It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Whew! It seems like the past few weeks at RCI have been a whirlwind as we went from celebrating Thanksgiving, to Christmas to New Years here at our Linden Street Community Center. As we enter 2020 together, we have been reflecting on all of the wonderful opportunities that we were given to engage with our wider Allentown area through the end of 2019.

The holiday season kicked off with a Thanksgiving Day meal. We were able to provide a fresh made, hot meal for everyone. One of the highlights was at least three different kinds of pie to end the evening!

Next, Pat Bolden and her friends hosted an incredible Holiday meal for us on December 5th. They brought with them a HUGE turkey and all the fixings and served several dozen of our community center members. This incredible gift kicked off the MANY holiday festivities hosted by our Allentown friends.

The third week of December was RCI parties! On Tuesday, December 17th we had a retelling of The Night Before Christmas thanks to our friends with the Parish Nurses. Several of our community members dressed up: one of our community helpers even dressed up as Santa Clause (with a bit persuasion :) )

On Wednesday the 18th one of our volunteers, Ripple Pastor Angela Moyer chose to celebrate her birthday with us complete with cake and popcorn. We were thrilled to be able to sing to her and embarrass her just a bit with our antics!

December 19th closed out our ‘party week’ with a holiday party hosted by ‘The Zumba Ladies’ who are some of our weekly volunteers. They brought us gifts of blankets, handwarmers and other goodies! A highlight of that day was having one of the volunteers lead us in several games of BINGO.

On December 24th, we were given the opportunity to have a Christmas Eve extravaganza which included being able to give our Community Members a few gifts provided by the external community. Each member got a Christmas stocking filled with goodies and each a pair of weatherproof boots for the harsh weather months. It was a joy to be able to provide this basic comfort that many of us take for granted!

On Christmas Day, Johnny’s Bagels, a local eatery on Hamilton Street catered a GORGEOUS spread for our friends and community members! Please support them with your business if you get the chance!

The New Year began on a great foot with a donation of fresh deli sandwiches from a private donor. It feels special to continue to be supported throughout the year by the Greater Lehigh Valley and not just through the ‘official’ holiday season.

As the New Year begins, we have had and will continue to have some exciting events at RCI. Along with our continued partnership with St. Luke’s Parish Nurses and LVHN Street Medicine, VAST, Caring Dam Hearts and many others, we were also able to offer free haircuts on January 9th to our community members through our partner, Stephen Flowers! This amazing opportunity continues to allow us to offer important services to our Allentown friends. Thank you all for your continued support and we look forward to collaborating in this new year!

RCI Thanksgiving Day

A retelling of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ complete with our own Santa Clause!

Ripple Pastor Angela Moyer and her mother celebrating Angela’s birthday at RCI (photo taken by community partner, Denise)

Holiday BINGO led by the Zumba Ladies, pictured here!

Christmas Eve, gifts of boots!

We were able to gift around 85 pairs of boots on Christmas Eve!

A Christmas Day feast provided by Johnnys Bagels!

Stephen Flowers offering free haircuts! (Photo by Community Partner, Maria)

Remember RCI this #GivingTuesday

Want to love your neighbors this holiday season?

Consider supporting the work and mission of Ripple Community Inc.

https://www.ripplecommunityinc.org/give-resources

Finding a place to call home

As many of us prepare to have a nice Thanksgiving meal at home with our family, some people will be hosting their first Thanksgiving in a long time. For most of the RCI Village residents, the thing they are most thankful for this year is a place to call home.

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It’s hard to believe, but the RCI Village program has completed one year already. There have been many high points, difficult moments, and new learnings. The need for good, affordable housing and a supportive community remains consistent. Many of our residents would still find themselves in unsafe and unstable living if it were not for the RCI Village program. At our open house in September, one resident said, “I would still be stuck in my cycle of moving place to place if it weren’t for RCI Village.” We see success and hope in the lives of our residents who have gained stability. Having a place to call home is at the center of stability. When you don’t have a place to sleep and rest, it affects other areas of your life. You may miss work or school, your health is put at risk, and you develop stress and depression. We are grateful to help the people in our program, but we recognize the need is still great. For every individual or family we were able to help, there were 5 more in the same situation in need of stability. That is a hard reality to live with.

This hard reality drives us to be creative and press forward. We continue to find ways to expand the program so that others may find stability. In the past two months, the RCI Village welcomed two new families and were able to provide good housing and stability. A young mother now has a community that she trusts and friends to count on when she’s depressed. A couple is no longer living in a tent in the woods, allowing one of them to secure a full-time job. This is what the RCI Village is all about. Stability and community. Helping people to find a place to call home.

Fall Fun at the RCI Community Center

Welcome to Fall! As the weather has been getting chillier over the last few weeks in Allentown, PA, the Community Building Center has been busier than ever. We have been continuing to enjoy having a space to call our own and have been dreaming with our community about how we can use it to serve each other in the best way possible. Right now, that looks like a continued partnership with St. Luke’s Parish Nurses as well as LVHN’s Street Medicine on a weekly basis to care for each other’s health needs. It also looks like therapeutic circles twice a week led by our Community Chaplain and continued relationships with community volunteers who lead games, crafts and even weaving! At our core, RCI continues to put nurturing relationships FIRST and this core has given us the chance to be recognized as a safe place for many of our marginalized friends.  

In addition to our day to day, we have been able to host some exciting events over the month. On October 17th, LVHN Street Medicine hosted a Narcan Training for our staff, volunteers and community members. 25+ people joined us to learn about the opioid epidemic in the Lehigh Valley and practice administering Narcan (an opioid reversal medication) in a safe manner. What an awesome privilege to be able to do outreach while supporting our community!  
 
On October 19th our friends at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown supported us in hosting a Fall Festival! We loved sharing a meal with them while playing games, decorating pumpkins and overall getting ready for the holiday season together. It felt good to be able to meet each other and share stories with people of all different ages and backgrounds.  
 
After our Fall Festival came trick or treat! A few of our Ripple Church and RCI members came to the porch to hand out treats from 6-8pm. We went through several bags of candy and even got to start handing out chocolate covered pretzels to the parents and guardians of the local trick or treaters. Some of our favorite costumes were bees, sharks, monsters and even a few princesses!  
 
Finally, last week we have welcomed partners from 2 congregations in Mexico who have come to the Center to learn more about RCI and the work that we do here at the Center. The hope is that they will be able to use these learnings and knowledge to take back to their own community where they are looking to grow a similar program to our own. We have enjoyed food, conversation and especially singing with this crew and we already miss them and hope they are able to visit again soon!