Bilingual Exchange: A Good Deed Waiting to Happen

At the time Bilingual Exchange shut down last March, 25 Pilgrims were tutoring 25 Latinx students. Now that we are resuming, most of the students are returning. They and their parents love the program. Alas, several of our tutors cannot return, either because they graduated from college, moved, or have health issues and concerns. These changes mean that we are desperately short of tutors as the program restarts.

But the shortage of tutors creates opportunities for you to assist our immigrant community in a concrete and meaningful way: by helping children with their homework. It is also a chance to develop a meaningful relationship with an elementary or middle school student. Tutors report that they often get as much out of the experience as the students do. In addition, tutoring provides a chance to learn about the experiences of Latinx children and their families in ways that go beyond media sound bites. And you don’t need to speak Spanish to gain these benefits.

Pilgrim’s program is reopening for in-person tutoring on Tuesday, September 7. We will meet each Tuesday (holidays exempted) from 7:30-9:00pm. Our students are in grades 3-9. All of them speak English. And all of them have suffered greatly from being out of school during the pandemic. We Pilgrims can help. Again, if you are looking for a practical way to do good in our community, this is your opportunity.

Of course, everyone must be kept safe. To achieve this goal we plan on observing the following protocols:

• All tutors will have to be vaccinated.
• All tutors will wear masks while inside the building.
• All students will wear masks while inside the building.
• Based on preliminary talks, all the parents and over-age-12 students have been vaccinated. Younger students, of course, have not.
• Food will be consumed outside.

If you have questions or are interested in volunteering, please contact Mary Anna Hovey or Leonard Beeghley.