Youngstown Initiative hosts first volunteers

The initiative matches
agencies and help-groups with people in need.

By LAUREN POLINSKY

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown Initiative had its maiden voyage this week when founder the Rev. Jeremiah Williamson of St. John Episcopal Church hosted a fellow church’s youth group mission trip.

The Youngstown Initiative is a cooperative effort between St. John’s and the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio as an outreach program for the city. The idea was the brainchild of the Rev. Mark Hollingsworth Jr., bishop of Ohio, who felt Youngstown was being left behind in some ways, but it was Father Williamson who brought it to life.

“When I came on staff in October [2006], I was asked to put together some sort of urban service program. So I thought about what mission programs would appeal to me,” Father Williamson said.

What he ended up with was a program that was customizable to meet the passions of the youth groups participating and also stayed within a small budget.

“Some mission projects are very structured and set, so we tried to make this one self-directed and a more organic experience,” Father Williamson said.

The goal of the Youngstown Initiative is to “support the revitalization of the city through partnerships between existing programs and services in the Youngstown area and communities with a calling to urban missions,” Father Williamson said.

First volunteer

The first community to volunteer its services was the Church of Our Saviour in Akron. Fifteen youth and adult parishioners came to Youngstown on Monday and immediately went to work helping Habitat for Humanity refurbish an old Chrysler dealership in Struthers. Habitat for Humanity will be reopening it as a re-store facility where donated items, from desks to bookcases to kitchen sinks, will be resold.

“We wanted to have an opportunity to make an impact locally for another community. Also, with Habitat, this store will have national and international service, so we feel like we are connected locally, nationally and internationally,” said the Rev. Mother Meghan Frolich of Church of Our Saviour.

The Rev. Mother Frolich said this trip was three years in the making for her youth group. This is the first mission trip for this particular group of teens, and it was structured around what they decided to do.

The schedule

They wanted to offer helping hands for building and interacting with children, and from there they contacted Father Williamson. After some research, he built a weeklong mission trip that comprised half the week spent on the Habitat project and the other half working at St. John’s Vacation Bible School, where the teens could help kids through the day.

“The Habitat project benefits the community, but the group does not get any real interaction with the community, so the second half of the week will be more interpersonal where they can put faces to the people in the community that they are helping,” Father Williamson said.

To keep the costs down, the youth group has been cooking its own meals at the church and sleeping on cots in the choir room. Father Williamson said he was able to make arrangements with the YMCA on North Champion Street for the teens to shower, for two dollars a head, and swim every night.

Father Williamson said he hopes his program will encourage not only people in the Episcopal Diocese to participate in volunteer work, but also groups and individuals in Youngstown.

“Sometimes, groups don’t know where to start, but now a church leader, for example, can call me up and ask for a Saturday project feeding the poor, and I can do the leg work and bring back a few options for them to choose from.”