Northlake residents were able to get a head start on the new school year July 16 at the Hope Fest event in Northlake.
“I’ve gone to Hope Fests in the city before, but I just recently moved to Northlake,” said Marisol Colon, 37. “I love everything they have to offer. I have seven kids, as old as 19 and as young as 7 years old, and to buy school supplies for all of them is very pricey. And the health fair — there was a time I didn’t have insurance, and I got their shots at another Hope Fest. So it’s an awesome thing.”
Northlake’s Hope Fest was held at Grant Park Recreation Center, 44 W. Golfview Drive, and families who attended were able to get free health screenings, free haircuts, a free backpack filled with school supplies, and a free bag of groceries as well as play free games and attend an outdoor music concert. The event is aimed at getting families ready for the first day of school.
“This is an outreach that we do to share the love of God with the community, especially in times like now, when there’s so much craziness and hopelessness going on in the world,” said Pastor Larry Perez, the founder and senior pastor of U-turn Covenant Church, 35 E. North Ave. “We want to be able to bring some peace.”
Pastor Perez says one of the most important things about Hope Fest is that it gives him a chance to meet residents and their families and learn their needs so he can better serve the community.
“That for me is more important than anything else, seeing the smile on the kids’ faces as they get their book bag and they look better after getting a haircut,” he said. “These are tough times, even financially, and many families don’t have enough money to go do health screenings or even get a haircut sometimes. So we’re able to provide help to the community with this.”
He said organizers had planned the event to accommodate 500 families, and by about 1:30 p.m. at least 300 families were in attendance.
“The groceries for Hope Fest were donated, and each family is going to get two bags of groceries,” said Nina Contreras, an event organizer who was at Saturday’s event. “One of the bags has breakfast goodies and stuff like that. The other one is nutritional foods, like beans and vegetables, fruits, pasta and pasta sauce. We also made sure that they had juice that’s 100 percent juice. We just want to make sure that for one week, this family will be fed.”
Contreras said her group spent the previous night finalizing donations and going to stores and then having members of her organization and teenage volunteers sort through the groceries and organize the bags at U-Turn.
“We were at the church until about midnight to pack all the bags and get them ready for today,” she said. “It’s been a blessing, and this is the first year we’ve been able to feed this many people. And hopefully next year, we’ll be able to feed even more. That’s our goal.”
Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.