Lansing Lists: Five local charities to give to this holiday season
From Lansing Online News, December 14, 2009
By Chris Singer
Lansing has many local charities, non-profits and community organizations doing vital work in the area. I have picked five who I think are worthy of your holiday donation.
How did I pick these 5? All of these organizations are ones I have either: volunteered with (past or presently) or accessed a service of the organization.
Give us your feedback – did we get it right? Do you have others for the list?
These are not in any particular order but here are the five:
#1 Charity – Refugee Development Center – Lansing is home to a large number of refugees from all around the world. Most of these men, women and children have suffered terrible injustices and have lost their family and homes to forces beyond their control. When refugees come to America, they usually have little money, few contacts, and a limited understanding of America’s vast and complex culture. I volunteered at the RDC several years ago and met some amazing people with even more amazing stories.
#2 Charity – Open Door Ministry
I mentioned Open Door Ministry around Thanksgiving time as a worthy organization and I believe it strongly enough to mention them in this post as well. The mission of Open Door Ministry is to meet people where they are at, offering the poor and homeless the right hand of fellowship, empathic listening and solidarity in the face of intolerance, injustice and an inhospitable environment. Open Door Ministry provides hospitality and many other services for those in need. It is a safe place to go for those who might have no where else to go.
#3 Charity – The Greater Lansing Area Food Bank
This is kind of a no-brainer I have to admit, but the numbers speak for themselves:
Estimated value of produce grown through the Garden Project: $362,000
650,000 pounds of prepared and non-perishable foods delivered to those in need
Volunteers donated over 7,500 hours, valued at around $127,500.00
#4 Charity – Your local neighborhood center
No matter where you live in Lansing, there is a neighborhood center doing fantastic work to help make your community a better place. Often understaffed and underfunded, these centers are often the heartbeat of a community. They know the neighbors and they know their neighborhoods, and as a result are an asset for the entire city in terms of information, public safety, public health, services for children and seniors, recreation, food assistance and much more.
#5 Charity – Expectant Parent Organization
As a new dad I know the value of preparation and although I think it’s impossible to be totally prepared for the birth of your first child, I can’t imagine what kind of shape I would have been in without EPO. EPO prenatal education programs help parents by providing:
- Information about pregnancy, childbirth and parenting the newborn
- Coping skills to reduce discomfort and complications
- Support that reduces anxieties and promotes the individual’s ability to cope
The “Changing Faces of Mid-Michigan” Event a Success
by the RDC’s Laura Havenga, March 23, 2009
A fun night was had by all as a crowd of people from around the world gathered in the fellowship hall of University Lutheran Church last Thursday night to celebrate and welcome many of Lansing’s newest arrivals.
Sponsored by the Red Cross, the evening consisted of speeches and cultural presentations by two recently resettle groups-the Burmese and the Bhutanese. Several awards were also presented to places and people in the Lansing community who have worked hard to make mid-Michigan a welcoming home to these refugees from around the world.
Art from the heart: Refugee kids’ ideas shape mural
From the Lansing State Journal, Thursday December 4, 2008
Matthew Miller
mrmiller@lsj.com
The cluster of children in the basement of Christ Lutheran Church weren’t shy about what they’d accomplished.
“I painted some bicycles,” said Isaac Fayia, an 11-year-old who had come to Lansing as a refugee from Liberia. “I painted a house. I painted the sun and the moon.”
They were waiting Wednesday night for the unveiling of a mural in a hallway on the upper floor of the church, near the offices of the Refugee Development Center, a bright rendering of the state Capitol with a river winding around it, of bicycles and birds, fish and people, houses and neighborhoods.
It was painted by children from the center with the help of four students from Michigan State University’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities and a Chicago artist named Guillermo Delgado. It was meant to symbolize community, to symbolize home.
Many of the children from the Refugee Development Center didn’t speak English very well, he said, “and everybody had their own vision for what the mural should look like and different background experiences.”
But ideas emerged in conversation, in communication that sometimes involved smiles and gestures as much as words, said Virginia Borcherdt, an MSU senior who worked on the mural.
Along with a crash course in art, Borcherdt said the past few weeks have been an education in “how to relate to these children that I can’t really communicate with through English, trying to imagine the things they’ve been through and how it can be a mutually beneficial relationship.” The last thing she wanted was to approach the project with a do-gooder’s attitude, she said. “It’s a give and take on both ends.”
As for the children, and there was a rotating cast of perhaps 15 of them, “many of them have never had any experience doing any kind of formal art, so that was a huge benefit to them,” center Director Shirin Kambin Timms said.
And not just formal art, but art as a form of community activism.
Delgado said projects such as this start with an effort to bring art “out of the studio and into the real world, into the streets and classrooms and get people to make art together, to share their visions, their dreams, their hopes.
“It’s almost like having a conversation,” he said, “but it’s a visual conversation.”
Refugee kids have fun learning about Lansing in summer camp
From the Lansing State Journal, July 21, 2007
Lindsay Machak
lmachak@lsj.com
(Photo by BECKY SHINK/Lansing State Journal)
A visit to City Hall: Jeneba Swaray, 10, (left), from Liberia, and Hermance Akono, 12, from Togo, laugh after answering a question from Jessica Sohn, staff assistant to the mayor, while visiting Lansing City Hall as part of their Summer Adventure Camp.
Eight-year-old Rocil Almarales listened intently as Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero spoke Friday.
She had never met somebody like him.
“I can tell Lansing is really important to him,” she said. “And that’s important to me because the mayor is supposed to care about the city.”
Rocil, from Cuba, was one of 14 students to visit City Hall and meet the mayor with the Refugee Development Center’s Summer Adventure Camp.
“Welcome to Lansing,” Bernero said. “This is part of your home.”
Bernero spoke to the kids about how he became mayor and the job.
He also said he plans to create an Office for New Americans. He was short on details. He asked the group for advice about what refugees need when they come to Lansing.
The camp strives to keep the students’ English skills sharp during the summer and give them a jump-start on the subjects they will be learning, said Vincent Delgado, co-director of the center.
The camp focuses on school-related subjects, including English and science.
This week, the students were learning about civics. Meeting the mayor was included in the lesson because he’s a leader in the community, Delgado said.
“For these newer young residents of the city, we thought it was important to understand that they are part of the community,” he said.
Nafisa Khogali, of Lansing, came to the United States from Sudan and is working at the camp as a teacher. Khogali said she wants the city to hire more people who speak foreign languages. They can teach English to new arrivals, she said.
A student in the program said meeting Bernero was inspirational. Ba Blamo said he wants to become a mayor or a congressman when he gets older. Ba, 11, came from Liberia three years ago and now lives in Lansing.
“The most exciting part of America is learning,” he said. “Because when we first landed here, we didn’t know any English,” he said of his family.
