Thank you to Lakeland Christina Rotary for hosting Barnyard BBQ Bash, a western-themed silent auction with dinner, live band, plus barnyard games to benefit Parker Street Ministries and Elder Point Ministries–TWO great local charities. All the fun took place Saturday, February 25. Check out this photo of staff, spouses, and neighbors who were just grateful to rub shoulders with our three on-staff mechanical bull riding champions: Hannah, Will, and Tom.
Bells will be ringing the glad, glad news! Oh what a Christmas season this has been.
We are pleased to announce the naming of the community center bell tower through a gift from the George W. Jenkins Fund within the Community Foundation of Greater Lakeland. Over the next few months we will install a digital bell system and present to the neighborhood the Anne M. Jenkins Bell Tower.
The pealing of bells is a call to community that directly aligns with our mission – something that will publicly celebrate ongoing revitalization and reconciliation in the lives of children and adults in the Parker Street community. The ringing of bells will signify
There will be a community celebration when we first ring the bells, so watch for the details later in 2012. Meanwhile, share our excitement that this beautiful architectural feature will have a bell system and will serve as a community building tool.
Here’s the renovated tower portion of the community center:
This was a phenomenal year for Christmas Store in many ways. We experienced growth in children served, growth in number of volunteers, and growth in number of partnering organizations. This year we took the time to communicate to volunteers, through a training session, our philosophy of Christmas Store as a community development tool. And it all took place in the amazing GWJ Gym with a newly donated sound system playing Christmas carols from a variety of musical, reflecting the diversity of the neighborhood.
Christmas Store at a Glance…
257 children served
1,607 gifts sold
$20,377 estimated retail value of gifts sold
284 volunteers made it happen
Find out more in our enewsletter. Meanwhile here are some pics…
Students enjoyed a full semester of after-school academic enrichment. Nearly eighty kindergarten through eighth grade students were part of the fall program. Besides building relationships with children and their parents in a beautiful environment, we continue to work toward measurable academic goals. Recent reports from standardized tests (STAR Reading and Math) reveal our children are making real progress. We compared the test scores of students who continued with us from the summer to fall semester and found that, in an academic down-time such as summer, our students improved an average of THREE months for reading and FOUR months for math during our TWO month summer program! That is what closing summer learning gaps is all about! Here are some pics from fall semester:
More than 200 attended our Fall Festival in November. Popcorn, snow cones, carnival booths, and three-legged races all made for a fun day to put aside our struggles and enjoy each other. The Candy Walk was a highlight. The SPCA was on hand to educate about pit bulldogs and low cost spaying and neutering. Thank you to the volunteers and organizations that loaned us games and to Snowie for going way past his snow cone limit.
