Hi, Jenessa Hefler from ENP here! Coming to you virtually from my very yellow kitchen. I hope you all are staying safe and connected in these unprecedented times. In light of our schools being closed and many parents and kids at home trying to navigate a new homeschool life, we wanted to make our Literacy Mentor (LM) materials free and easily accessible to you.
Dear Ministry Colleagues,
God’s people in the Valley are responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Many of you are involved in relief efforts – too many to list here. But in our role as an equipping organization, we wanted to pass along a few strategic things we are aware of that might be helpful for you to know:
We are in the midst of unprecedented times. COVID-19 and the potential impact on our city, state, country, and the world is rising in awareness as well as the importance social distancing and other efforts to flatten the curve.
ENP is continually monitoring the situation and wanted to let you know how we can love our neighbors and especially those on the margins.
Word of Warning: Take the precations you feel you need to take. We are not medical professionals, but rather trying to give you options and ways to show Jesus like compassion during these times.
Let your neighbors know you are there for them! You can download and print this PDF and share it with them. If you want an editable version or want ENP to help you create one email gabrielle@everyneighborhood.org.
Thanks, Neighborhood Church for sharing your design.
Neighbor-COVID19
On February 22, 2020, the Fresno County Trauma and Resilience Network partnered with Every Neighborhood Partnership to bring awareness to the impact of childhood trauma in Fresno.
The vision behind these two mini-conferences is to gather community members to discuss and strategize ways to build connections between the health care system and other systems to better serve kids and families struggling with adverse conditions in their lives.
The first Trauma and Resilience Mini-Conference was held at the Butler Church and approximately 45 people — educators, mentors, parents, and students– were in attendance.
The Well Community Church partners with local organizations to promote municipal revitalization
Original Post by Addison Schultz on The Feather Online, reprinted with permission
The City of Fresno suffers as one of the worst cities for poverty concentration in the nation. Of the 500,000 residents from around the globe that inhabit Fresno, 28.2 percent live under the national poverty line. Moved by the city’s statistics, organizations gather together to attempt to mobilize the community for action.
The Well Community Church hosted the second annual Discover Fresno, a one-day event used to inform citizens about the needs of the city and volunteer opportunities for Fresno residents, Feb. 8. Over 250 guests attended the event which included ten breakout sessions and opportunities to engage with the session speakers.
Leaders from Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP), Live Again Fresno, Youth for Christ, Poverello House, Pregnancy Care Center, World Impact, Housing Authority, Safe Families, Fresno Rescue Mission, ESA Love Inc., Economic Opportunities Commission, Central Valley Justice Coalition and Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries represented their organizations and shared the part they play in revitalizing the city of Fresno.
2019 was a year of growth! We added a few new programs- including Read Fresno and Resilient Playgrounds, deepened our existing work, and continued to pour into resident and young adult leaders. All of this growth is thanks to our partners like you!
Leadership is often envisioned as an individual leading a large group of people. This is an accurate vision of leadership, although it is not a holistic vision. For example, rarely mentioned in the same sentence is that of motherhood and leadership .
In 2019 ENP was blessed to journey with 60 mothers from Fresno who accepted the challenge of participating in one of two leadership cohorts hosted by ENP. These residents, we believe, are already leaders as they are already equipped with gifts, talents, and abilities. Through authentic engagement ENP facilitated pathways to future development and community engagement. No surprise to us, mothers are, without a doubt, leaders of their communities.
Resident Leader Cohort’s Graduation held at Arte Americas downtown.
ENP partnered with Fresno Housing Authority at Legacy Commons, which has been instrumental for strategic place-based development. This partnership has led to growth in the neighborhood association group and the development of an additional resident leadership cohort (CAN). It has also resulted in the installation of security doors on each of the 128 apartments in the complex.
As part of community development and creative place-making, ENP was successful in helping a local partner acquire a one-acre vacant property for the purpose of building a neighborhood park. ENP conducted the outreach for the park design and acted as consultant on a state-wide grant. ENP also supported a resident-led project with the Vang Pao Neighborhood Association “familias en accion” to ideate and install thirty art murals in the community. The Callejon mural/Mural Alley project serves as a walking path and activity zone for community members to enjoy. Blight and litter abatement has also gone down in that space.
A glimpse of the beautiful Mural Alley project led by “Familias En Accion” in Vang Pao.
Latin Dance Fitness is building resident leaders and healthier communities. Read this quote from one attendee: “With this class, I have lost 28 pounds (from November to January). This class is a positive place to work out without feeling judged. On days I go to class, I have more energy. I am in a better mood and it helps me relieve stress for a little while. In the class, I am out of my head and only focusing on the next move. Having bipolar, I often get stuck in my head and for an hour twice a week it’s nice to just be in the moment, focusing on the music and the moves. Spending time out of my apartment with positive people is such a good feeling”.
In 2019 Literacy Mentoring added 10 more schools, allowing us to impact over 300 additional students on a weekly basis. This is thanks to the partnership of 4 more churches and the newly added Read Fresno program with Fresno State. We have seen tremendous academic growth (students grew on average 443%), the building up of more young college student leaders, better supported teachers, and volunteers who are building real relationships with students, teachers, and families.
The LM program is also now in Spanish! We are able to work with kids in dual-immersion classrooms at both Centennial and Jackson elementary. One of the mentors Heidi White said “ I love it so much. I believe we are transforming lives by being in those classrooms.”
