Back 2 School Outreach 2019 - World Changers Church Boston

Back 2 School Outreach 2019 - World Changers Church Boston


Affordable housing is a significant issue in the Boston area. It was recently reported that Massachusetts was, onaverage, the most expensive state in which to buy a home, and the rental units are also among the most expensive,thus many families are struggling to pay for housing. As a result we focus on working with families who areexperiencing housing challenges. We connected with a local community partner (Somerville Housing Coalition) toidentify 5 families in temporary housing, so that we could provide $400-worth of school supplies from Walmart. Wescheduled this event for 25th August, so that the families identified could be invited to Church, and then join us forour annual picnic afterwards. The congregation raised $1900 and we received $100 in gift cards from Walmart.Sadly, there was a misunderstanding with our community partner. We had asked them to identify and facilitateparticipation of the 5 families in their program, and gave them a listing of the families we had assisted at our back toschool event last year. Although they identified the families, we found out when we followed up to check onprogress just before the event that they had not contacted the families, claiming that they did not have contact detailsfor the families and that they understood that we would contact them. Our attempts to then locate the familiesourselves proved fruitless. Therefore we decided to identify families in our congregation who needed assistance. Wegave backpacks and the Walmart gift cards to children in 4 families, and we also purchased Walmart supplies for 2additional families. One of our VKs has 5 children and has been having trouble finding work to help pay for all thechildren's expenses. There was strain within the household, as his wife was pressing him to get the school suppliesfor the children. They were grateful that we selected them to be one of the families we assisted, and we were able toprovide them with $250 of supplies

 

Attendance -
Volunteers Participating 22
Backpacks Distributed 5
Stationery Distributed 7