The Wilberforce Center

Welcoming and Serving our City's Newest Neighbors

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The Wilberforce Center is doing vital immigration work in our community and in the lives of our new neighbors from Afghanistan. As a co-sponsor for two families resettling here in our community,  I have been blown away by the compassionate care and professionalism that they bring to the immigration process. Every family arriving in our city deserves to be welcomed with the sense of dignity and level of care and attention that the Wilberforce Center offers. I have experienced the capacity constraints placed on the organization given the scale of this historic resettlement initiative, and hope to see The Wilberforce Center have the opportunity to expand its capacity so that they can continue to meet the time-sensitive immigration needs of our Afghan neighbors.

                                                                                                                                                  Mary Katherine Bell

                                                                                                                                                 Afghan Family Sponsor

William Wilberforce was born on 24th August 1759.  He was an English politician known as the leader of the movement to stop the slave trade.  Wilberforce devoted his life as an advocate for social change and human rights.  His life was portrayed in the movie Amazing Grace, a 2006 British-American biographical drama.  It chronicles the campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce.  

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 If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a  fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.

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