English as a Second Language: Nonprofit start-up

Part 1: My involvement and some background

In late 2009 I was burnt out on International Relations and service work. So, I took 2010 to get my house in order. I switched to domestic education work and took two full-time jobs, attempting to demonstrate nonprofit competence and make an impact in communities that I knew and whose problems I could understand.

While working at 92Y in New York City, I completed ESL training at Oxford Seminars in an attempt to maneuver my way into international development work in Mexico. The violence in the North was escalating, and after receiving a job offer in Durango, I turned it down to move to Washington, DC instead. I felt unprepared transferring from one overwhelming environment to another and decided that if I wanted to serve, I needed to begin in an environment which would spare me the brutal culture shock while still teaching me ways to listen to communities and learn from them. My time for field work is coming, it’s just not now. So, which community to help? My Mom used to tell me about my Grandmother’s immigration from Poland to the United States after WWII, and her difficulty navigating simple life tasks after her husband (my Grandfather) died. I never my Grandmother, but I developed a deep connection to the story and thought I might learn to understand her better by learning what some of the difficulties she faced were. And try to tackle these difficulties in my Queens neighborhood. But, after refusing Mexico’s offer, and deciding to move to Washington, I let the idea go dormant.

I moved to the Columbia Heights neighborhood and began attending church at Sacred Heart, which is run by Capuchin Franciscans and employs an impressive range of social ministries. The parish is quite poor. In fall 2006, it was forced to shut down its ESL program after a change in diocesan priorities– although many think it was due to mismanagement. At the time of its closing, 800 adult students were attending classes and programs ranging from ESL, GED and computer literacy courses. It was a big hit to the parish, especially because funding transferred to St. Matthew’s, a homogenous white parish in downtown DC. They have a well-kept educational complex and struggle with too many volunteers and too few students. Sacred Heart struggles with too many students and too few volunteers, has trouble paying utilities and health insuring its part-time security guard.

Sacred Heart has 3,000 Hispanic parishioners. Over 1,000 people regularly show up to the Sunday Mass at noon. Only 10% of the parish is English-speaking. The church has 4 parish councils in each of its community languages: Spanish, English, Haitian (Creole) and Korean. Meaningful communication and collaboration has been difficult, especially since Columbia Heights has transformed dramatically since 2006  and real estate prices have soared, bringing in affluent professionals, who don’t regularly socialize with Hispanic or urban neighbors.

Looking for a community base, I attended SH’s Social Justice meeting, a ministry of which had just been reconvened but, in light of the January 2010 Haitian Earthquake, had become an uninstructed and failed disaster relief committee. With neighborhood immigration raids and a parish budget crisis, they needed a new way to enhance relations with the Spanish-speaking community. So, Brian, a 7-year parish cornerstone and I agreed to put a program together.

Our next steps were listening and learning from parishioners who wanted to enhance their English skills and to also dig up the old bones of the failed former program.