By Kylee Toland

Church’s After-School program provides local children a place for academics, faith and fun.

A yellow school bus pulls up into a parking lot. As the doors open, tiny feet jump out and run toward the playground. The sounds of laughter and squeals radiate as young children run playfully at the heels of an older volunteer. After about 30 minutes of playtime outside, a woman calls the children over to line up to go inside a large church; the children look up at her with wide smiles as she extends the same expression. 

This is an average afternoon at Covenant Presbyterian Church, where an after-school program runs from 3 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Located in Harrisonburg, the program serves preschool to fifth-grade children, many of whom live in a mobile home community just beyond the church. 

Sandy Hernandez, the director of Covenant Presbyterian’s After School Program (ASP) and wife of the Spanish-speaking congregation’s pastor, started the program in 2002 after she and her husband moved into the area. Hernandez said her husband wanted to start a Spanish ministry at the church due to the growth of the Hispanic population in Harrisonburg. 

After talking with people who were already involved with the Hispanic community to try to figure out the community’s needs, Hernandez said she kept hearing how the children in the community would go home to households where parents weren’t home from work yet. The community was located in a “dangerous” neighborhood at the time, and a need for children to receive help with their schoolwork due to many of their parents not speaking English also motivated her to start the program. 

“The kids really needed help and a safe place to be after school,” Hernandez said. “That’s when the church decided to open this after-school program.”

An ‘84 JMU alumna, Hernandez said there wasn’t a sizable Hispanic population living in Harrisonburg until the rise of poultry farms in the area, which gave jobs to most of the Hispanic population. The program started with Hernandez’s brother Joe Slater playing soccer with the children once a week. It has now evolved to three-day working periods that involve helping the children with their schoolwork and learning about the Bible. 

“The goal really is both to speak to them about the Lord,” Hernandez said, “and hopefully help them to be more successful in academics.” 

The community behind the church holds 80 homes. Hernandez said only three families living there are non-Hispanic. Out of those 80 homes, there are about 60 children living in them, and Hernandez said about more than half of them attend the program. The children are dropped off at the church from Mountain View Elementary, the school they all attend, which Hernandez said the church has “a great relationship” with. Volunteers include JMU students and high school students who were former members of the program themselves. Joe Slater, who is a campus pastor at JMU through Reformed University Fellowship, is in charge of recruiting JMU students as volunteers for the program. 

“[JMU Ministry] had to take a two-year hiatus because we were figuring out how to do ministry at JMU [during COVID],” Slater said. “Once that was over, we felt like it would be a great service opportunity for students, so we started helping out again.”

Impact on the Community

Since being a part of the program from the beginning, Slater said it’s more structured, organized and has a higher emphasis on academics. The children are given a 20-minute reading period, as well as one-on-one help with a teacher from Mountain View Elementary. Slater also said there’s been a change in behavior among the children since the program started, with most of the kids showing good behavior compared to 20 years ago when curse words and fights would break out on a regular basis.

“Back when we started [the program], we were just trying to get to know folks in the community,” Slater said. “I mean, it’s just totally transformed.”

Twenty years ago, Hernandez said the mobile home park was deemed by the Harrisonburg-Rockingham police departments as “one of the dangerous communities in the area,” with gang markings such as graffiti and tennis shoes hanging over electric wires being a common sight. Since the program has taken place, Hernandez said there haven’t been any gang markings in over 14 years, creating a different atmosphere for the children living in the trailer park. 

“I believe that as God’s word has taken hold, and as that has transformed the lives of children and families, that’s changed the community,” Hernandez said.  

During the program, Slater can be seen interacting and working with the older children, helping them with school work they may have or teaching Bible lessons with references the kids may understand. He tells a story about his dog being sprayed by a skunk and how it ties in with one being forgiven from sin. Slater said seeing the children start to take their faith and academics seriously has been a memorable part of being in the program for him, as well as seeing former members of the program grow up and help out when they are in high school or college. 

“[Faith and academics] can change the whole trajectory of their lives,” Slater said. “Right now, we’re hearing kids singing about Jesus, and in the other room, they’re studying and getting help with those two things.” 

The Borja family, which includes parents Jesus and Julietta and their two children Jesus Jr. and Jose, live in the community and are members of Covenant Presbyterian Church. The family doesn’t speak English, so Hernandez translated as they spoke. Jose is 11 and currently attends the after-school program, while Jesus Jr. is 23 and an “alum” of the program as well as a volunteer. The family has attended the church since Jesus Jr. was 6-7 years old, and Julietta said both the church and program have helped them grow in their faith as parents and a part of a bigger community. 

“The program has been a blessing for us,” Julietta said. “It’s helped us that our children would be involved in the most important thing in the world, which is God.”

Jesus Jr. said he was hesitant to attend the program when he was younger but started coming when his friends started to go. At the time, the family was attending a Catholic church, but when Jesus Jr. became involved in the program, the family started going to Covenant. He said the program helped teach him what was good and bad, along with getting good grades in his schoolwork. 

