Hampden County Masters Congregation Recruitment

The New England Farm Workers Council’s Hampden County Amachi program in Springfield, Massachusetts, is off to a great start. In less than six weeks, they had solidified partnerships with 10 of their 12 target congregations, the result of many long hours spent pounding the pavement.

“It required a lot, a lot of leg work,” said Margarita Sanchez, director of the Amachi Hampden County program. “You had to make at least three to four calls a day to see if you could locate the leader. It took a little extra, quite honestly, evening hours. I’d call their church number and find out when their church services were, and I’d just show up to one of their services. They’d see that I was sitting there, and either I would get the covenant at that point or I’d get the name of the [congregational volunteer coordinator]. You had to work around the clock. At times I even had to go to work on a Saturday or skip my service on a Sunday to go to one of their services.”

Sanchez says the sacrifice was worth it to reach their church partnership goal in such a short time frame. She worked closely with Archbishop Timothy Paul, champion for the Amachi Hampden County program, to target congregations in the community. “If you’re doing anything like [Amachi] you have to have persistence and tenacity in order to be able to overcome the obstacles,” said Paul. He said he met with faith-based leaders two to three times to make sure they understood the purpose of the Amachi program. “I felt that if the leaders in the community would grasp this vision, they could articulate it,” said Paul. “The mentors were enthusiastic because they were inspired by the leaders.”

Sanchez said they were able to get buy-in from the congregational leaders because project organizers quickly put them at ease. “I think it was the approach that we took,” said Sanchez. “The way that we addressed [them] was, ‘we’re not here to put a load or burden on you.’ Then we said, ‘this is why you need a CVC,’ and then you could see the relief in their faces.”

Now that Amachi Hampden County has secured their congregation partners, they are in the process of locating children. They partner with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department and also recruit children through schools and community organizations. In addition, they are in the process of partnering with Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program. “We followed the road map,” said Paul. “[Amachi] can and it does work.” Sanchez agrees, but wishes she had known about the Amachi Model earlier.

“In the beginning I was frustrated because I started with nothing, and I didn’t know how to locate the information,” said Sanchez. “So I went into the Amachi site and located Rev. Goode’s book, and I printed it out and that’s what I used. I wish I would have known where to locate the tools. I would have saved myself a whole lot of time if I had known that [sample Amachi documents] are out there. I think lots of people don’t know that, and they start from scratch."

“We hope that we can inspire other communities that are embracing this and they can see that [Amachi] can be done,” Paul added.

Spring 2005