The 2023 Solas Awards celebrated three people who helped make the Welcoming Center what it is today. This year’s honorees were Anne O’Callaghan, the Welcoming Center’s founder; Anuj Gupta, who wrote a report on the importance of immigration in Philadelphia; and Patrick Eiding, who provided the center its first space. 

The Welcoming Center provides various services to immigrants in the Philadelphia region. This includes English language support, workforce development, and community engagement. 

In Irish, solas means “light,” and the annual ceremony represents that each year. The awards “shines a light on the contributions immigrants have been making in our city and region.” 

This year’s event was held on April 24. 2023 at the aptly named World Cafe Live. Magda Martinez, the center’s Chief Operating Officer, and Hao-Li Loh, the Board Chair, introduced the event and this year’s video about the Welcoming Center. In the video, several former Welcoming Center participants who now work there, shared their experiences.

In the video, Yushan Chou, co-founder of Let’s Talk Philly! Conversation Circles and Participant Advisors Council member, said “In the beginning, I was a participant. I received everything that the organization gave to me. Now I’m the co-founder of Let’s Talk Philly! Conversation Circles.”

“And this is why we are trying to give back to the community because we receive[ed] help. But now we want to return to the community and help other immigrant friends,” she continued.

Let’s Talk Philly! was a 2022 Solas Award winner.  

After attendees were told how they could donate, The Welcoming Center’s outgoing CEO, Peter Gonzales, gave a speech. 

In it, he talked about a Pew report that found that 15% of Philadelphia’s population are immigrants and 25% of households speak a language other than English at home. He also discussed the human aspect of these statistics that he’s going to miss when he leaves in June. 

“It fills all of us up with what I think Philadelphia and I think this country has been wanting for. That is a diverse group of people who have a common interest, a common love for humanity, for each other, for building friendships, for building support for newcomers, no matter what language they spoke,” he said.

He then thanked the rest of his team and brought up Dan Fitzpatrick, the President of Citizens Bank, to introduce the first honoree, Anuj Gupta. Fitzpatrick noted in his speech that Gupta was actually the first person to introduce Gonzales to the Welcoming Center and its board.

Gupta started working with the board after publishing a report in 2000 on immigration in Philadelphia. 

“When I wrote that paper, I very intentionally entitled it, “Immigration in Philadelphia: A Call to Action.” I wanted it to be a call to action for Greater Philadelphia,” Gupta said during his acceptance speech.

He continued, “It’s an equation with two parts. The first is an economic imperative. But there is a second side to that equation, arguably more important. It’s the moral imperative. Because unless you are of indigenous origin. We all have an immigrant story.”

Stephanie Sun, who works for the Office of the Governor, introduced the next honoree, Patrick Eiding. She met Eiding as a Welcoming Center participant while he was on the board. 

“Over the next seven years, I would come to know Pat Eiding personally, as a true champion for immigrants,” she said. 

“Philadelphia is an open arm for a lot of people. It was an open arm for my grandparents when they came here, and other people’s grandparents. And to have the Welcoming Center just continue that open arm and make sure that everyone's got an opportunity, a chance,” said Eiding.

The night’s final honoree, Anne O’Callaghan was introduced by Manuel Portillo, the Director of Community Engagement, and Maureen Smith, the Immigrant Leadership Institute Program Manager.  

O’Callaghan started her speech by joking, “Rebecca told me that, in block print in an email, I was only to speak for 60 seconds. So what she doesn’t understand is that no Irish woman can even say her name in 60 seconds, much less [finish] talking.”

She then talked about the starting of the Welcoming Center, touching on the contributions of the other two honorees. 

“So we decided that because we didn’t want to be duplicating services, we wanted to honor the services that existed in Philadelphia Nationality Service Center, Pious, and some of these other, smaller ones. But we did a survey and noticed that there were some significant gaps in service. And that was what we decided, that the Welcoming Center would fill those gaps,” O’Callaghan said.

The 2022 Solas Awards raised over $473,000. By the time of the event, the 2023 Solas Awards had raised $425,525. Since donations exceeded what was needed for the match donation, Loh and her husband offered another match of $25,000.