Hands-on Outreach

Recognizing our responsibility to our neighbors, we seek to reach out in love to our surrounding community in many ways, including: ESL, Food Pantries, Tutoring, Refugee Assistance, and in action committees devoted to bringing about Social Justice.

English as a Second Language (ESL) Classes.
We offer ESL classes as regularly as we are able to because we wish to be of assistance to and become friends with newcomers (refugees and others) as they make a home in Grand Rapids. In addition to a hired teacher, many volunteers (some with quite extensive training and experience, others without) are involved.

During the school-year, the regular schedule we tend to follow is Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 6-8pm. These evening classes are a favorite for the students, and we’ve successfully transplanted them to two other local CRCs (Woodlawn and East Paris).

Generally, the class takes on the following format…

We also provide babysitting for the children of our students.

In addition to our evening classes, which rely heavily on the availability of volunteers, we have also begun to offer daytime classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings, from 10am-1pm with a solo-teacher provided by Lutheran Social Services of West Michigan.
If you’d like to get involved, or would like to join the email ESL news-group, please contact Barb, Helen, or Connie.