A Note from the Executive Director
In those brief check-in conversations, I have with people in the hallway, I am often asked, “How is ENP? What have you all been up to?” Honestly, I haven’t gotten better at summarizing our work to a 1 to 2 sentence response. There is so much to say!
How do you summarize the impact of hundreds of literacy mentors who support kids’ educational and emotional development? How do you summarize residents beginning to know themselves and the power and knowledge they have to change their communities? How do you summarize the numerous church, CBO, and other partners we have worked with around Trauma/Resilience, Digital Equity, Land Use Planning, Church Equipping, and/or Racial Justice? Sometimes all I can say is, “We have an amazing team and great partners and the work is going well.”
I hope as you scan this report that you get a sense of all that has happened, that you see the work being done and the reason your support and investment in ENP is worth every penny. Thank you for partnering with us to activate our schools and neighborhoods!
Table of Contents
- Financial Snapshot
- Literacy Mentoring
- Recreational Resilience
- Neighborhood Development
- Neighborhood Health and Wellness
- City-Wide Equipping
Financial Snapshot
Income Sources
- 117 Individuals
- 39 first time donors
- $233 average first donation
- 45 Businesses
- 19 Churches
- 16 Grants
- 42 Monthly recurring donors (individuals and churches)
- $105 average monthly donation
Literacy Mentoring
Literacy Mentoring underwent a lot of change throughout 2021, from mentoring fully virtual in the first half of the year, to a hybrid of in-person and virtual mentoring, to launching literacy mentoring for 3rd-6th graders alongside after school programs. For years, our 3rd-6th grade teachers have asked “When is it our turn?” and we were so excited to finally launch a pilot program to support their students! Thanks to 12 Fresno State Psychology Masters program students, we piloted our 3rd-6th grade curriculum with 59 students at Kirk Elementary August-December 2021. We’re also working with a handful of upper elementary students online. In these grades we track students’ reading fluency by tracking how many words they can read fluently in 1 minute.
January 2021 – June 2021 Virtual Literacy Mentoring
- 21 schools
- 3 afterschool sites
- 3 group homes
- 138 mentors
- 285 students
August 2021 – December 2021
- 11 schools in-person during school day
- 7 after school sites (ENP running 4 of them)
- Started a new After School Reading Intervention Program at 3 schools
- Supported virtual after school program at apartment complex
- 84 Literacy/Read Fresno mentors
- Read Fresno back in person! 29 Fresno State students served at 5 schools
- 31 Virtual Literacy Mentors
- 47 kids online
- 245 kids in-person during school day
- 110 kids in-person after school
- 12,500 total volunteer hours, with an approximate dollar value of $420,000
- We partnered with AmeriCorps to have a Volunteer Infrastructure Program (VIP) Fellow serve at ENP to revamp our volunteer recruitment and engagement process.
During the summer, learning was able to continue as some virtual literacy mentors met with their mentees via GoSchoolbox. Some virtual literacy mentors also met their students at the zoo for some in-person exploring after a semester of meeting online! In April and November, mentors personally delivered 85 Literacy Take-home bags to students’ homes. Bags included supplies to support online literacy sessions and encourage more reading at home! Mentors also brought each student a book for Christmas.
Recreational Resilience
Saturday Sports exists to provide children with a safe green space where they can play with reliable and positive mentors. Through this 2-hour program, children engage with volunteers in a group mentoring setting that includes activities like sports, crafts, games, and a positive character talk or Bible message. Children are also provided with a sack lunch. Volunteers connect with kids and begin to engage with them and their families. At the beginning of 2021, due to COVID restrictions, Saturday Sports was unable to take place. Over the summer, ENP hired a new Recreational Resilience Coordinator, who worked hard to relaunch Saturday Sports and additional recreational activities in the fall.
August 2021 – December 2021
- 5 Saturday Sports sites relaunched
- 2 Neighborhood Sports Camps
- 395 Recreation Volunteers
- 7 Saturday Sports Lunch Drivers
- 2000 kids attended
- 9,700 total volunteer hours, with an approximate dollar value of $326,017
Poverello House Partnership
Beginning in 2002, Poverello House began providing lunches for the 3 original Saturday Sports programs under the Patty Project. In 2008, ENP was launched and continued the great work of the Patty Project by partnering more local churches to local elementary schools. This grew quickly and at its height there were nearly 50 Saturday Sports programs.
