There are places you can go and be virtually assured of finding a feel-good story. The Dorcas Place Adult & Family Learning Center on Elmwood Avenue in Providence is one of those places.
Dorcas Place is a private, nonprofit agency that helps low-income adults reach their potential by providing for both the education basics they may have missed along the way and workplace skills.
Students who arrive at Dorcas Place tend to share similar backgrounds. For example, 76 percent of them enter the program reading at a level no higher than that of a sixth-grader. Ninety-eight percent live in households at or below the poverty level. Eighty percent are unemployed.
There’s something else about all of them, too. They all want to be there. They want to learn. They want to get good jobs and support their families.
Now begins the feel-good part of the story.
Dorcas Place is in the final stage of a capital campaign, the goal of which is to raise $2.1 million. The money from the fund raising will do the organization – and community it serves – a lot of good.
For starters, it will open 4,000 square feet of new classroom space to serve an additional 200 students. It will also allow the center to strengthen its computer and language lab programs.
But that all sounds so clinical – so bricks-and-mortar. The story is better than that.
As the capital campaign moved closer to its goal, the folks at Dorcas Place received a letter from the Fish Family Foundation. Lawrence K. Fish, president and CEO of Citizens Financial Group, said he has been so impressed by the results of the work at Dorcas Place that the foundation was offering a “challenge grant” of $100,000. So if Dorcas Place raises the balance of the campaign’s goal – $145,000 – the additional $100,000 is theirs.
That prompted a real neat idea.
It seems Tom Walsh, an executive vice president at RDW Group who volunteers some of his time to help out Dorcas Place, had talked with a couple members of the center’s board of directors awhile back about ways to cap off the capital campaign. They figured it would be great to somehow involve the students.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to end this right where it started … that’s what we were thinking,” said Walsh.
Walsh sent word to Dorcas Place that they were wondering if the students wanted to help out directly with the campaign. A meeting was called for a Friday evening a few weeks ago.
“I get there and there are 50 students … the room was full,” said Walsh.
And so that’s a big part of how Dorcas Place is looking to meet its goal. The students are pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and tapping into whatever resources they can find, to raise the money.
“The students are thrilled to be a part of all this,” said Brenda Dann-Messier, president of Dorcas Place. “It’s very inspirational.”
In addition to a low-income student body of 700 students each year, Dorcas Place gets about 30 telephone calls every day from prospective students seeking admission. Dann-Messier said the demand is just incredible.
“Right now we are serving just 8 percent of the eligible population,” she said.
Walsh thinks it’s fitting to have the students involved because the campaign is, after all, for them. It’s not about buildings or desks, it’s about people, he said. And who better to tell the Dorcas Place story than the students themselves.
“To hear them talk about why they are here and the profound difference Dorcas Place has made in their lives … this is about getting a better job or in some cases, about reading to their kids at night. The stories are just so rich,” said Walsh.
Dann-Messier tells the story of one student who came forward and donated $100 to the campaign. Dann-Messier knew it was too much money for the woman to part with and insisted she take it back.
But the woman wouldn’t hear it. Dorcas Place is changing her life, she said.
“She said to me, ‘When I get rich, I’ll give you more,’” said Dann-Messier.
If you or someone you know would like to contribute to the Dorcas Place Capital Campaign, call 273-8866, ext. 111.
