HomeWorks Trenton is a free, community-based, after-school residential program designed to provide a supportive and safe space where high school girls learn to self-advocate, become leaders, and achieve academic success.
Four aspects define our program:
Residential Boarding: From Sunday evenings to Friday mornings, our scholars live in our dorm with three staff and spend weekends with their families. Residential boarding creates a structured, stable environment for scholars to focus on academics and personal growth. It provides an immersive community experience for scholars to collectively grow in ways traditional, non-residential programs do not allow.
Core Curriculum (Academics & Identity-Driven Leadership): Our academics programming focuses on daily tutoring, skill development, and college preparation. Additionally, scholars engage in Black and Brown girl-centered workshops, social justice discussions and readings, and a public service capstone and internship. This curriculum equips scholars with the tools and confidence to become leaders that ultimately creates systemic change in their communities.
Career Readiness: Third and fourth year internships and electives allow scholars to explore their academic and career interests, making an impact in the community while gaining valuable work experience.
Wellness, Field Trips, and Travel: Group Therapy offer spaces for scholars to develop mindful habits and practice self-love. HomeWorks also sponsors group travel to local organizations (like local theater productions) and cities such as New York and Washington D.C. to further supplement their public education and offer experiential learning opportunities outside of the classroom.
HomeWorks offers the support girls need to graduate from high school, attend college, feel confident in their discovery and evolution of self, become effective leaders, and create change. Our mission is to inspire and equip young women from marginalized communities to achieve their potential and positively transform the world around them by providing a supportive and educational residential environment.
9:00 a.m. | Assembly Room, with coffee and breakfast snacks
In this five-week series through June, we will learn from activists and historians as they seek justice and point the way toward a better future for us all. We will listen and learn with advocates for a humane criminal justice system and an expert on Princeton’s fraught history with race. A scholar on church hymn composition will close the series with song and the history of Lift Every Voice and Sing.
Thank you to the Mass Incarceration Task Force for organizing this month’s leadership.
Audio recordings will be posted below each class description.
June 2 | Sean Washington
Wrongful Conviction to Exoneration: My Journey for Justice
Wrongfully convicted of multiple homicides, Sean Washington served twenty-five years before his eventual release. Come hear about his experiences in prison and the work Sean has done and continues to do since his release to help incarcerated people and their families.
Unfortunately the audio for this class was not captured.
Sean Washington, born and raised in Camden, NJ, dropped out of school to work and help support his family. Earning his GED while in prison and studying to be a paralegal helped develop the skills to prove his innocence. He was also a tutor helping other prisoners complete their high school educations. Since his release in 2020, he has worked as a paralegal, served as a youth mentor, spoken at legislative hearings, and advocates for prison reform. His mission is “to make a difference in this world and leave it in a better place.”
Advocating and mobilizing in New Jersey isn’t enough to truly transform the harmful conditions too many families face. Come learn how relational faith based powerbuilding is the key to building beloved community and living into who we are as people of faith. We’ll take the first steps toward our own internal revolution and begin answering the question of who we need to become.
Charlene D. Walker, Executive Director of Faith in New Jersey, is a New Jersey native and a powerful woman of faith with a consistent record of fiercely advocating for racial, immigrant, economic, and social justice. She challenges leaders and institutions to better unite our social movements and to work towards dismantling systems of hate and oppression.
Rising from the Ashes: A Journey of Redemption, Advocacy, and Education
Come hear the life story of Donte Hatcher, Sr., founder of Knowledge is the New Currency, a non-profit that assists at-risk youth. Learn about his deeply personal journey through incarceration and his transformation through education and his research to reform the system that once held him captive.
Donte Hatcher, Sr.holds a degree in psychology and advocates for mental health awareness. He founded a non-profit organization called Knowledge Is the New Currency which empowers justice-impacted individuals and at-risk youth through education, mentorship, and community support. He is currently researching ways to reform the mass incarceration system.
Hear from lifelong Princeton resident, teacher, historical guide and advocate, Shirley Satterfield as she discusses our town’s segregated history through the lens of her life, her ancestors and descendants, including justice denied and achieved throughout her career.
Shirley Ann Satterfield, the fourth of six generations of the VanZandt Moore May family in Princeton, was educated in the Princeton Schools during the segregated years and graduated from Princeton High School. While a student at Bennett College for Women (Greensboro, NC), Shirley participated in the 1960 sit-ins with the Greensboro Four, students from A&T University. She earned her Master’s Degree in Guidance/Personnel Services from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey). She taught English and history for many years and was a guidance counselor in Hightstown and Princeton High Schools.
James Weldon Johnson and his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, wrote this anthem in 1900 and also devoted their talents to preserving the tradition of the “spirituals.” Now known as the “Black National Anthem,” join us to learn about its place in the history of the Black Church and its impact on the global church’s quest for social justice.
Paul E. Rorem, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Benjamin B. Warfield Professor of Medieval Church History Emeritus, earned an MDiv from Luther Theological Seminary, an STM from The Lutheran Theological Seminary, and a PhD from Princeton Seminary. An ordained Lutheran minister, he is interested in medieval church history and Pseudo-Dionysius. His courses covered the confessions and influence of St. Augustine, the Christian mystical tradition, medieval Christianity, and the spiritual and theological legacy of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings. He is editor of Lutheran Quarterly and Lutheran Quarterly Books.
