In August of 1918, the Institute opened its doors for the first time. The original seeds of the International Institute germinated in the Field Offices of the YWCA, as Edith Terry Bremer, head of the YWCA’s Department of Immigration and Foreign Communities, recognized a need for specialized services and activities for recently arrived, non-English speaking immigrant women and girls who found themselves alone in a new country without the skills and resources they needed to survive. Nineteen International Institutes existed by 1918, primarily in the industrialized Northeast. The San Francisco Bay Area’s dire need for an International Institute grew out of our country’s participation in World War I.