A Semester in Review

This last semester has been an eventful one for Hope House Montgomery. As many of you know, Hope House Montgomery was established in 2021. For an organization that has just begun in God’s journey, many exciting parts of HHM have been flourishing. 

Another one of our newest programs is our ESL class. ESL stands for English as a second language. HHM is in a neighborhood with many different people, such as African Americans and Hispanics. A majority of our Hispanic neighbor’s first language is not English, so Ms. Cain believed this class might help our neighbors if they wanted to learn. We are blessed to have Alan and his wife, Nancy, teach the ESL class every Monday. 

Hope House Montgomery has consistently scheduled one trash pickup each month during the last semester. HHM and other volunteers would clean neighborhoods one Saturday of each month. We had Faulkner students participate in trash pickup during their volunteer college day. HHM had social clubs from Faulkner University, such as my (Dessy) club Xi Chi Gamma, to help beautify our neighborhood. The Hunter Hills youth group took their time to help also. HHM would provide all of our volunteers with an excellent breakfast beforehand. 

During holidays, HHM comes up with really sweet gifts to give around the neighborhood to spread positivity because the holidays can be both wonderful and the hardest days of the year for some people. HHM provided two different gifts for two well-loved holidays in America: Thanksgiving and Christmas. For Thanksgiving, we (Ms. Candace, Kiara, and I) created Thanksgiving baskets filled with many classic Thanksgiving items such as vegetables, meats, desserts, and gift cards. For Christmas, Ms. Cain found a cookie recipe, so we packed jars with the dry ingredients to make the cookies! In both instances, these gifts were distributed randomly around the neighborhood. 

Reading Around the Block (RATB) is our biggest challenge and success. RATB is an after-school program held every Wednesday from 3:30 pm to around 5ish pm. HHM interns and other volunteers will help tutor and read with children from 1st to 5th grade. To get this program started, we woke up early, went to Highland Avenue Elementary, and passed out flyers for our program. We prayed, hoping to get at least two children to show up. No one came on the first day of RATB because of the bad weather. Instead of moping, we kept praying that the next week would be better. To our surprise, five children showed up for ROTB. The week after, eight children showed up! Ever since then, the numbers fluctuate between 5 to 8 children showing up.

What do we do during RATB? When the children come, they are seated around the dining table at Hope House with volunteers, and we pass out their afternoon snacks. Snacks include fruit snacks, chips, popcorn, and juice.  We ask questions about their school, interests, dislikes, etc. Next, we gather everyone into the living room to hear one of the volunteers or interns read a book to everyone. It is always exciting to see the kids participate with tremendous enthusiasm to answer questions the reader may ask about the book. Once Big Read is over, the children will split up to go with a reading buddy.

The reading buddy will interact with the child by letting them read some pages, and then the buddy will read some too. If the child wants to do something else, we have a variety of worksheets to polish other skills such as reading comprehension, math, and more. Lastly, we will prepare a weekly game or crafts to do. The children are ecstatic whether they play “Simon Says,” paint Christmas stockings, or play a game of Jenga! It makes my day whenever I see their smiling faces. We have lots of fun. 

Part of our internship is cooking together each week, which has been challenging and fun. I have learned to cook things I wasn’t sure I could. Ms. Candace, Ms. Cain (I call her VP Cain since that is what I call her at the university) also treats us to breakfast twice a week, and we are doing a Bible Study titled the Upside–Down Kingdom by the Bible Project. We are learning about things we have not thought about before. Reading the Bible is making us think. We also plan out events and brainstorm for HHM at these morning meetings. 

What are our upcoming expectations for this semester? “I’m excited to see all the new accomplishments and ideas that may be brought this semester. I’m ready to walk more within my faith and leadership role I have been given. I believe God will help us engage and prosper even more than last semester!” 

I asked Kiara what she expected, and she said, “It’s my last semester at HHM, and I’ve seen how well we’ve done and grown since the first year we started. I want to do my best in anything that we do.” Our main motivation for each semester is to simply “Be a Good Neighbor.”

Thanks for reading!  Dessy G