Giving Thanks for So Much! A Gratitude Brunch

At St. Stephen’s Youth Programs, we have so much for which to be thankful: the joy we get from our young people; the deep connections with their families; the passion and energy of our staff and volunteers; and the hard work of our partner organizations--religious and community groups--which helps to make every dollar and every hour do more for our young people.

On Sunday November 20, we celebrated all of those things--plus our brand new kitchen!--at a Gratitude Brunch with our friends and supporters from Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester. Our collaboration with Parish of the Epiphany has been a long and fruitful one, including so many wonderful B-SAFE meals, our annual Turkey Wahoo event (taking place on Tuesday November 22 this year), and a warm welcome at field trips when our youth visited Epiphany over the years.

Our friends from Parish of the Epiphany provided the seed money for the kitchen project so it was especially fitting and important that they were here as we dedicated the kitchen to long-time SSYP participant and staff member Jorge Fuentes, a lover of good food and a student of the culinary arts, who grew up to be an exemplary leader in our program before he was tragically killed by gun violence four years ago.

We prepared a celebratory brunch in the new kitchen and then sat down to eat together. Along with Jorge’s family, the people of St. Stephen’s and the people of Parish of the Epiphany shared a meal. Even more importantly, we shared a sense of partnership, of purpose to create more justice, and of thankfulness.

Wishing all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Our new kitchen is dedicated to Jorge Fuentes.

Rev. Liz Steinhaser, MirnaLuz Ramos, mother of Jorge Fuentes, and Rev. Tim Crellin as we dedicate the kitchen.

By Jen Cusack, Director of Leadership Giving

Rev. Tim Crellin, Rev. Thomas Brown of Parish of the Epiphany, and Jenny Gray and Beulah Roach, longtime parishioners of St. Stephen's.

Toasting our partnership with Parish of the Epiphany, Winchester

Connecting over a meal.

A view of our brand new kitchen. Come on in for a visit soon!

13th Annual Turkey Wahoos!

THANKS to our partners for making the day so special!

On Tuesday November 22, partners helped the young people and families of St. Stephen's Youth Programs get into the holiday season with our Thirteenth Annual Turkey Wahoos. What is a Wahoo, you might ask? It is an event that makes you want to shout "wahoo!!!" And these gatherings did not disappoint!

Turkey Wahoos make EVERYONE smile! 

At B-READY at St. Augustine and St. Martin, partners from Crosstown Church and the Church of St. Augustine & St. Martin in Roxbury prepared a full Thanksgiving meal for the young people and their families. Before sitting down to the meal, Kiana Lane, serving as a VISTA through Lasell College, helped lead crafts and activites with youth. Nearly 70 people had a fun and delicious time!

At B-READY at St. Stephen's, friends from Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester were thrilled to prepare the Turkey Wahoo meal in our new kitchen (thanks again, Epiphany, for the seed grant that helped us with the renovation!).  Youth ran outside to build up an appetite, made Thanksgiving decorations to take home, and played games before sitting down to a full Thanksgiving meal with their family members. Volunteers from Epiphany served close to 150 LEARN and YLC youth, teens, and family members. 

At the end of the day, EVERYONE had smiles on their faces and an attitude of gratitude in their hearts. 

By Liz Steinhauser, Senior Director of Youth Programs

Families get together for food and love. 

YLC dines in the downstairs Art Room at St. Stephen's

Volunteers from Church of St. Augustine & St. Martin get ready to serve!

Kiana helps the youth of B-READY at St A&M with crafts!

Friends and fixings at St. Stephen's

...and We are Back!

The empty library awaits a class

After weeks of anticipation, the Blackstone Library is open for classes!  Since the school year began, I have been asked on a daily basis when the library will open, by students and teachers alike.  Before officially opening for classes, the library held a preview week in which librarians visited classrooms to introduce the class’s time in the library and read stories.  Students were already requesting books to read aloud throughout the school year and inquiring about books available for checkout in the library’s collection.  

Clifford, the library's mascot

This year marks the seventh year of the library’s existence under the leadership of St. Stephen’s Youth Programs.  Previously, the Blackstone did not have a library!  During our after-school programming, we saw first hand the side effects of this lack of access to books in the reading ability of our Blackstone students. The library is staffed by volunteers and now welcomes twenty classes on a regular basis.  

