Bridgeton Villas:
Revive is very thankful for the service of Melissa Manske in heading up the ministry at the Bridgeton Villas. She has done a fabulous job working together with the various churches to provide the Sunday afternoon activities for the children. We are looking forward to another summer of programming and relationship development with the children and their families. It is our prayer that we will be able to have a month-long summer program this year. We are looking for an intern from one of our local churches to help us this summer to coordinate things and be an on-site help to the churches each week. We are also looking at the possibility of starting a small soccer league for the children there. We would be looking for churches to sponsor a team by providing for the cost of T-shirts and then helping to provide coaches as well. We would love to engage parents through this as well! Please let us know if you are interested!
Johnson Reeves:
Things continue to progress with this project. In January, we received the great news that a national organization, KaBoom!, awarded RSJ with a grant for $15,000 for playground equipment. We are currently working to raise the $9,000 in local support needed to trigger that grant and are about half-way to that goal. We plan to have a community build to install the playground equipment on May 29 and 30 and are looking for volunteers to help this weekend with the effort. We will need laborers to help with construction and others to help with activities that will be done with the children from the community and their families. We are also working to finish the community building located on-site and will hopefully be finishing that around the same time as the equipment install. We are working to find local churches who will be willing to come provide a similar ministry to what we already are doing at the Bridgeton Villas at this location once construction is complete.
Unidos Para La Familia:
The services that Revive South Jersey is able to provide in collaboration with our partners through Unidos para la Familia have been very well received in the community. We are currently serving 40 students through the Spanish GED program and hope to have 10-12 of them pass some part of the test this Spring. We are also serving 5-7 individuals through the English program. The conversational ESL classes continue to flourish with an average of 30 students coming out twice a week to receive help in learning English and tutoring to pass their citizenship exam. We were also able to start a class for 5 individuals who didn’t know Spanish or English, to begin learning Spanish. Through these classes, we come in contact with many families. The Family Strengthening Network provides three life coaches that are available to these families to help them with their daily life needs in: health and wellness, educational advocacy, financial literacy, parenting, job skills training, and more. Our life coaches are currently working with nearly 30 families to help strengthen them in these areas. We are working closely with Indian Avenue School and will be starting a community garden there this year as well as on-site ESL classes for parents beginning April 15th.
Community Development:
RSJ is looking into various ways to help through community development and is exploring options for community gardens on vacant lots throughout the City and abandoned homes that can be reclaimed and restored.
We are particularly thankful to the churches that make the ministries of Revive South Jersey possible through their volunteers. It is truly a testimony to the light of Jesus shining in the City of Bridgeton.
For more information, please contact Jonathan Cummings: jon@revivesj.org
or call the number below…
Revive South Jersey, Inc.
545 Daretown Road, Elmer, NJ 08318
(phone) 856-391-9110 • (fax) 856-494-1365
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