For Middle School Students incoming 6th grade through outgoing 8th)
$100 for the week, Mon-Fri, includes MetroLink passes, t-shirt, snacks, and a fun Friday at a pool!
EVERY DAY A DIFFERENT CITY: Each day (10 AM – 4 PM) we’ll go to a different site to work and serve and learn about God’s justice in the city.
Dress for heat. Close toed shoes, hats, sunscreen, water bottles, sack lunches. And invite a friend (or two)!
Students will need to fill out a medical form provided by their church. To register online click here.
Daily Agenda:
10:00 Meet at site - Intro/Learn about the site agency
11:00 Lunch
12:00 Work
3:00 Pray/Snacks/Depart for home
MONDAY
Rancho Damacitas Children & Family Services (founded in 1983 as Thessalonika Family Services) was started as a foster home for young girls removed from their homes due to severe abuse and neglect. As the needs of the children grew, so did the organization. After 30 years of working with foster youth, Rancho Damacitas opened “Project Independence” in 2012, a program focused on filling in the gap of support for former foster youth as they transitioned from the dependency system into independent adulthood after 18. In 2017, Rancho Damacitas transitioned the residential campus from serving foster youth to serving struggling single mothers with young children through Empowerment Village.
TUESDAY
HomeBoy Industries was started by a Catholic priest, Father Greg Boyle, to help gang members in SoCal to find a way out of gang life. Taking up an entire city block in downtown LA, HB offers jobs through a restaurant, bakery, and retail store. Job training, resume writing, laser tattoo removal, anger managements classes, parenting classes, budgeting and life skills. Father Boyle has written several books, Tattoos on my Heart is the most well-known. We take the MetroLink from S. Pasadena, take a tour of the facility, hear testimonies of former gang members who work at HB.
WEDNESDAY
Crossroads, Inc. is a private home in Claremont with a program where women who have just been released from prison learn self-sufficiency through life skills, job interviewing, resume building, budgeting and overall socialization. Started by a Sister Terry Dodge, Executive Director of Crossroads in 1974, Crossroads is a licensed drug and alcohol treatment center. It also supports sister programs of a community garden and Uncommon Good as well as a transitional house in Pomona. Students will interact with the women and hear their stories.
THURSDAY
Riverside Habitat’s A Brush with Kindness program helps low income, sometime disabled, senior citizens who live in mobile home parks to maintain their trailers so they will not be evicted. We paint the mobile homes and do yard work to keep them in compliance with the park’s regulations. Students will interact with the residents.