His new book, Singing Church History: Introducing the Christian Story through Hymn Texts,published in May 2024, is available for purchase in the church office through June for the discounted “author event” price of $18 (retail $34). Contact Lauren Yeh (email) in the church office.
On behalf of Bending the Moral Arc Courageous Conversations (BMA CC), Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church’s Christian Education Committee, and Nassau Presbyterian Church, we are thrilled to invite you to our virtual meeting on May 15th at 7:30 pm honoring the legendary Tuskegee Airmen. This BMA CC meeting will feature Princeton graduate, Gordon Smith. Gordon will tell the inspirational story of how his father, Captain Luther H. Smith of the fabled “Tuskegee Airmen,” fought racism in our country’s armed forces, and served heroically as one of the “Red Tail” fighter pilots in the skies above Germany in World War II. We hope to see you there!!
Consider donating to the Raritan Valley Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Manville. They have a partnership with Housing Initiatives of Princeton (HIP), one of Nassau’s Mission Partners. HIP received an exceptional grant from Nassau’s Mission & Outreach Committee in January for their transitional housing move-in/move-out days. Often a family is in need of furniture as well as a home. HIP’s partnership with the ReStore helps families furnish their new apartments.
The Nassau Church Refugee Coordinating Team has provided this update on the Hashimi family, the Afghan refugee family that Nassau Church has sponsored.
This past summer, the Coordinating Team reported the good news that the family’s asylum applications had been approved. This gave the family the legal right to live and work in the United States and to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship.
More recently, the father of the family who is stranded in Dubai has received preliminary approval for his spousal asylum application and an invitation to submit his information for a visa. That could still take a long time to resolve, but the Coordinating Team is hopeful that things are moving in a positive direction.
There is other good news. The second oldest daughter has passed her GED and is enrolled at Mercer County Community College. Her mother and older sister are also enrolled there.
The oldest son is still working at Princeton Orthopedics, and his brother is in the process of enrolling in a commercial pilot training program which will prepare him for a promising career.
We are grateful that they and all the members of the family have been such cheerful and enthusiastic partners in our work together.
We want to recognize the ongoing commitment of the Refugee Coordinating Team, who are walking alongside the Hashimi’s as they continue to navigate immigration, education, and medical systems. Our thanks to them and the other volunteers who have given of their time and resources as part of Nassau’s commitment to support refugees.
We have become aware that some of you may have received emails that appear to be from Dave Davis or other church staff requesting your help. Please be very cautious. Church staff will not contact you asking you to buy gift cards, etc. Church staff emails will always come from a nassauchurch.org email – not a gmail or other address. We have taken steps to encrypt email addresses on our website to prevent this but it seems nothing can completely block determined scammers.
Please DO NOT respond to these emails. Even if you think an email is really from a church staff member, please make independent contact to verify before you make a financial transaction. You can send an email through the encrypted emails on our website or you can call the church and leave a message. We check the messages regularly.
We can all work together to deter this by reporting these phishing attempts through our service providers’ reporting processes. If you have questions, please call or email the church office.
We appreciate that folks want to help and just want to make sure that none of us are taken advantage of. Use a healthy dose of skepticism!
“Telling Our Stories” is a new documentary film that tells of the history and relationship of Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church and Nassau Presbyterian Church. It is the story of how two congregations are working to be honest about our past and move forward together standing on our faith and building relationships one by one. It is 37 minutes long and is a must see!!
The bulletin from the October 8 service, linked below, also contains a history of Presbyterians in Princeton since 1755 compiled by members of the churches.
Sunday, October 8, 1:30-3:30 p.m., Sanctuary
Reception following, Assembly Room
Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, Princeton, NJ, founded 1840.Nassau Presbyterian Church, Princeton, NJ, founded as The First Presbyterian Church of Princeton, 1766.
Learn more about the shared history of Witherspoon Street and Nassau Presbyterian Churches. The Rev. Dr. Jonathan Lee Walton, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, will speak and we will view a brief documentary by Bob Meola.
By telling the stories of our shared history over the last 186 years, this project offers a look at the evolution and practice of the Presbyterian faith, in one of the oldest towns in America, through the multicolored lenses of our congregations.
Members of Nassau, Witherspoon and Westminster Presbyterian Churches are creating a coalition of faith groups in Central NJ who are deeply concerned about an exception that was written into the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (in 1874).
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except for those convicted of a crime. We view this exception as morally wrong. It perpetuates the legacy of slavery itself in the form of demeaning involuntary servitude in our prisons. In the long term, it is socially destructive, since the formerly incarcerated are returned to society impoverished and demoralized rather than rehabilitated.
A number of states copied the language of the U.S. 13th Amendment and its inhuman “exception” into their state constitutions. New Jersey does not have such language in its constitution. Nonetheless, our prison system takes advantage of that exception in its use of involuntary servitude.
A diverse group of seven states have now voted to remove that exception through citizen referendums. Rhode Island recently set an example in 2022 by adding this language to its state constitution:
Slavery shall not be permitted in this state.
The New Jersey bills (download and read them below) are similarly worded.
We are calling on the NJ State Legislature to quickly pass Senate Bill SCR135 and Assembly Bill ACR125 which would put a constitutional amendment before NJ voters in November 2024. This bill would explicitly forbid slavery or involuntary servitude in the state, including for conviction of a crime.
HomeWorks Trenton is a free, community-based, after-school residential program designed to provide a supportive and safe space where high school girls learn to self-advocate, become leaders, and achieve academic success.
