wfn.org | 'Project Transformation' links children, college students

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

July 21, 1998 Contact: Thomas S. McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
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NOTE:  A photo is available with this story.

By John Lovelace*

DALLAS (UMNS) - This is a story about big kids helping little kids.

They're doing it through Project Transformation, new to Dallas-area
United Methodists this summer.  The big kids at its core are 24 college
students known as interns, working in four churches and a community
center in predominantly Hispanic sections of the city, six hours a day,
four days a week for nine weeks.  Their "kids" are some 250 first-
through sixth-graders.

Assisting the interns are volunteers and staff of all ages, men and
women, from the four churches and the community center.  Also helping
are volunteers from partner churches throughout the North Texas Annual
Conference, among them some of the denomination's largest and wealthiest
congregations.

By day, the interns work in five-person teams at each of the five sites.
After-hours "home" is a former fraternity house at Southern Methodist
University, where they sleep and eat most meals.  One intern is
Hispanic; two are African American.  The rest are Anglos.

As a requirement for participation, each intern comes recommended by his
or her pastor and is selected on the basis of an application including a
written faith statement and an indication of possible interest in the
ministry as a vocation.

After a week's orientation, interns began leading the children in what
amounts to an eight-week Vacation Bible Study-plus at the four site
churches and the Wesley Rankin Community Center.  Together they have
daily Bible study, lunch and snacks, supervised play, crafts, field
trips, music, drama, one-on-one help with reading as needed and lots of
personal attention, including gentle behavior correction as needed, in a
10-to-one ratio with the interns.  All of this is at no cost to the
children or their families.

Site churches report receiving an infusion of new life from within their
communities, including families with no prior active church connections,
because many Project Transformation children bring their families to
church with them on Sundays.

Interns' home churches - mostly in the Dallas area but one in Oklahoma
and one in Michigan - provide each intern $100 per week living stipend.
They also, as able, send  volunteers to prepare evening meals for the
interns and to become conversational "ears" as the college-agers talk
informally about the transformations in their own lives and in the lives
of those they are serving.

Saturdays are the interns' only free days.  Monday through Thursdays
they are at their assigned sites from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.  On Fridays they
participate in group worship and vocational workshops at major United
Methodist-related agencies throughout Dallas, and on Sundays they
worship in their site-church congregations.

At the end of the nine weeks, each intern also will receive a $1,000
voucher from the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries payable to
the college of his or her choice.

United Methodist-related schools like Texas Wesleyan University in Fort
Worth, Albion College in Albion, Mich., and Wofford College in
Spartanburg, S.C., will have back on their campuses this fall many of
the these two dozen 19- and 20-year-olds with a storehouse of experience
helping Hispanic, African-American and Anglo children learn to play
together, pray together, sing together and, in their own ways, begin
transforming their own homes and communities.

Project Transformation director is Shayn Jucht, a graduate of
Baptist-related Bethel College in Minnesota and, at 23, a genius at
holding the interns and hundreds of volunteers together all summer.  She
had been an Americorps volunteer at the Wesley Rankin Center until her
two-year term expired this summer.  She then became a permanent employee
of the center.

The two co-creators of Project Transformation give Jucht a lot of credit
and agree that what began a year ago as a lunch conversation followed by
a "blueprint" on a napkin is exceeding all their expectations.

Dallas South District Superintendent Leighton Farrell took the first
step by asking Wesley Rankin Director Sarah Wilke what churches in his
district could do to increase Hispanic ministry.

They quickly agreed that the best way was to start with children.
Wesley Rankin's successful summer day camp program for children in its
West Dallas community became the working model.

Farrell and Wilke aren't ready to commit to a Project Transformation II
for 1999.  But he did say that three of the four pastors have asked if
it will be repeated because they have some young people they want to
recommend as interns.

#  #  #

*Lovelace is the editor emeritus of The United Methodist Reporter based
in Dallas.  This article is compiled from three that appeared in the
North Texas Conference Reporter.