Love is in the air! Okay, maybe not, but the delicious aroma of chocolate chip cookies was in the air at Fortress YDC’s Valentine’s Day Banquet on February 6th, and that’s pretty darn close to love! Parents and kids were invited to spend the evening celebrating the love of family, food and fun by enjoying a yummy dinner of homemade spaghetti, salad, and chocolate chip cookies (of course!), all lovingly prepared and served by Cupid’s favorite helpers, the volunteers from the Fort Worth Junior League. And what would a Valentine’s Day celebration be if dinner wasn’t followed by dancing? While some of the kiddos were a little shy at first, a favorite song and alittle encouragement (I’m looking at you, Gabriel’s PawPaw!) were all it took to get the party started for most. The evening was capped off by a solo performance to Bruno Mars’s instant hit, Uptown Funk, by Fortress’s own superstar-in-training, Jeremiah. He even did the worm, people! We hope you had as much fun as we did and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone next month!
Internet Safety Class
Welcome back to another year with Fortress YDC! We are so happy to have our kiddos back after the Christmas break and we just know 2015 is going to be a great year! To get the year started off right, Fortress hosted an Internet Safety Class for parents on January 15, 2015.
Have you ever thought about how websites like Facebook and Instagram make money without charging users for their services? This was one of the many thought-provoking questions raised by Mr. Chris Robey from Teen Lifeline, Inc. Chris presented an internet safety class to a handful of Fortress parents and covered topics including text message lingo and whether your Snapchat photo is really deleted forever (hint: it’s not!). While parents listened to Chris’s informative presentation, they also enjoyed a taco and nacho bar prepared and served by volunteers from the Junior League of Fort Worth. Following the presentation, these volunteers sat down with the parents to discuss the issues Chris raised. One parent offered that her two-year old even knows how to access YouTube on a smartphone! Chris used the invention of flight to highlight how new technologies are developing faster and faster. While many of the parents and volunteers could remember their first experiences with computers and cell phones (and pagers!), our children will grow up never knowing anything but tablets and smartphones and whatever new technology is waiting just around the corner. Given the quality of the discussions, we think it’s safe to say that those in attendance went home with a new or renewed perspective on monitoring their kids’ use of technology and internet access, a wonderful way to start the new year on the right foot.
Fortress Christmas Party
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! On Friday, December 12th, Fortress YDC hosted our annual Christmas dinner for our wonderful kiddos and their families. We had over 120 people attend, our biggest event this year! The kids set to work on making and decorating popsicle stick christmas tree ornaments, a perennial favorite. Then everyone was treated to a dinner of spicy Texas chili, homemade cornbread and a hot chocolate bar with every topping imaginable, all served with a smile by the lovely volunteers from the Junior League of Fort Worth. After dinner, families worked together to make gingerbread houses with graham crackers, icing, and a little engineering ingenuity. The results weren’t all what you might call “perfect,” but they were all perfectly tasty! At the end of the night, a few lucky attendees won raffle drawings for gift cards, and all of the adults went home with a gift - a cookbook designed for those on a budget. The cookbook is called "Good and Cheap," and the copies were generously donated by the author herself, Leanne Brown. It was a wonderful evening with friends and family and a festive way to end the year. Fortress YDC will be closed starting Thursday, December 18th and will re-open in January when school starts again. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and blessings for a wonderful 2015!
Gobble, Gobble Get Together
Gobble, gobble! It’s almost Thanksgiving, and at Fortress YDC there’s a lot to be thankful for, especially our mentors. That’s why we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for our families and the mentors who volunteer their time to work with our wonderful kiddos. On Friday, November 14, 24 families came together, along with 8 mentors, for a night of food, family and giving thanks. The evening started with students, their families and mentors making thankfulness pumpkins, writing or drawing something they are thankful for on strips of orange paper and combining them to form a pumpkin. Next, volunteers from the Junior League of Fort Worth served a delicious, homemade dinner of turkey casserole, collard greens, sweet potatoes and biscuits. At the end of the meal, everyone got to enjoy watching a video collage of photos taken throughout the year at Fortress, many including the mentors and also the very popular Halloween Carnival! To cap off the evening, students were given a baggie with two Oreos, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, seven jelly beans, and access to large bowls of icing. For those who could resist temptation and hadn’t eaten their goodies already, they combined these ingredients into Thanksgiving turkeys!
The Boo Bash!
