Loren Penman and Vinnie Tjhung speak to a group of volunteers and students during the Day of Service at the Presbyterian Church on East Main Street in Batavia on Monday afternoon.
A team of eight local women have been getting together the past few years and volunteering their time to do doing things like writing postcards, enlisting people to put out political signs in their yards and supporting GoArt on the Day of Service.
This year, the group of women decided the direction of their team would be to support non-profits and groups that are already in Batavia and Genesee County.
"We have been getting together for a number of years, says Lauren Penman.
We're trying to figure out how we can support all the great stuff that happens in Batavia. In the past, we have sort of kicked in as individuals. You know, one year we all committed to join GoArt. We've done remarkable things along the way, but this is our first wide scale event, and we thought we'd see how it went if we tried to organize people, and as you can see, we got a great response on a cold January day. We're calling it our MLK Day of Service."
The group of women, Loren Penman, Bev Hoy, Vinnie Tjhung, Joanne DiSalvo, Kathy Antonelli, Shirley Puleo, Tracy Klinkroth and Carol Kistner also decided to collaborate with a group of students and their advisors from My Brother’s Keeper at the Batavia Middle School.
The students and their advisors joined the women and their volunteers at the First Presbyterian Church at East Main and Liberty Streets for a brief lunch where they were able to chat with each other and get to know one another. The students then read about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. out loud.
Rev. Dr. Roula Alkhouri helped facilitate the get together.
The most important thing is when we serve, we receive even more, I hope this day with be rewarding for you, said Rev. Dr. Roula Alkhouri. Who shared this quote from Dr. King. “Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
“So, I know today that’s the spirit that we’re generated by love wherever we end up going and coming together I know we are going to be honoring this heritage and this memory of a great man, but also each one of you is great.”
After lunch the eight women and several other volunteers split up into groups to assist with projects at the First Presbyterian Church, Crossroads House, GoART, the YWCA and Restore/Habitat for Humanity, while the My Brother’s Keeper Middle School students walked to 400 Towers to hold a Circle session with residents there.
Later in the day at 400 Towers with residents in an E Circle which is done quite often at the Batavia Middle School in the classroom and is used for restorative justice and community building. Everyone gets the opportunity to introduce themselves and tell everyone what they do for a living and what animal they identify with.
"It's a really positive group that supports connections, family connections, community connections," says Kristen Gomez, Extended Day Director at Batavia City Schools.
"We start meetings with community building circles. We do restorative practices for things that might happen to them during the day, things in their past. So, it's really to build up confident, self-esteem and the social emotional learning that we need these kids to have."
My Brother's Keeper started last year at Batavia Middle School with about 10 to 12 kids and this year there are 38 students involved 5th-8th grade.
The program uses a curriculum called young men of purpose by Roy Dobbs, and it guides the mentoring the program. The program teaches character, promotes citizenship, supports academics, emphasizing to students the importance of setting goals, scholastic achievement, and graduating from high school, and post-secondary pathways.
Roy Dobbs came out to speak to the students at the Batavia Middle School last year.
https://youngmenofpurpose.com/about-ymp/
Mrs. Gomez says students must maintain a good standing and hold up to expectations of the school during the day and outside of the day.
“So, when we hear of one of our kiddos possibly doing something they shouldn’t be, we’re called immediately, and we take care of it. If they don’t follow the expectations, we have to ask them to leave the group, but that’s very rare,” says Gomez.
Co-Facilitators of the My Brother’s Keeper Program, Daniel Rhodes and Tom Frankenberg, who are 7th grade teachers at the Batavia Middle School, say that peer mentoring in the group is key.
“Our hope is that when they go to the high school, they also have a My Brother’s Keeper at the high school, and some of these boys will come back to us to help with the younger guys, and we’ll keep going and keep going. The High Schools program just started again this year,” says Frankenburg.
“We want to be as back seat as possible, like, we’re just facilitating that connection with the boys,” says Rhodes.
Despite being a day off from school and the cold, wintery weather, 12 students showed up for today’s community collaboration.
“It’s really neat to see how they step up for community building days stuff like this. Like, it was bad weather out, it’s a day off of school. Yeah, we got kids here, to see these kids stepping up and being like, Yeah, I’ll do that for you guys. That’s exactly what we want. We want to build leaders, but we want them to be a safe space for each other too,” says Frankenberg.
Xavier Williams went through the program last year and is in 8th grade this year.
“A lot of people are coming together, like, people that need help. It brings you out and it gives you a chance to explore your options and have fun.”
Left to right-Louis Pfenninger, Xavier Williams, Jasper Thomas read information about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King
