Churches Work to Serve the Latino Community
February 3, 2010
Each September several churches in Newberg partner together to put on an event called “Serve and Celebrate.” The fair-like event reaches out to members of the local community, providing a festival atmosphere with free food, music and on- and off-site services, such as haircuts, family photos, bike repair, house cleaning, etc. One of the services available this year, spearheaded by members of Newberg Friends Church, was assistance with passport applications for children. A number of bilingual volunteers from George Fox University, Newberg Friends, Iglesia Evangelica Los Amigos and several other local churches passed out applications and provided assistance with filling them out.
Promotional fliers were delivered in advance to the Parenting Now class at the high school, run by Young Lives (an outreach to teen parents). The leader mentioned the passport service and one of the Latina girls in the class cut her off to explain in Spanish to the rest of the students why it is so important that they obtain passports for their children.
The very first gentleman to arrive at the event, waiting in pouring rain for the booth to open, had all his documents in a plastic bag and needed someone to help him fill out the application. He shared that he did not know how to write.
Without any idea of what the response might be, the volunteers were wonderfully surprised when they passed out over 70 applications!
A postal service employee eagerly agreed to come the following weekend to the local elementary school to process applications. Once again, volunteers from NFC and Los Amigos assisted with the completion of applications, and approximately 25 applications were processed in a few short hours! Approximately one-third of the application cost was paid by a NWYM local church outreach grant for those who requested financial assistance.
Great connections were made with a variety of folks and the overall sense was that this is indeed a need. It is a need that can easily be addressed by any local church. For information about how you might assist Latinos with this process, contact Gar Mickelson, associate superintendent of Local Outreach. If you’re interested in the Serve and Celebrate Carnival, Elizabeth Sherwood at Newberg Friends would be a good contact.
I was present at both the Serve and Celebrate event and at the follow up session helping people apply for passports for children born in the United States. It really was simple, and something many other churches may be able to do. It is a small dea that can help some families keep together–and that becomes a really big deal. Jennifer Perez at Newberg Friends did a wonderful thing to see this service through. Ron