Ghouls and goblins! Pirates and princesses! Superheroes and villains! Fortress YDC’s Halloween Carnival on Friday, October 24th, had it all! The 1st annual party was one of the best-attended events Fortress has hosted this year, with over 100 parents and kids coming for a night of fun. The party kicked off with a creepy dinner of tombstones covered in graveyard dirt and doused in troll snot, zombie slime and vampire guts (i.e. ground beef nachos with cheese dip, sour cream and salsa, prepared and served by the lovely volunteers from the Junior League of Fort Worth). After dinner, the Carnival doors opened and kids raced to play pumpkin darts, ghost bowling and jack-o-lantern golf for a chance to win candy, bubble gum and snacks. However, the party REALLY got started when the costume and dance contests kicked off! The dance floor was packed the entire night with talented kids showing off their best moves. It was so much fun, even the parents and volunteers couldn’t resist getting in on the action, busting out some old school Michael Jackson Thriller and newer favorites like the Nae Nae and the Wobble. At the end of the night, prize packs full of goodies were handed out for the Best Boy Costume (Iron Man), Best Girl Costume (Day of the Dead) and Most Creative Costume (Agnes Gru from Despicable Me). The award for Most Creative Adult Costume went to Ms. Pacman, along with a $25 gift card, for her handiwork. The troll snot and graveyard dirt gone and the last piece of candy handed out, the children were turned loose in their sugar- and dance-induced frenzy to terrorize (I mean, entertain) their parents for the rest of the night, while the volunteers and Center staff cleaned up and talked about how they are already excited for next Halloween!
Fortress YDC Parenting Class
On Thursday, September 24th, Fortress YDC had a historic night. For the first time ever, every single person who registered for an event attended, and then some! It is safe to say that the Parent Training class was a big success. The 17 participants learned about the different discipline techniques used by Fortress to guide kids towards making better choices, including practical tips to use when disciplining at home. After the presentation, the parents enjoyed a dinner of garlic bread, a green salad, and baked ziti, made from scratch by the lovely ladies of the Fort Worth Junior League. After dinner, these same Junior League volunteers joined the participants to discuss what they’d learned and how they might be able to apply those principles to real-life situations they’ve encountered with their kiddos.
Back 2 School Bash
To get the school year started off on the right foot, kids and parents (and grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and cousins too!) gathered at Fortress for a Back 2 School Bash on August 22nd. More than 140 people came out for food, games and awesome prizes to help get kids ready to go back to the classroom. Kids engaged in a variety of games to win school supplies, like composition notebooks, binders, mechanical pencils and extra large erasers. Two very lucky raffle winners even got to take home new backpacks stocked full of school supplies! While the kids played, parents and family members enjoyed hamburgers, hot dogs and watching the kids run around having fun. The hula-hoop competition was particularly entertaining and attracted more than a few spectators! In the late summer heat, the water balloon toss was also quite popular. With help from Junior League of Fort Worth volunteers, Fortress gave out approximately $300 in school supplies and served nearly 200 hamburgers and hot dogs to the attendees, which included over 75 people from the community in addition to the families already enrolled with Fortress. Judging from the enthusiasm at the Back 2 School Bash, we think it’s going to be a great school year!
Intern Spotlight - Kalyn Brisby from OCU
Kalyn Brisby is about to begin her Junior year at Oklahoma Christian University. She is working on getting a Social Work degree so that one day she can start a program with similar goals as Fortress. She found out about Fortress through a Career Fair at OCU where we were recruiting interns. Ironically, Kalyn did not attend the fair, but rather saw a pamphlet that her roommate had grabbed and was intrigued by how closely aligned our values were with her dreams for her future career.
Kalyn, like other interns and staff, felt an inspirational fire one day at Fortress during worship time. Coincidentally, her church lesson that week had been about "having faith like a child." "That week at Fortress," she says, "the thought was really hammered home during worship time! Students were singing different songs, but all of a sudden, when "Set a Fire" started playing, the whole place exploded with the sound of singing children. All around me I heard, 'set a fire down in my soul, that I can't contain, that I can't control. I want more of you, God.' It was absolutely amazing to listen to such young hearts singing to God with such fervor. They may not fully comprehend everything that they were saying, but neither were they ashamed of what they were proclaiming either!" Kalyn believes that "we should all have faith like a child and not be ashamed of what we stand for, or to just say 'I need MORE OF YOU GOD!'" Kalyn praises God for the children at Fortress and for what they have taught her this summer!
Some very potent wisdom Kalyn has to share with newcomers to Fortress is to love and be fully invested in the work that you are doing here and with the kids. You have to believe in its purpose in order for it to feel like a successful job. Remembering that we're aiming for long-term goals for these students and that immediate change may not be evident will keep an intern in the right mindset for success. She adds, "Seek God every step of the way because He makes those unbearable days a little more bearable."
Kalyn recognizes that there are hard parts of this job. "Sometimes the kids won't cooperate. Sometimes it rains while we are on Urban Experience. Sometimes it feels like you're not making a difference. But those days that a kid loves what we are doing in class, or a homeless person exhibits so much hope and thanksgiving, or when our building is full of laughter and praise at worship, or when a child just runs up to hug you because they love you--those are the times that you KNOW God is working on and through you." She feels that every negative interaction or experience is matched with a rewarding feeling that you are doing right by God. When that happens, Kalyn is reminded that God has brought her to Fortress and is using her for His purpose!
