St. Luke's Church in the Fields

GO Project, founded in 1968 by parents and neighbors of Grace Church School, has a mission to close the opportunity gap for New York City’s public school students. We do this by channeling additional resources to the city’s youngest most vulnerable learners from under-resourced schools, who are most at risk of academic failure, and provide them with a high-quality academic, social and emotional enrichment and family support program that equips them with the skills needed for future success. Students participate in Saturday morning tutoring sessions, a 5-week academic and enrichment summer program, and year-round family support services each year.

Many GO Project students who were once struggling and disengaged at school transform into the most dedicated students in the classroom. Instead of falling behind, GO students perform at or above grade level, are promoted to the next grade on time, and are accepted into high performing middle and high schools.

Among GO Project’s five campuses, St. Luke’s is the only church to serve as a partner of GO Project. Since 1994, volunteers from St. Luke’s Church and School communities have provided tutoring to public school children, and this laid the groundwork for the partnership with GO Project that began in 2016. We invite you to join us in this work. We place 3 to 5 dedicated people for these children in every single classroom, which means anywhere between a 3-to-1 and a 5-to-1 ratio.  This means that, as a volunteer, you and the teachers in the room are the ones the students are engaged with. So you have a big impact on the students. Not just in their math or reading, but their social skills, too: not just on their schoolwork, but in their lives.

Ongoing commitments are requested, but one-time opportunities are possible.

Contact Simone at srichmond@stlukeinthefields.org.

Hours of operation:

From October through April: 22 Saturdays, 8:30 am to 12:30 pm

Summer: First week of July to the first week of August (5 weeks): Monday-Friday, 8:00am - 5:30 pm

Art & Acceptance is a weekly Saturday evening drop-in program for LGBTQ+ young people ages 16-24 experiencing homelessness, hosted by St. Luke’s Church. Our mission is to offer a safe, hospitable, harm-reduction, gender-diverse, nonsectarian safe space. The program includes a nutritious home-cooked dinner and to-go bag with a second meal, space for arts, writing and dance, a free clothing and toiletries “shop,” health and legal services, and crisis support.

Activities, including the communal dinner, run throughout the evening. Once a month we host an open mic, where the young folks express themselves through theater, poetry, and music before an audience of peers, staff and volunteers. We hold a monthly community meeting, a brief circle of staff, volunteers, and people served, to gather feedback about the program and needs.

Volunteers are critical to every part of this program. They help serve food, run the shop, participate in games, and other tasks. The third Saturday of the month is our Open Mic night.

LBGTQ+ young people have much higher rates of adverse mental health experiences. A study released by Trevor Project in June of 2019 shows that LGBTQ youth who report having at least one accepting adult were 40% less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year.

The volunteers at Art and Acceptance might be the only adults in the lives of these young people who don’t get paid to spend time with them. They show unconditional love and support to young people who need it most without any expectation of return. Each participant gets one-on one-attention, from an adult who genuinely cares about them and is excited to see them and hear about their week.  We invite you to join our Saturday night community in this work.

One-time opportunities or ongoing opportunities

Contact Simone at srichmond@stlukeinthefields.org.

Hours of operation:

Saturdays from 5:30 pm to 8:15 pm

Sacred Ground is dialogue series on race, grounded in faith.  Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race, racism, and whiteness while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. The 10-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.

Sacred Ground is a resource coming out of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society.  This series is especially designed to help white people talk with other white people, while being open to all racial/ethnic groups.  Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love.