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Hello Friends,
This school year, The Pittsburgh Project program team started planning outreach nights once a month for the students enrolled in our afterschool program and their families. Each week the families and the program staff would share a meal, listen to some good music, play games and share any prayer requests they might have. Each month there was a different theme, from March Madness to Around the World! You might walk into Family Night and see dads shooting three-pointers or the kids running around the room doing a relay race. We thought some evenings would be a little more laid back, but we underestimated the excitement that Bingo would induce.
At The Pittsburgh Project, our core values are community, inherent human worth, equity, justice and education. We know that living in a community with others is a vital part of human existence, and we are all responsible for caring for one another. Since every person has been made in the image of God, unique, valuable, and deserving of dignity, we have a responsibility to fight for equity and justice for each person. Lastly, we know that high-quality learning experiences and all of their benefits should be made available to all people, young and old.
Standing in the back of the sanctuary for the last Family Night of this school year, I could see our core values play out before me. What a beautiful community we created. Parents, grandparents, aunts, cousins, and friends enjoying life together. No one in the family had to decide what was for dinner that night; we took care of that. Grandpa having a chance to remember what it was like to be a kid again. Younger siblings, too young to attend our programs, watching their older siblings have fun with friends and just being glad they are allowed to join in on the fun for once. It was a space where everyone felt loved, cared for, and included. If trivia wasn’t your thing, you could try the cup stacking game, and if all else failed, there was plenty of candy to go around for everyone.
I pray that there are many more Family Nights to come. It’s a great opportunity for families to have carefree fun together. A chance to bring generations together. The staff can engage with parents in a way they don’t often get to. It was always tough to see the look of disappointment on the kid's faces that weren’t able to attend family night on certain days or to hear the excitement in the voices on the van when the kids were getting picked up from school when they realized it was Family Night at TPP! At the last Family Night, we surveyed the kids and parents, and 100% of the kids said they wished family night was even longer. I think it was plenty long for the parents, who often came directly from work and were ready to get home for the evening, but 100% of them said they loved Family Night and plan to attend again next year. When starting Family Night, our goal was to create an opportunity for our staff to better engage with kids and their families outside of standard program time. Little did we know that we would not only create that space but also open lines of communication, let down guards, share some great laughs, and become a little more like a family
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