It Takes More Than Just A Village

There is an old African Proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” However, Rev. Peter Matthews, lead pastor of McKinley UMC in Dayton, and team, are taking that one step farther…enter the Dayton Equity Center.

The Dayton Equity Center was envisioned by Pastor Peter in memory of UMC stalwart and McKinley UMC/Dayton area local legend John H. Moore, Sr. The Dayton Equity Center is a separate 501c3 advised by both McKinley members and Dayton residents to help provide a holistic array of services to their local neighborhood and throughout the city. Its mission acts upon ways to cultivate avenues for social mobility that will later provide the infrastructure for discipleship pathways through youth services, civic engagement, food/neighborhood security, and workforce development. 

Peter and the congregation, to whom he affectionately refers as his “fam,” believe it takes more than just any village to raise a child. It takes a healthy village to raise and rear healthy leaders in these ever-chaotic times. Next generation leaders who are equipped and empowered can make a real difference in real time on behalf of real people. Next Generation servant leaders like Ashton Dupler, Anthony Newton, and Tia Payne.

Ashton Dupler, student pastor at McKinley and Associate Director of The Dayton Equity Center, provides programmatic oversight for a network of services for those young and young at heart. His specific area of focus is work-force development where he has launched an initiative specifically for formerly incarcerated persons and high school dropouts. Called POWER, which stands for Positive Opportunities With Excellent Rewards, it is the only faith-based forklift certification program in the nation. With partners including but not limited to P&G, Dayton Food Bank, Fifth Third Bank, and GEM City Career Prep High School, POWER is a four-week paid internship that facilitates both living wage opportunities and self-reliance for 25 persons of all backgrounds six times annually.

Education Director and Family Resource Coordinator Anthony Newton has a deep passion for kids. When talking about the after-school program at Roosevelt Elementary he said, “Our program goes far beyond giving them a safe space to be after school and get some homework done and have a snack. We get to help build their character and hopefully help them choose wise choices.” The after-school program with upwards of 40 young persons from 1st-6th grade is partnered with Dayton Public Schools and involves tutoring, meditation, STEM opportunities, and soccer practice four days a week, while also providing “weekend bags” to more than 100 students. These are just a few examples of how Newton and Dayton Equity facilitate concrete ways for young persons in the city’s most impoverished elementary school to consistently feel the love of God. 

Another organization with roots connected to McKinley and led by Next Generation leader/Founder TiaNisha Payne is GEMS (Girls Emerging Into Maturity). Payne, a McKinley UMC member and Dayton Equity coordinator for Food Security, knows the importance of helping today’s teens navigate the complexities of growing up. GEMS is a separate 501c3 that meets twice weekly for 40 weeks a year at McKinley while providing more than 70 African American pre-adolescent and adolescent women supervised opportunities to explore their dreams in relevant ways with mentors, field trips, and journaling. 2022 marks the first year GEMS will celebrate a high school graduate who has been a part of the program from middle school, a celebration Tia had only dreamed of before. That celebration will reverberate throughout her organization, McKinley UMC, and the entire community.

Finally, Matthews believes that by “changing the projectory of our local community we can impact the greater community and world. Our denomination possesses the tools to make realized differences. We simply must commit ourselves to the work.” His hope is that by providing fair and equitable opportunities to young leaders today like Tia, Anthony, and Ashton, while also improving the health of the overall community, McKinley UMC will create organic ways for God’s grace to be felt by all. Healthy leaders must value all human life, extend compassion to their neighbors, and assist in making humanity human again. Healthy leaders like Next Generation servant leaders assist in making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world right now. 

This post is republished with permission from the West Ohio Annual Conference website. Marielynn Grace contributed to the article.