Living Our Mission: Pages for Peace

Ask the first- and second-graders who go to Pages for Peace after school on Mondays what they like about the program and you’ll most likely hear, “I like to read!”

In downtown Council Bluffs, Iowa, the Council Bluffs Central congregation is located in a low-income area where families face extreme challenges. Use and sale of drugs is prevalent in parts of the neighborhood. It is not unusual for youth to find themselves in and out of the juvenile justice system or on house arrest assigned to community service. In the elementary school nearest the church, almost all of the children are enrolled in a meal assistance program.

Our congregation has been an integral part of this community since 1953. We completed construction of a Family Life Center in 2005. I also became a full-time minister that year, hired by the congregation. Developing new ministries was part of my assignment, with youth and children of the community high on the priority list.

The congregation wanted to provide an after school program to help children and families in the neighborhood. I contacted the Washington Elementary School principal who told us there were no after school programs specifically for first and second graders.

The most urgent need for these children was help with reading. A group of us met with the school’s three reading specialists. They shared that the children would benefit from one-on-one attention with reading. Working together, we developed a program to mentor young readers and teach peacemaking skills.

Expanding Their Worlds
Pages for Peace is the ministry that was born. Every Monday three or four volunteers meet the children at school and walk them to the church. Putting first things first, we share a snack.

Students are paired with a volunteer who helps them read. One student in the program, Bailey, said, “I like to read and be with my teacher and be with my friends.” Curriculum has been prepared with the school’s reading specialist according to each student’s reading level. Another student, Ellie, said, “I like Pages for Peace because I like to read. I read five books in one day!”

Volunteer Marline Swenson said, “I think that’s probably one of the best gifts we can give them is teach them to read and expand their world.” Of our fifteen volunteers, many are seniors, some retired teachers. They come from the congregation, community, and friends of the church. Each volunteer has been screened by the state according to denominational and school requirements.

“It’s always rewarding,” said Mary who has volunteered for two years. Jimelle Moreno has been volunteering for two years because she wanted to help kids in the community. She also found an opportunity to make connections with the congregation. “My husband and I have been coming to the church pretty regularly for the past year or two,” she said. “It helped getting to know the other people in the tutoring program…. We felt comfortable coming to the church.”

School Principal Jason Plourde noted that one of the challenges the school faced when Pages for Peace started was that its reading scores were among the lowest in Iowa. In 2007 the school was recognized by the United States Department of Education as one of the top four in the state for greatest gains in student achievement using “Reading First” guidelines. Pages for Peace is honored to have been a small part of this success.

Building Character through Peacemaking
After reading time, we bring the students together for peacemaking activities based on Young Peacemakers Club materials. Principal Plourde recognizes the impact of this part of the program as much as the reading. “When I first came to Washington [2005] I spent almost all of my afternoons dealing with behavior issues,” he said. “Now I can see that through different programs—Pages for Peace being one of them—most afternoons I don’t spend on behaviors.”

The principal appreciates the coupling of the goals to 1) create proficient readers, and 2) develop positive character traits. He said, “The program is really powerful and positive, reinforcing what we’re doing at the school.” Student lives have been changed and their futures improved as a result of our cooperative efforts with Washington Elementary School.

We are very grateful to the generous contributors to World and Congregation Ministries who help make this kind of ministry possible. Funding for Pages for Peace has been provided through a 2008 outreach grant from the Prairie Bluffs USA Mission Center. Congregational funding helps support salaries and program expenses.

In 2009, a Tangible Love grant (funded through Oblation) was awarded to our congregation’s Community of Helping Hands program, which includes Pages for Peace as one of its ministries. This grant also helps with salaries for full-time ministers and bolsters our youth ministry efforts for the next three years. One new step we will take is to expand Pages for Peace by taking it into an additional elementary school for 2010.

By Seventy Bill Carlile