Here is part one, part two.
The Plan
The plan is simple. The biggest need in the apartment complex is to extend the school day for children living in the complex. The Neighborhood Resource Center (NRC) is meeting meeting part of this need. They have a great drop in place for kids to be at after school. They have capacity for about 40 kids at any one time with about 60 kids in total visiting on a regular basis. This is maybe 20% of the kids living in Westwood. They also serve about 350 adults per year with various services and programs some of which they run and some of which are run by outside partners.
This is why we are renting two apartments inside of Westwood. This will give us about 1500 sq. ft. of space. We will use this space for our casework offices. The space will also be used for different "workshops". Parenting, job skills, budgeting, health etc...
We learned pretty quick that we can't help the kids without also helping their whole family. This is why we have hired a part time and full time case manager who will be working inside of our offices at Westwood. We believe this will not only help students who are in our after school program, but will also be a place for NRC and WEGO referrals. Eventually it will be opened up to referrals to other churches. We will have to wait to see what our capacity is after the first year.
So. #1 We are going to be offering an after school program to Westwood kids (and if capacity to non-Westwood kids) starting in few weeks. We are hiring a full time teacher, and two part time teachers to do this.
#2 Case management and workshops inside of the complex itself. I want to add that we had looked for some space to do our case management around the complex, even looking as far away as downtown WEGO (about 5 miles) but did not feel like a good fit for us. We wanted to go big and small at the same time. In other words we wanted to stay focused on one community. Westwood. We wanted to stay close to our church campus. Westwood is just three miles away. We wanted to shoot for transformation. It will be easier to gage how we are doing with this in a definable community like an apartment complex. It made sense to simply focus on Westwood for the pilot program. And this is pilot. Yes we are committed to years of ministry, but there are no guarantees. We have bigger plans, much bigger but we are in this for a long time so we will move ahead confidently.
#3 We want to be "the welcome wagon" to the complex. We hope to be developing a visitation program with the complex management. We will visit all new tenants on behalf of the management, WEGO, the NRC and Puente. We want people to feel welcomed, and to let them know where they can go for help if it is needed.
#4 Because we believe in Jesus and his Church we will be bussing people to church on Sunday mornings. That will start in a month or so.
#5 In year three we want to start a summer day program as well as a scholarship program for teens.
#6 Puente is sort of a lab. We want to create and environment where people can use their gifts to start new ministries. The sky is the limit! We have lots of good ideas and already have one solid written proposal in our hands! We have two more ideas from committed volunteers in the area of health care and legal services which are big needs. Can't wait to see where that leads. Did I mention we already have 100 volunteers in process of getting applications turned in and processed?
By the way since my first post on this we modified the name. It is now Puente del Pueblo not El Puente del Pueblo. We wanted puente to be a very and not a known.