The hardest part is having patience and keeping calm when you as an authoritative figure are being put to the test. We can feel that! These kids will try to make you crack, but we always remember 'love and logic!'
Kalyn would like to add that this summer's group of interns and staff has been the best she has ever worked with and she will be sad to leave at the end of this week!
Intern Spotlight - Nadirah Shorter from TCU
Nadirah comes to Fortress everyday prepared for the five hours of chaos ahead of her. She works as an intern with our preK-1st grade age group, and there are some wild days for sure! She is a student at TCU until next spring when she graduates. With a bachelor's degree in Communication Studies under her belt, she will then continue on to get her master's in Speech Pathology. We are blessed to have such a dedicated student interning with us this summer!
Nadirah heard about the summer program at Fortress when we set up a booth at the Careers in Health Fair at TCU. She was interested in applying because of the unique opportunity and the challenging responsibility that she thought an internship at Fortress would bring her.
A day that Nadirah will never forget is when the preK-1st graders had a talent show-turned-dance party. Many of the kids' talent was doing some sort of dance to a Top 40 song, or singing the "Frozen" theme song from the Disney movie that we all know and love. By the end of the event, every person in the room--including the volunteer youth group--was shakin' it to top 40 songs. "It was crazy because a lot of them had a lot of rhythm and knew how to dance extremely well!"
Nadirah suggests Fortress as a great place to start with first-hand urban environment volunteer work. Even if you do not have teaching experience, a new volunteer can easily acclimate to our learning system, she says.
Nadirah feels that God placed her in the right situation for her to work in this summer with the preK-1st grade age group. "Just to be a part of these children's lives and to see them excited to learn has really solidified my choice to be a Pediatric Speech Pathologist." We are moved to know that Fortress and its students have helped inspire people to do good work with at-risk youth.
The toughest part of this summer for Nadirah has been "sustaining the amount of energy it takes everyday working with small children in addition to a youth group in the afternoons." Balancing two other jobs as well as a summer class at TCU does not make it any easier to be at full brain capacity all the time! But, we can see that Nadirah has found a way to do it, because she has been an integral part of our preK-1st grade program.
Intern Spotlight - Kelsey Henson from OC
Kelsey with her favorite little monster, Trent.
Kelsey Henson is a longtime staff member/volunteer at Fortress. Even before her first run here as a staff member in 2008, she volunteered here through Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills. Kelsey has always worked with our preK-1st grade age group. Her talents for teaching this age group are evident when the kids welcome her back with each visit and each summer return. Kelsey is a senior at Oklahoma Christian University where she will obtain her degree in Family Studies/Child Development with a Psychology minor. After she graduates next spring, she will be attending graduate school for Non-profit Management. Fortress has made a huge impact on Kelsey's life and she wants to return to the Fort Worth area after grad school to work at Fortress full-time.
Kelsey is the daughter of our Executive Director Terri, who hired her to work in the after-school program in 2008. She credits the joy that the kids bring to her life as reasons why she decided to intern here this summer. They have made such a positive impact on her life, she says.
Kelsey and Trent (pictured above) get along great and have developed a strong relationship this summer. Trent is a vivacious character who is always making her laugh. One day, she remembers, "Trent looked at me and said, 'Man, Miss Kelsey, you have something wrong with your eyes.' I asked him what was wrong and he said, 'You have these dark circles up under them.'" Kelsey laughed and said it was because she was tired from working at Fortress so long! He told her, "You need to tell your boss to let you go home and take a nap." Her boss may also be her mom, but Kelsey didn't think that she would get a go-home-and-nap pass.
Some wisdom that Kelsey would pass to Fortress newcomers would be to "have a lot of patience and love to give away from the moment you walk in the door. It takes a lot of patience to work with the little kids and if you have no patience, then your time at Fortress will be very stressful. You have to learn to let the little things go. Lastly, one of the most important things you can give the kids is love. Letting them know you love and care about them is something that can change their lives. A simple smile and hug when they walk in the door can turn their whole day around."
This summer, Kelsey taught the preK-1st grade group all their bible lessons, starting with Creation and ending with the Resurrection. During most of the stories, Kelsey felt as if the kids weren't listening. "I have been proved wrong about that over and over again. Every time I ask about each of the stories from the whole summer, the kids can say what happened in each story. They all say 'God loves us and we should never be afraid of anything.'" Seeing them learn so much from the Bible has shown Kelsey that God is working through her as she teaches the stories.
Kelsey agrees with many of the other interns that one of the hardest parts of this job is being physically exhausted and getting little sleep each week. But, as the summer JAM program comes to an end, she knows that, once again, the hardest part for her will be saying goodbye. "This is my fifth summer at Fortress and leaving this group of kids is going to be the hardest. The relationships that I have formed with them in these nine weeks have been one of the most rewarding things I have ever experienced." Kelsey never likes saying goodbye to these kids who have affected her life for the past five years, but she visits frequently and awaits the day that she will come back permanently to make big waves of change for the near southeast community of Fort Worth.