During this time, Poverello House faithfully provided lunches for every new Saturday Sports program that was created, as well as Spring Break camps, Summer Camps, and Winter Camps for our youth. It’s projected that Poverello House has provided over half a million meals from 2002-2021. Their partnership with other ministries, providing a meal on Saturday morning, and helping address our community’s food insecurity, are just some of the ways Poverello House plays a vital role for our community.
We are so thankful for not only the role Poverello plays within ENP’s work, but also the role they play in our entire county. They have, are, and will continue to be a blessing to many.
ENP is forever grateful for the support and partnership that we shared with Poverello House for almost 18 years. While we could never truly put a price on the invaluable impact of putting food in kids’ bellies, we do know that over that span of time, Poverello House helped us feed over half a million children! (Roughly 504,000). That is a donation worth approximately $1,260,000! Thank you to the men and women who served with us and helped us have a lasting impact on generations of kids across Fresno.
Neighborhood Development
In 2021 we saw new opportunities to engage the community and connect with partners to dive deeper in collaboration. We sought new ways to invest in our residents by committing over 40k in stipends. As our capacity grew, we in turn were able to support more community partners and neighborhoods with innovative workshops and cohorts. We also expanded our existing networks of faith based partners to develop new neighborhood strategies to connect with their communities. Civic Infrastructure became a new way of looking at neighborhoods, which intersects community development with resident engagement. While our daily lives continue to be interrupted by the pandemic, we also look forward to new opportunities to adapt and change our built environment that we live in! The neighborhood development scope of work is inherently optimistic because it explores new possibilities that could arise in spite of existing challenges that are most impacting communities without voice or resource. Community work is aspirational and intuitively hopeful because it seeks the best outcomes.
Highlights
- Launched 6 DRIVE HUB organizations
- Provided capacity building support to 20 local organizations
- Connected and supported 10 residents to successfully participate in the California Avenue Neighborhood leadership cohort, 34 weeks and counting
- Implemented Cal Berkeley CalWalks audit & assessment at California Ave., A St., and Church Ave.
- Facilitated 2 ABCD workshops
- Provided $40,000 of stipends to resident leaders
- Over 300 engaged residents
- Led 10 neighborhood improvement projects
- ENP Pastor’s Network conducted 3 workshops on neighborhood and leadership development
- Participated in 10 city-wide initiatives
Neighborhood Health and Wellness
2021 was a big year for Neighborhood Health and Wellness. In light of the negative social impacts of Covid-19 and the strict restrictions, we continued to engage the community with creative solutions. We continued our online classes such as Dance Fitness, Women’s Support Group, Digital Literacy, Chronic Disease Self Management Program, and “Cultivando la Salud Mental” (Cultivating Mental Health). On June 14th, 2021, we launched our first outdoor in-person Dance Fitness class. Our community members expressed their excitement and gratitude for this class because they can now dance in person and be around other community members. We also launched a new curriculum called “Parent Cafe,” which is a Trauma and Resiliency course. Watching members share deeply about the pain and joy in their lives as they developed new tools to heal was powerful and inspiring.
Group Participants
- Outdoor Dance Fitness: 800
- Online Women’s Support Group: 200
- Digital Literacy: 67
- Chronic Disease Self Management Program: 35
- Parent Cafe: 19
City-Wide Equipping
Residents’ Council
Every Neighborhood Partnership was invited by The Children’s Movement to be one of the anchor Community Benefit Organizations in the first-ever Fresno Residents’ Council. ENP nominated 8 individuals to be part of the council. They range from resident leaders to teachers to college students and come from all across Fresno. Along with the other 92 residents, they are learning about public policy and will together advocate for public policy change in Fresno in 2022.
LivingUNDIVIDED
A group of 25 diverse individuals from a variety of churches and organizations in Fresno met over zoom for six weeks to learn and discuss racial solidarity and faith through LivingUNDIVIDED’s curriculum. It was a significant time of sharing, listening, and growing, and we are looking forward to seeing the next steps that group members take as a result of this experience. Three of the participants got trained as facilitators to bring the first in-person LivingUNDIVIDED class to the west coast in 2022.
Conclusion
Thank you again! Hopefully you were encouraged reading about the work that ENP is doing to serve our residents/community and support schools and churches in Fresno.
We would love and welcome your monthly or one time support! Become a donor today!
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