WORLD Magazine names Hope Award finalists

ASHEVILLE, NC – WORLD News Group is pleased to announce the East Region finalist for WORLD’s tenth annual Hope Award for Effective Compassion: Church Hill Activities & Tutoring (CHAT) in Richmond, VA.

The annual Hope Award goes to an organization that demonstrates the power of effective
compassion by fostering life-change through personal, Christ-centered help to those in
need. Each year, five regional awards go to organizations that embody all that the Hope
Award stands for, qualifying them for the national award.

CHAT grew out of the hospitality of Percy and Angie Strickland who are part of East End
Fellowship, the neighborhood church closely tied to CHAT. The Stricklands began having
neighborhood children over after school, which resulted in CHAT’s formation thirteen
years ago. Today, the group includes close to 160 children in the “East End,” which
includes a number of Richmond’s predominantly African-American, high-unemployment
neighborhoods, including Church Hill.

Most CHAT staffers live in the neighborhood and go to East End Fellowship, where they
tutor, mentor, and teach life skills. Focusing on those who are behind in literacy, CHAT
strives for every child in the program to make an additional grade-level jump each year
with individualized learning plans.

To balance the academic rigor, one CHAT tutor has a garden where kids learn to grow
plants and make salsa that they sell at the local farmers’ market along with homemade ice
cream.

Church Hill Academy, a nearby Christian high school, is also affiliated with CHAT. Church
Hill equips students for academic success but does more: Skip Long, who heads the
Academy, said, “We want kids to know two things: there’s somebody thinking the best of
you, and there’s somebody praying for you.”

The high school meets at Carlisle Avenue Baptist Church, a largely white and elderly
church. Upstairs is a wall with photos of the graduates since the school started in 2007,
all of them African American. Long, who is black, recalled how the white congregants

recently announced in a Sunday service, “Our kids are graduating.” He loved this plural language. “Christ is at work,” he concluded.

The overall 2015 Hope Award winner will receive $25,000 for the advancement of its ministry—at a time when some want to remove tax exemption from any nonprofit
organization that maintains a biblical position.

WORLD News Group, sponsor of the Hope Award for Effective Compassion, is a nonprofit organization that produces WORLD Magazine, WORLD Radio, and a wealth of engaging digital content about the stories that matter most. To learn more about WORLD and its award-winning Christian worldview journalism, visit wng.org.