Amigos
What is Amigos?
Amigos is the Spanish word for "friends" and building friendships is exactly what our Amigos group is aiming to do! We are a group of individuals from Good Shepherd Church who are working on establishing relationships between local residents and unaccompanied minors as well as newcomer students from Latin America. Our goal is to build lasting relationships and to support the students in numerous ways.
How did it begin?
God placed many people on different paths that all lead to our Amigos group forming. A few members of GSC, who also work in the Sioux Center Community School District, expressed a need to build relationships with and to help support students in the newcomer classes which are continuing to grow larger each year. Many of the newcomer students are unaccompanied minors who are living in Sioux Center without a guardian or parental support. Our church community decided to form a core team to help make decisions about how we could best support these students. Our core team is a diverse group of individuals who all have their own story about what led them to joining Amigos. Many others have supported us along the way, including Dawn Mars, administrators, teachers, and secretaries from the Sioux Center Community School District, members of Good Shepherd Church, Pastor Travis Else, as well as so many others.
What difference do you feel that Amigos is making?
The best guide we have for how we can help or what we can do to support these students comes from the students themselves. Nancy Robles is the teacher for the newcomer classes and she has been a huge support to us. We have been able to go into the classroom to meet with the students and to ask them what it is that they are wanting from our group. Issues like transportation to and from school, appointments, and work were brought up, as well as things like learning how to swim, ride a bike, ice skate, or just meeting new friends. Many of these students go to school during the day, then work through the night. They have had to grow up very quickly and some need to be given time to just have fun and to be a kid. Our group has brought students together for social events where we can all get to know each other better like the Latino Festival, Fields of Fun night, pizza picnic and games, as well as ice skating at the All Seasons Center Vernon Arena (which they loved!). We also held a winter clothing drive at Good Shepherd Church and were able to bring all the students winter hats, mittens, and some coats to gear them up for the cold Iowa winter. On another trip into the classroom we let each student pick out their own Sioux Center Warriors t-shirt from the school store so they can feel part of the Warriors family. In addition, we have created a private facebook group for our core team and the students and have provided the students with our core team contact information in case they need to reach out with a transportation need. Some students have already started reaching out. We have been able to provide rides to appointments, work, and school, and we are also providing rides to at least one student to and from school daily. While I can't speak for the students as to what difference we are making, I can say that we are trying our best to listen and to show up with consistent support the best that we can.
How can the broader community be involved?
This is an area we are working toward developing and expanding on. Amigos started less than a year ago and we are still learning what works and what doesn't. Establishing relationships takes time and trust and our core team has been taking that very seriously. In the past we have invited members of our church to join us at our social events which has been wonderful. Many have also supported us through generous donations. A few ways we have talked about possibly involving the broader community in the future are continuing to expand on our transportation support and reaching out to community members for help with future events or when needs arise. We would also love to offer some educational sessions where community members can learn more about our students and the countries they moved here from. Of course, prayers for the wonderful students and prayers for our guidance are always welcome. The blessing here is that this is only the beginning and we can't wait to see where we can go from here.
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Relationships go two ways and I can't tell you how much we have been impacted my these amazing students. Learning their stories and getting to know them has shown us so much. These kids are stronger and braver than I may ever be. I'm in awe of their resilience and so blessed to be part of their lives.
- Lisa Wilcox
