A century of support: United Neighborhood Centers celebrates 100 years of community services

Oct. 23—United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania can trace its beginnings to a simple concept.

Neighbors supporting one another.

That idea still drives the mission of UNC, one of the region's oldest and longest operating nonprofit organizations, as it celebrates a century of serving the community with compassion.

UNC's diverse programs, developed in accordance with the times and emerging needs of the area over the last 100 years, serve low-income families, seniors, youth and new immigrants while providing tools for self-sufficiency.

"It's important to us that we're preserving the dignity of the consumers that we work with," said UNC President and CEO Lisa Durkin. "All of the services that we provide are things that every human being is just entitled to: safe, affordable housing, education, to feel welcomed and included in one's own community, food and clothing. It's our role to make sure that it's happening, because everyone deserves it and needs it. It's our job to make sure that that's the case because sometimes, it's not as easy as it should be."

UNC dates back to 1923 when Black residents formed the Progressive Recreation and Social Service Association. Soon after, another organization called Big Sisters came into existence.

These independent centers, later known as the Progressive Recreation and Community Center and the Bellevue Community Center, respectively, merged in 1970 to form United Neighborhood Services of Lackawanna County. It was later renamed United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania to better represent its service area.

Durkin, who started at UNC as a housing counselor 25 years ago and held various positions prior to becoming CEO in 2019, said the organization kept evolving throughout the decades. Everyone continued building upon the groundwork their predecessors laid.

Following the passage of the Older Americans Act in the mid-1960s, Durkin said senior centers started opening all over, including in Scranton, and UNC spent the '70s developing that program area.

UNC owns and operates senior centers in Scranton and Carbondale, and manages others, all with support and collaboration from the Lackawanna County Area Agency on Aging, she added.

"We've been able to evolve the programs and services over the years," she said. "At one time, the big event was bingo, and in 2023, we've got golf simulators and Wii Sports and sip and paint events."

Later, Durkin said UNC began seeing more households with two working parents and hearing the term "latchkey kids" to describe children at home alone after school. This led UNC to focus on child care, she said. It operates three child care centers in Scranton.

With increased awareness of the homeless situation during the '90s, Durkin said UNC and became involved with the Scranton/Lackawanna County Continuum of Care.

"Every year, this community of nonprofits leverages millions of dollars from the federal government that's brought into this community to provide supportive housing programs for our homeless individuals," she said.

In the 2000s, Durkin said it became clear that there weren't enough affordable housing options. So UNC formed its housing and economic development subsidiary, United Neighborhood Community Development Corporation, in 2006 to construct new buildings or adapt older ones.

They've developed housing in Lackawanna County and surrounding areas and have an eye on new projects throughout the region, she said. Looking at neighborhoods so closely had UNC leaders thinking about revitalization efforts as well.

"That's when we started to really commit to more boots on the ground at the neighborhood level and started our community revitalization programs," she said.

This led to projects such as getting Scranton's Pine Brook neighborhood designated as an Elm Street Community through the state Department of Community and Economic Development and the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, UNC-operated farmers markets in South Scranton and Carbondale which accept SNAP benefits, and other initiatives.

Another milestone for UNC came in 2014 with the development of a community health department, Durkin said. Focused on the social determinants of health, UNC aimed to connect health care and social services to improve health outcomes for at-risk individuals. Durkin said they determined this work was reducing emergency room visits and hospital readmissions for the clients they serve.

In 2020, UNC adapted to serve rising needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then post-pandemic, Durkin said career development became a huge focus as families took a closer look at what it means to earn a living wage.

"We started some of these job readiness programs where we're continuing to do this work that we've built our history on for the last 100 years, but in a way that's specific to the workforce," she said.

Today, UNC's work spans five departments — community services, children and teens, community education, community revitalization and community health and aging, as well as the UNCDC.

UNC's leadership and staff see the impact daily. For example, so far this year, Durkin said the nonprofit's food pantry provided more than 22,000 bags of groceries, and last year, the South Side Farmers Market generated upwards of $200,000 in revenue for its local vendors.

Christina Manuel, who recently became director of development and communications at UNC after working in community revitalization, said there's nothing more gratifying than the success stories of their clients.

It's also inspiring for her to look through the archives and see the organization's progress since 1923. She looks forward to hearing others reflect on UNC's recent work decades from now.

"Now we're writing that story, and we want it to be a really good one," she said.

Contact the writer:

bwilliams@scrantontimes.com; 570-348-9100 x5107;

@BWilliamsTT on X.