Building Community & Serving an Unmet need!
/It’s been 15 months since we’ve had to completely redesign the way we do things. It would be a lie to say that this has been easy. Every step of the way there has been obstacles and challenges. But let me be clear- children, their parents, and our educators have risen to the occasion.
When schools shut down and went virtual in March 2020, my heart sank with the stark realization that this might be the end of a program that I, along with my staff, teachers, students, and many other stakeholders have put our hearts and souls into. The transition to virtual learning was chaotic. The workload and pressure were unyielding for teachers and administrators, leaving me to believe that adding the pressure of keeping after-school programs alive for kids may be the last thing on their priority list. It was hard to put together a coherent plan for how we were going to mobilize college students to provide mentoring and support to middle school students in a meaningful way when our in-person and relationship-building components were threatened. My team and I felt the crippling effects of being sidelined and watching our school partners struggle with their heavy workloads. We were trying to figure out how to use C4C in the best way to provide additional support to students because we were all worried about their social and emotional status. We found ourselves asking questions and in conversations that we had not engaged in before. We were engaged in questions that related to equity and capacity for families to provide life's basic necessities in a 21st-century world. It wasn’t about whether our students were excelling academically. We were asking questions about whether they had enough food to eat? Were they being supervised at home? Is there any abuse going on that we don’t know about because we aren’t seeing them in person? Are their families healthy and safe during this time? The questions and answers were devastating.
This was the hardest part. Coaching4Change is all about relationships. It’s about spending time together and working with one another. By January 2021, we had regrouped. We identified trailblazing leaders and teachers, previous partners at C4C, who did not want to see their previous efforts to provide meaningful after-school experiences for kids be derailed by the COVID circumstance. We were fortunate to start back virtually to be in front of kids again and ask what do you need? I was blown away by their responses. They wanted to know, “How can we help? We need to help! People are struggling and we can do something about it.”
Because Fall River Public Schools was not allowing any outside organizations to enter their school buildings, we used a virtual platform to make connections. The virtual platform was something all students, college and middle school, were much more comfortable with so we took a leap of faith to restart our program virtually in January 2021. Little did we know that the virtual world would allow college students to mentor middle school students while successfully leading a philanthropic community-based project aimed to improve the lives of a marginalized group in their immediate community. We leveraged the virtual platform to allow for the recruitment of college students from a wide range of schools; we recruited from Dartmouth College, Tufts University, North Carolina A&T, Stonehill College, and Northeastern University.
Henry Lord Community School teachers, students, and C4C mentors came together regularly to participate fully in the C4C mentoring program. They were all resilient in their commitment to each other and the mission of C4C. We saw students grow together, plan for and execute with fidelity their long-term projects, while fostering relationships through the virtual world. Our students chose projects that created awareness, spread kindness and tolerance, while leaving their mark for other students at Henry Lord Community School to see that they were in action during the pandemic. C4C’s impact at HLCS and the Fall River community was incredibly special. We were able to transition the program to in-person learning in April 2021 and really see the projects come alive to have their intended impact.
Students participated in 3 projects:
designed a marketing campaign for a diaper drive and baby supplies to initially support the Stepping Stone Women’s Center. They received so many donations they were able to extend their donations to St. Vincents and Citizens for Citizens in the Fall River community. The students received more than 2,600 diapers/wipes, 5 cribs, 5 strollers, and many other baby supplies;
developed a beautification project of Henry Lord school's bathrooms that included the painting of inspirational quotes of kindness and tolerance on the bathroom doors across all student bathrooms;
created a podcast vlog and blog where students interviewed influential members of the Greater Fall River community and members of the Henry Lord Community School to create news stories focusing on the many messages of progress and positivity that were happening during the year.
Despite all of the headaches and challenges that 2020 gave us, the C4C partnership saw firsthand that relationships matter most during our most difficult times. Our students and staff grew stronger, wiser, and ever-determined to make a difference, together, in the lives of others. We couldn’t be more proud.