Community Bridges Spring 2013 Fellow: Breanna Chachere ’13 Fifth Ward Pleasant Hill Baptist Church The Pleasant Hill Baptist Church Student Ministry is a church organization that focuses on building Christian, college-bound leaders. The organization works with Fifth Ward youth to not only build better students and leaders, but also students who will go off to do great things and then come back and help build up their own community. Their purpose also includes personal and spiritual growth. Through mentoring and tutoring, Pleasant Hill hopes to build character, encourage better grades, and provide the tools and connections students need to be academically and financially successful.
The organization has two different programs. The Pleasant Hill Leadership Institute works with students between the ages of 12 to 18 and the Alpha and Omega Children’s Ministry works with preschool-age students. The main focus of this program focuses on establishing Christian principles in the life of these children at a young age. Both programs meet throughout the week, with sessions that not only allow tutoring, mentoring, and Christian-character building, but also provide dinner and snacks, and time for the kids to participate in fine arts and sports. The focus of the weekly sessions is to provide tutoring for math, reading, writing, and Christian leadership. Each semester, the organization also focuses on a specific topic that will help instill different Christian values. During the fall semester, the students focused on the principles of integrity and
vision, utilizing different lessons and activities that taught the meaning of these values and how the students could incorporate their usage into daily life. For the younger students, the Christian topics were teaching the kids about the Ten Commandments and the importance of Baptism. Teaching the students about the Bible is the first step for creating their Christian purpose in life and building strong Christian leaders for the future.
This organization serves to meet a need for at-risk youth in the Fifth Ward. By helping them build strong character values and a solid academic foundation, this organization is instilling in these youth a desire to go on to college to build a better life for themselves and for their family. The importance of mentoring programs such as Pleasant Hill Youth Ministries has been documented in academic literature. As research compiled by Dr. Keith King and others notes, the effective use of mentoring and academic tutoring programs, can help improve student connectedness to their families, schools and peers, raise self-esteem levels, and improve academic achievement through grades as well. This is so important for the Fifth Ward as residents work to rebuild, improve living conditions and the futures of those who are members of the community.
Working for Pleasant Hill Institute this spring, I hope to really develop my leadership and mentoring skills. My future goals after graduating definitely include being able to either teach or work with underprivileged kids. I am excited to better my ability to reach out and help improve these kids’ lives. As a mentor, I am excited to be able to work one-on-one with these children and help not only instill positive religious values in their lives (something that is very important to me), but also teach them to become better students and people. Moreover, I think that the work
that Pleasant Hill does is so important for the community. Helping these kids instill values that will make them better people will not only improve them as Christians, but also as students, friends, and future leaders in the community. One thing I am really excited about is truly connecting with these kids as we build a relationship of trust and guidance. I am passionate about improving the future for these kids, because I was once there myself. As someone who lived in Fifth Ward, I hope to serve as an example to them as someone who made it out to be successful, but also desires to give back to the community.