A mural of Justice Sotomayor hangs in the Blackstone School

This month, we are spotlighting National Hispanic Heritage Month by reading a variety of picture books, short fictional stories, biographies, and bilingual books that celebrate Hispanic culture and Hispanic heros.  In a fifth grade class, we discussed where in the library we would look to find books about well-known Hispanic people.  A student quickly raised her hand and gave the correct answer: the biography section, which is in the nonfiction section, and is marked with blue dots on the book spine.  We then named Hispanic leaders that we might look up.  A student raised her hand named Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an important leader with Hispanic heritage.  Another great answer!  Down the hall from the library is a mural of Justice Sotomayor, which was painted by volunteers last Martin Luther King Day.  A framed picture of the mural also hangs in the office of Justice Sotomayor!  

To learn more about the Blackstone Library, become a volunteer, or to learn more about the partnership between St. Stephen’s and the Blackstone, contact Maureen at maureen@ststephensbos.org.   

By Maureen Burns, Lead Organizer of School and Community Partnerships

In This Together

During B-SAFE staff training, I led a training rotation that I called “In This Together” about working with partners, about building relationships across difference, about understanding that we are all in this together- staff, kids, families, partners and volunteers. That together we all want the same thing, the best program and experience we can offer to young people. These goals of building relationships can sometimes seem more like challenges during a summer when current events cause division and political campaigns focus more on what separates us. But that is our work, to power on, to not give up or give in.

Each summer I have the honor of being witness to this work. About 50 partner (mostly suburban) churches and their volunteers spend countless hours and resources to make sure that each of our young people and staff eat a nourishing meal and enjoy fun field trips outside of the city. Everyone involved believes that this is important work,  that it is about more than serving lunch, that it is about the care and the joy that is given and received. And, where there is joy and care, there is ample opportunity for relationship.

Every day I witness care- care in making sure a child with a food allergy has the food he/she needs, care in planning all of the last details of a field trip, care in choosing the best activities, care in holding hands while learning together on a farm, or in making a friendship bracelet together.

And, I witness joy- joy in knowing a child is fed and ready to learn or explore or discover, joy in welcoming a group of young people to a field trip and making them feel special, joy in a special interaction, joy in sharing a book, joy in petting a goat together, joy in getting to know someone they didn’t know before, joy in building relationships with children, teens, staff or members of the host congregation.

Many times over the past 5 weeks, I have wondered to myself what our city, our country or our world might look like if we joyfully cared for each other and did the work of building relationships, all in this together.

By Betsy Walsh, Partner Organizer

Betsy earned a degree in Special Education from Vanderbilt and subsequently worked with preschoolers with special needs in the South Bronx. She moved to Boston where she studied counseling psychology and raised a family. Betsy chaired the Outreach Committee at Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester for twelve years, and led their partnership with St. Stephen's. She is also a member of SSYP's Advisory Board and the board of El Hogar Ministries.

Celebrating Read Across America Day at the Blackstone!

By Maureen Burns, SSYP’s South End School and Community Organizer

On Friday March 4th, forty volunteers gathered in the Library at the Blackstone Innovation School in celebration of the Sixth Annual Read Across America Day sponsored by St. Stephen’s Youth Programs.  The library was decorated with a Dr. Seuss theme for the occasion; even Clifford The Dog sported a Cat in the Hat chapeau!  The event began with welcoming addresses from members of the Blackstone Executive Leadership Team and a City Year Corp Member, followed by a reflection from Bishop Alan Gates of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and Tricia Harvey, SSYP’s Library Coordinator.

After the celebration in the library, volunteers launched into an afternoon of read alouds.  Students were very excited to host volunteer readers in their classrooms.  A volunteer in the kindergarten class commented: “We loved the book we read in our small group. I was impressed! The Eiffel Tower was in the background on one page and before I could tell them what it was, they told me it was the Eiffel Tower and they knew all about it!”

The volunteers included Blackstone School parents, South End community members, members of faith- based organizations, and City Year sponsors. All of the volunteers shared their love of literacy with the young scholars of the Blackstone!

Volunteers at RAAD listen to welcoming addresses.

St. Stephen's Youth Programs has been coordinating the Blackstone Library for 6 years.

JCRC's ReachOut! Program Reaches Out to Middle Schoolers

By Maggie Needham, Academic Coordinator and Lead Counselor

Twice a week, when our B-READY elementary schoolers get picked up at 6:00pm, St. Stephen’s offers Academic Nights, a space for teens and middle schoolers to spend time on their homework with staff members and volunteer tutors.

Many of our all-star volunteers during Academic Nights come from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). JCRC’s ReachOut! program connects young Jewish professionals who want to get involved in social justice issues to organizations like St. Stephen’s Youth Programs, and they have made a huge impact on our Academic Nights.

