Jacksonville to celebrate World Refugee Day on Saturday, June 19

Lutheran Social Services will join Catholic Charities’ Office of Refugee Resettlement and World Relief for the 2010 commemoration of World Refugee Day on Saturday, June 19.

The event will begin with a naturalization ceremony at Jacksonville’s Main Library, 303 N. Laura Street, at 2:30 p.m. Special guests will include Ambassador Marilyn McAfee, former ambassador to Guatemala, and Nancy Dreicer, Northeast Region director of the Florida Department of Children and Families. The guest speaker will be Tri T. Vu, a world-renowned architect and former Vietnam refugee. Mr. Vu, who was resettled as a refugee himself in Jacksonville and is a former member of the LSS Board of Directors, is the president of TTV Architects, Inc. and plays an active role in the community.

In addition to the naturalization ceremony, the library will display photographs of refugee fathers and their children in honor of Father’s Day as well as artwork by local refugee children. Following the events at the library, a small carnival will take place in the courtyard of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, 121 E. Duval Street, from 5–7 p.m.

All refugee clients of the participating organizations as well as their families are invited to attend the event and socialize with members of the community as well as other refugees in the area.  Refugees are an integral part of the First Coast community, over the last five years more than 3,500 refugees have come to the Jacksonville area hoping for a new life.

Ticket sales from Nationwide Tour event will benefit LSS

A new stop on the Nationwide Tour is coming to Ponte Vedra Beach and the TPC at Sawgrass Oct. 18-24 with all ticket sales benefiting local charities, including Lutheran Social Services.

The Nationwide Tour – which is a feeder tour to the PGA Tour – will make its debut on the First Coast in the form of the Winn-Dixie Jacksonville Open. Tickets to the event are $25 for the entire week with 100 percent of the money spent on tickets going toward the participating local non-profit organization of each fan’s choice. The event is part of the PepsiCo Tickets Fore Charity program, which will also offer a $50,000 bonus pool that will be divided among each participating non-profit organization, based on each organization’s percentage of ticket revenue.

Alums of the Nationwide Tour include major championship winners Ernie Els, David Toms, Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson and Lucas Glover.  

For more information on purchasing tickets please click on the Winn-Dixie Jacksonville Open/PepsiCo Tickets Fore Charity page.

For more information on any of our upcoming events please call Tia R. Ford, Special Events Coordinator, at 904.739.7074 or e-mail tford@lssjax.org.