30 April 2015 - The Philippine Consulate General in New York, in cooperation with the Filipino Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia (FECGP) and the Filipino-American Community Development Center of Ocean County (FCDC), New Jersey, delivered consular services to Filipinos in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. The consular outreach event was held on two successive days, April 18 for Philadelphia and April 19 for Tom’s River, New Jersey. The eight-person consular team was headed by Consul Kerwin Tate. The team served the needs of the large Filipino communities in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey that had been looking forward to the outreach event.

The Philadelphia consular outreach was held at the activity center of the St. Thomas Aquinas Church. Community leaders and volunteers from the (FECGP) were at the site early, setting up the center to accommodate the expected volume of Filipino applicants. The team was not disappointed, as dozens of applicants arrived to avail of various services like passport renewals, dual citizenship, legalization of documents and civil registry reports. The Consulate General also registered a large number of Filipinos for Overseas Absentee Voting. As part of the Consulate’s outreach services, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration was on hand to deliver educational materials to the community.

The next day, the consular team travelled to Tom’s River, New Jersey, to render its services to the Filipinos living there. This time, it was the FCDC’s turn to host the team. With clients lined up early to benefit from the team’s presence, the team members immediately set to work, and processed the service requests of their clients, who expressed their appreciation for the team’s presence and fast work. In total, the team processed 213 applications for the two locations. END