Since January, we’ve been implementing a new system for our JCRC volunteers to work with our middle schoolers during Academic Nights. Rather than having the volunteers be available to any students who want help, we have paired up each of our JCRC volunteers with a specific group of three or four middle schoolers who regularly attend Academic Nights.

This system allows students and volunteers to build ongoing relationships from one week to the next and creates continuity of support. The middle schoolers can now expect the same volunteer to be there, each week, to check up on them and their homework. This consistency helps to hold both our students and our volunteers accountable to each other. It also gives the students a key, expected person they can turn to every week for help.

We are grateful for our partnership with JCRC and can already see how our students and volunteers are growing during Academic Nights!

Volunteers from JCRC's ReachOut! program do homework with middle school students

JCRC volunteers are matched with students for the whole semester, creating continuity in relationships

Sharing the Story of Our School Partnership

St. Stephen’s Youth Programs was honored to share the story of our partnership with the Blackstone Innovation School at the New England Providence All Our Children Conference.  All Our Children is a national network of school- church partnerships, of which St. Stephen’s is a founding member.

Our story began in 2010, when Blackstone’s test scores were in the lowest 5% of the state’s and the school started the Turnaround process.  At our after-school program, we saw that our Blackstone students were struggling in reading.  When we learned the Blackstone lacked a functional library, we could not overlook the opportunity for partnership.  Today, the Blackstone Library, which is entirely staffed by volunteers, welcomes 19 classes on a weekly basis.  Other school partners, such as City Year and Big Sisters, Big Brothers use the space as well.

In addition to sharing our story, our conference session focused on building relationships with the leaders in the room.  Fifteen church and school leaders come from New Bedford, Salem, Lynn, and the Cape as well as New Hampshire and Connecticut to learn from our partnership and share their own successes and struggles.  Across geographic areas, participants stated that their motivation for entering into a partnership with a public school was to provide the resources the school can’t prioritize.  With increasing emphasis on standardized test scores, schools do not have the in-house resources to provide programming in reading, physical activity, and the arts. This is where community partners, both faith- based and secular, can step in.

By Maureen Burns, School and Community Organizer

Maureen Burns presents the story of St. Stephen's Youth Programs Partnership with the Blackstone Innovation School

Fostering A Lifelong Love of Literacy!

Most library classes at the Blackstone Library begin the same way-- twenty or more students file in, place their books in the “return” bucket, and take a seat on the rug.  If the class is kindergarden, there is usually a little bit of squirming on the rug.  If the class is third grade or older, at least one student might inquire about the status of the library’s most popular collection,The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  Once the class is comfortably seated on the rug, one of the librarians will read to them.  For the older classes, read alouds might include a chapter of the Roald Dahl book the class is reading together.  For younger classes, the story might be a Mo Willems picture book that even has the teacher laughing.  Following the read-aloud, the students have time to look through the collection and select one to check out for the week.

The library currently sees nineteen classrooms on a weekly basis, from the three-year-olds in K-0 to the fifth grade, the oldest grade at the Blackstone.  The librarians are all volunteers; they are each committed to overseeing some of the thirty-minute library classes that happen every day of the week.  Yet--and not surprisingly--the most popular member of the library team is a knit red dog mascot named Clifford.  Students are very interested in his book selections, even though he usually has has his nose in a book about himself or other dogs.  The library is also a space shared by other programs at the Blackstone School, including Big Sisters and Starfish, City Year’s after school program.    

This year marks the sixth year of Blackstone Library, the product of the thriving partnership between St. Stephen’s Youth Programs and the Blackstone Innovation School.  Previously, the school did not have an operational library and the space the library currently occupies was a dusty, musty space used for storage.  Once the Blackstone made the need for a library known, St. Stephen’s, along with Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, came together to clean the space, collect and organize books.  Leaders worked with the school’s staff to integrate the library into the Blackstone.  Volunteers from Wellesley and Simmons College were also instrumental in the foundation of the library.  The library officially opened on March 2nd, 2010.  The ribbon cutting ceremony was part of the Blackstone’s Read Across America Day celebration, a holiday that coincides with Dr. Seuss’s birthday!

At the launch of this school year, the library welcomed a new Library Coordinator, a new Blackstone Partnership Coordinator, and a handful of new volunteers!  These volunteers include a group from the Emmanuel Gospel Center, located across the street from the Blackstone.  One EGC volunteer shared how happy she was to be involved with a neighboring school on a regular basis and how much the staff, including their director, enjoyed interacting with their class.  Because of their support, an additional kindergarten class is able to regularly come to the library!  In addition to welcoming more kindergarten classes, the library is hosting Multiple Disabilities classes for the first time this year.  The library is also working to add more Spanish language books to its 10,500 volume collection.

