Catherine McAuley Center celebrates 35 years

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Catherine McAuley Center is celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2024 and has planned several events next month coinciding with Welcome Week to mark the milestone.

The events begin with the center's first open house from 1 to 5 p.m. Sept. 15, a Sept. 17 refugee simulation mean to impart a sense of the hurdles that refugees face and concluding with a 35th anniversary celebration and gala Sept. 20.

While its services have evolved over its three-and-a-half-decade span in operation, the McAuley Center’s core focus has remained the same.

“The word that we use around here is dignity, it's all about dignity,” said Rachel Cohen, the center’s director of development and communications. “So it's refugees, immigrants, unhoused women, unaccompanied women (and) teaching them that they have support and that we can help them just live with dignity. Everybody deserves that.”

The Catherine McAuley Center, 1220 Fifth Ave. SE in Cedar Rapids, opened in 1989 after being founded by the Sisters of Mercy. The group is an international community of Roman Catholic women who “dedicate our lives to the Gospel of Jesus and take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service” and follow the example of McAuley, according to their website. The center initially offered women’s education and services.

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“Catherine McAuley was very, very passionate about educating women, typically women that were divorced or widowed, that had never maybe gotten their high school diploma. So it was a lot of teaching, a lot of getting them the means to get a job if they needed to,” Cohen said.

The center began offering education to 16 women studying for the GED and housed four women in a traditional housing program shortly after. Since then, the Catherine McAuley Center has grown to provide services to more than 1,000 people annually. The center has moved three times, increased its staff to more than 50 employees, and added numerous services, including its refugee resettlement and LIFE (Learning Is For Everyone) programs.

Cohen said the center is “very well known” for its refugee and immigrant services but, in addition, coursework that includes classes on English as a second language, computers, GED and a transportation class to learn the bus system.

Cohen said there are a “bazillion” ways to support the Catherine McAuley Center, including donations of money and items and volunteering.

“We have 100 students on our waitlist,” Cohen said. “(If) you have an hour a week that you can sit and tutor a student, we will train you. So anybody can do it.”