“Now that I help, I see how the program is helping kids stay out of doing bad things in the streets,” Jesus Jr. said. “It helped me make better choices.” 

Jose began attending the program when he was 4 or 5 years old and said getting his schoolwork done, learning about God and playing with friends has been his favorite part of being in the program. 

“It’s truly helped me [make] better life choices,” Jose said.

From the eyes of volunteers 

As for the college-aged volunteers that come to help, Slater said they’ve had their eyes “opened” to the needs of the community beyond their campus, as well as “transforming” their lives and giving them compassion for the immigrant community. 

Joanna Woo, a student volunteer and JMU junior, got involved with the program after attending the church and being part of the campus ministry at JMU since her freshman year. She said she wanted to be a part of the program because she loves kids and has been working with them since the age of 13 at her local recreation center and church from Manassas Park, Virginia. 

“I knew that was a way that I could serve really well and plug in with this community,” Woo said. “I just realized how fulfilling it is to work with kids and how much it brightens your day.”

Woo is at the church as soon as the children get off the school bus and can be seen running around, playing and laughing with the kids and with the other volunteers around her age doing the same. Once playtime is over, the children are split into groups based on their school grade. Woo helps out with the older children and answers any questions they may have during their academics and Bible lesson periods. 

“I learn so much from them, being able to teach them but also learn from them,” Woo said. “It’s just something I can’t really express how enriching this process is.” 

This is Woo’s first “normal” year working for the program because she started her sophomore year when the pandemic was at large. Slater said the program didn’t take place from March 2020 through that summer when the pandemic was dominant in the U.S.. In the fall of 2020, the program opened back up to a decrease in enrollment, but Slater said there was an increase in volunteers. Masks were required and regulations were put in place to make sure both the children and workers were safe.

“At the end of the [2020] summer, we were talking about, what does it look like to have [the program] because, more than ever, these kids need it now,” Slater said, “because they’re gonna get left behind.”

Technology during the pandemic proved a challenge for the program. Hernandez said the children didn’t have great access to the internet and some of the parents weren’t “well-versed” on how to use technology. That’s when the program started providing resources for the families, such as a book drive with about 3,400 donated books that later turned into a mobile library for children to share books with one another. When restrictions started to loosen up, the program allowed the children to sit at individual card tables in a big room where they were able to connect to the internet and do their homework. 

The pandemic also impacted a change of study for Woo, who started in the nursing program but switched to health sciences after she said it was affecting her mental health and free time to volunteer for opportunities such as this one. She said connecting with Hernandez and getting to learn from her and her leadership has been “incredible.”
 

“I realize how my own privilege of being in a bubble at JMU made me not know the living conditions that exist just so close to where we are now,” Woo said. “It really was a culture shock.” 

The importance for the volunteers to interact and be hands-on with the children is something that Woo said helps establish an equality among themselves. On Mondays and Tuesdays, volunteers help the children with Bible lessons and memory verses, with Thursday as a review day for what they have learned throughout the week with a game.  Woo said she was hesitant to be physically playful and loving with the children when she first got involved, but she said she’s learned it can influence how she connects with the children and other volunteers. 

“I’ve never really worked with kids that have this kind of warmth to them,” Woo said. “I think exemplifying that [warmth] has been a really rewarding experience and really fun too.”

Future Goals

Toward the end of the day, Hernandez is teaching the younger children in the church’s wide hallway about a Bible story and answering questions they may have for her about it. The children face Hernandez while she speaks to them, and the sun shines in behind them through the windows. Although it’s bright, the children’s wide smiles can be seen as Hernandez talks to them. 

Along with providing a place where children can connect with one another and learn about their academics and faith, Hernandez said she wants the children to have choices in life when they graduate high school, whether it’s going to college or getting a job. She said knowing the program takes pressure off parents who may be unable to help their children with their homework is rewarding. Many of the families that attend the Spanish-speaking congregation at the church, Hernandez said, have started their faith in God through the program. 

“For most of them, they see us as people that are helping their kids in many ways and also providing that safe place,” Hernandez said with a warm smile. “We’ve been able to offer a few things for the parents as well.” 

To keep the program running, Hernandez said she and the other volunteers try to incorporate new things they’ve learned during the pandemic, such as the older children working at individual tables rather than being put into a larger classroom. However, Hernandez said the continuity of building trust throughout the community by showing families that the program is there for the children, no matter their age, is something she’s proud of from the past 20 years. 

As 4:45 p.m. rolls around, and it’s time for the children to head home, Sandy and the rest of the volunteers walk with the kids to the trailer park where they live. Some of the kids run off at a safe distance so the volunteers can see them get to their homes, while some children stay behind and talk with the volunteers about what they did during the day. Some have their hands warmly gripped in the hands of the volunteers, looking up at them with a glimmer in their eye and a smile on their face. 

“For me, it’s been a privilege to feel loved and valued by the kids,” Hernandez said. “And I guess it makes me feel like I have a purpose. Right?”