We have seen the gap close for students, especially when we have enough capacity (trained volunteers and supplies) to work with them in Kinder, 1st, and 2nd grade. This chart shows the classroom average of sight words known and the growth over the year.
This golf cart was created for the Winter Wonderland event at Williams Elementary by Read Fresno Mentors. Their love for their kids propelled them to work overtime and attend events outside of school hours!
We asked our students what they think in some key “Group think-tanks.” They said “it (literacy mentoring) makes me feel more smarter,” “I’m really happy they teach me and they help me learn about stuff” and “I want to tell her (my mentor) that I missed her and that I love her..” They also gave us new activity ideas- including adding playdough and car games.
Our Literacy Mentors come from many different places! For instance, at this training we had three parents, one pastor, one community member who found us online, and a college professor! It takes the whole community coming together if we’re going to see our kids succeed.
Read Fresno
# of Fresno State Community Members Involved as mentors: 49
# of hours of service provided by mentors:13,386.55$255,431.27 of Work Study awarded to students
Recreational Resilience is ENP’s unique framework for promoting and developing individual and community resilience in under-resourced neighborhoods. This framework incorporates Resilience-Based Trauma Informed practices from the most relevant fields of scientific research with fun and playful recreational activities that are facilitated through safe, supportive and caring adult relationships. Through our network of community partners, ENP coordinates these relational based activities in two primary categories: Community-Based and Campus-Based.
Our Community-Based programs take place outside of the regularly scheduled school day. Saturday Sports (SS), a drop-in recreation program takes place on regularly scheduled intervals on Saturdays and is our main community-based program. During 2019, our SS programs have provided enriching recreational and relational engagement to over 400 individual students each month. On average, over the course of the program year, we mobilize more than 5,000 community volunteer hours and serve over 17,000 sack lunches to students in these high need neighborhoods.
Our Campus-Based programs take place on elementary school campuses during the regular school day. FunFit PE is a unique project where college volunteers provide support to classroom teachers by delivering fun, engaging physical activity to elementary students during regularly scheduled PE classes. The FunFit PE projects include activities like Yoga Ed, Kid Dance, Parkour Fitness, and Beat the Odds Drumming, a social-emotional drum circle program. The FunFit PE projects have served over 800 students on five elementary school campuses.
ENP’s Resilient Playgrounds initiative includes college volunteers providing semi-structured recreational activities for elementary students during recess. Over the last two school semesters, Resilient Playgrounds has provided semi-structured recess for over 400 students at two elementary school sites. Through our campus-based programs, ENP has mobilized over 4,000 volunteer service-learning hours, providing essential personal and professional development opportunities for the next generation of professionals who will soon be working and leading many of our social institutions. Even more importantly, these future professionals are providing safe, nurturing adult relationships that ultimately help to support and meet the social-emotional and relational needs of students in our community.
These girls are keeping cool on a warm day, coloring in the shade with their Saturday Sports leaders at Susan B Anthony. Our Satrudays include more than just sports!
Kids from Heaton Elementary are being led in fun, structured PE activities by Fresno State students. We are building healthy kids and college student leaders!
One of ENP’s core staff values is to be a learner. We start with listening to our communities, reading books, articles, and news, and then test that information in the real world lab of our community. Information that we or others we find helpful we pass on. This is not a complete list, but sampling of the type of information that we shared in 2019 to our community partners, residents, churches, and volunteers.
Additionally, over 500 individuals have received specially designed trauma-informed training related to individual specialized fields such as Foster and Adoptive Care, Social Work, After School & Recreation Programing, and Mentoring.
Over the course of 2019 ENP has helped facilitate community conversations in the West Fresno elementary neighborhood. It started with school staff and community organizations near the school to eventually working with over 40 residents meeting on a monthly basis in the school cafeteria.
The first priority the residents had was the road and traffic conditions around the school site.
The Bible reveals that leadership shapes the heart, mind, and actions of entire generations. The book of Judges reveals the complex and dynamic interrelationship between our collective human nature with leadership and God’s divine purpose. It is with this wide-angled perspective that I would like to discuss the ministry of Saturday Sports and its crucial role in the leadership of the Next-generation.
Below is your FREE copy of our 101 Church for City Drive Tour. Follow the directions on the PDF and listen to the tracks through SoundCloud. We hope that as you take the tour you will get to know our city a little better.
What is the Drive Tour?
This project is birthed from the many stories and people Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP) has worked with over the years. We wanted to tell their story.
We want you to know just a few of the thousands of people in our city of good faith and good will that are working hard to love and serve our city.
Our Hopes and Expectations
This is not about guilt, shame, or any ulterior motive. We serve our city because Jesus served us. We love others because he loves us. Our hope is that a story you hear resonates deeply with you. That it encourages you in your journey of loving God and others. That you are spurred on to love and good deeds.
Our hope and expectation are at a minimum; 1) that you are exposed to new areas and ministries in our city, 2) that you would pray for these people, places, and issues and; 3) that for some of you that you would join them in their work in our city. Your story and journey is unique, but we know God has good things in store for you and for others as you seek the prosperity of the city! (Jeremiah 29:1-14)
Happy Touring!
ENP_AudioDriveTour_101
Click here to check out the August 2019 Newsletter.
