart

With the notable exception of those heroic souls who are working through the coronavirus pandemic—from health care professionals to cops and medics to grocery store clerks—all the rest of us are, or should be, keeping a safe distance from each other.

As a consequence of the need for physical distancing, millions have been laid off or furloughed from their jobs. Some people were hanging on by their fingernails as it was, before the outbreak. Now, those same people are—and there simply is no better word for it—desperate.

“We know that people normally have enough to get them through a couple of weeks, a month at most, says Emily Norton Ashinhurst, executive director of the Delaware County-based Irish Diaspora Center. “If you look at studies across America, the vast majority of people living in the United States don’t have enough to pay a $400 emergency expense. So that says, we’re living from paycheck to paycheck, and we recognize that losing that paycheck is going to be tough.”

In the case of the Philadelphia-area Irish community, many of those people aren’t eligible for unemployment insurance, government food assistance or other benefits because of the types of visas they hold—or simply because they are undocumented. They’ve slipped through the cracks.

April 8, 2020 by Jeff Meade

News

An Ireland Trip of a Lifetime for Teens

A trip to Ireland is always a thrill, but here’s one for teens—rising high school sophomore, junior and senior, to be specific—that will leave lasting memories, not just of places, but of the peers they’re going to meet along away.

It’s the Summer Immersion Program, sponsored by Philly’s Irish Diaspora Center, and it takes place from June 21 to July 3.

This is the second such trip sponsored by the center, and organizers hope it will be even bigger and better than last year.

Some of the kids who went to Ireland for the trip last summer had been to Ireland before; some hadn’t. But it’s a cinch that even if they’d gone before, they had never seen Ireland in quite the same way.

“We’re trying to show them a different experience from what they might have seen previously in Ireland,” says Center Executive Director Emily Norton Ashinhurst. “I think the beauty of this program is that the students who are participating get a feel for Ireland that you don’t get when you’re on even the best bus tour.

“Our young people last year were able to meet up with young people in Ireland, and form networks and connections that they continue to maintain today. They’re still talking to friends they made over there. That’s really the point of the trip—to give them connections back to Ireland and build those connections for the long term.”

January 31, 2020 by Jeff Meade

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