Volunteers help students check out books in the Blackstone Library

Clifford reads about Clifford!

Students learn to love reading together

To volunteer as a classroom reader during this year’s Read Across America Day Celebration at the Blackstone on Friday, March 4th from 1-3PM, or to learn more about ways to get involved with the Blackstone Library, contact Maureen Burns at maureen@ststephensbos.org.

Service to Justice: St. Stephen's Sixth annual MLK Day of Action at the Blackstone School

By Sarah O'Connor

On Monday, January 18th, in celebration of the Martin Luther King Day holiday, over 200 people from thirty organizations gathered at the Blackstone Innovation School for the Sixth Annual MLK Day of Action.  This day was organized collaboratively by St. Stephen's Youth Programs, the Blackstone Innovation School, City Year, the Massachusetts Service Alliance, and the B-PEACE for Jorge Campaign. Volunteers from the South End community, numerous AmeriCorps groups, and churches and other faith institutions from across greater Boston spent the day brightening hallways with colorful paint, organizing the school library (which is run by St. Stephen's and staffed by partner church volunteers), building classroom storage space, and creating educational materials for lessons. A team also reclaimed the greenhouse from cacti that have been growing for more than four decades, creating areas for desert and temperate flora and preparing for spring science projects. 

State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz was there with her staff team. They worked with teens from St. Stephen's Youth Programs and Hidri Boston, an Eritrean youth group, to paint four murals of heroes with Puerto Rican heritage, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and independence movement leader Dr. Ramon Betances.  These murals will be displayed in the Blackstone School entrance area to inspire students toward similar greatness. Senator Chang-Diaz said that being part of this Day of Action was an opportunity to live out King-like values by "praying with our feet." 

During a community conversation to draw meaning from the day, participants reflected on the day's theme of moving from service to justice.  Adults and teens spoke about applying lessons from their work and discussed this quote by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on."  One teen shared her thoughts on why this Day of Action mattered: "[W]hen we all work together to make my school better, I see that my school matters to other people. I see that I matter to other people."

For more information about how you can build relationships with young people at the Blackstone Innovation School and in the South End, please contact Maureen Burns, St. Stephen's Youth Programs' School and Community Organizer at maureen@ststephensbos.org. 

A Volunteer Creates a Hundreds Chart to Support Students at the Blackstone School

Volunteers Paint a Welcome Banner at the 6th Annual MLK Day of Action

Books And Bulbs At The Blackstone

Following the AmeriCorps Swearing In Ceremony, 40 Mass Promise Fellows visited the Blackstone School for an afternoon of service. This was the first service event B-PEACE has sponsored this school year!  School partnerships and service are the primary way B-PEACE works toward its goal of academic excellence in public schools.

The event began with an address to the volunteers at the school’s library from Lisa Lineweaver, representing the school’s Executive Leadership Team. Lisa spoke about the school’s turnaround story and the students the Blackstone serves.  The school is one of the only BPS schools to serve students with multiple disabilities, and therefore draws students from all around Boston.  Lisa also spoke about the school’s motto, Ubuntu, meaning, “we are because of each other”, and the school’s core values: respect, unity, and excellence.  The presence of the volunteers that afternoon, said Lisa, was a way of showing, and not just telling, the students that the school community strives to live its motto.

Following Lisa’s introduction to the school, Tim Crellin, the founder and Executive Director of St. Stephen’s Youth Programs, spoke about the South End community that surrounds the Blackstone and the flourishing relationship between the Blackstone and St. Stephen’s.  In addition to facilitating service days like this one, St. Stephen’s runs the Blackstone Library, coordinates Support-A-Classroom, and oversees classroom aids from Wellesley College.

After the orientation in the library, volunteers joined students in their classrooms for an afternoon of reading!  A teacher hosting volunteers said he was delighted by his students’ enthusiasm to read with the volunteers. Several teachers expressed interest in hosting similar events to empower students and foster a love for reading. 

After school was dismissed, the Mass Promise volunteers and St. Stephen’s after-school students and staff spent the sunny afternoon at the Blackstone Park and Ramsay Park weeding the garden, planting daffodil bulbs, and playing kickball.

Northeastern Students Volunteer at B-READY at St. Martin and St. Augustine

Eight students from Northeastern have been volunteering with B-READY in Lower Roxbury. They have helped with everything from math homework, to bulb planting, to comforting to children who are having a difficult day.  Photographed is Northeastern Volunteer Jose reading a book with Kindergarten student Mustafa.