Hero Story

As the Pastor of Rivers Of Life Church, it’s an honor to nominate this team. When covid hit, this team immediately recognized the struggles of families getting groceries out of fear, and finding childcare, especially as an essential worker. So, we opened up our church and allowed pick ups, drop offs and delivery for food. Then we opened up our doors for childcare, for essential workers. But, not just any childcare. We opened up a tutoring/ mentoring program. We partnered with teachers and parents to help with schooling during the day. We expanded our WiFi, turned our all purpose room into classrooms, grabbed volunteers and worked with students aged 5-12. We never knew that we would end up keeping our doors open for two years. We recently just ended the program. Teachers and parents were very thankful. We had students who when they first started could not read and ended up reading books to their parents at bedtime. We ha either who struggled in math and are doing so well. Every student in our program, didn’t just stay a float but ended up getting ahead in the classroom. For the first year is was a free program. The second year, we did it by donations. Whatever a family could give. We Made sure to create rooms for social distancing, Stayed in contact with the governors office and had cleaned come in after each school day. Providing childcare and help with school was the best gift we thought we could give, but we quickly realized, that the gift of joy and thankfulness given back to us, was a gift in itself. Every person on the list above, came in every day. Especially our lead teacher; Audrey Smith. No one got paid. We provided two meals and two snacks a day. We were open from 7-6pm Monday – Friday for two years. This was set up for essential workers who had to go to work, or couldn’t work from home and attend online teaching with their children. Overall, it was a great experience!
-Pastor Brigitte Brown