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St. Anthony’s Catholic Church recently started an Adopt-A-Student program, giving college students the opportunity to become part of a local family while they’re away from home.
The program matches students with families in the parish who “adopt” them, giving them a home away from home and local parents a little extra help around the house.
“Families just need help. Especially at St. Anthony’s, the parent-to-child ratio is somewhat unusual,” Adopt-A-Student volunteer Kathryn Wales said. “It can get overwhelming to just do normal life, but we know that many students want to have that life, and so they would like to have a glimpse of it. If they didn’t grow up in the sort of family they’d like to have, then they want to peek in and see how it works.”
Freshman Katie Dimmer, an Adopt-A-Student participant who was adopted by the Wales family, said that it was refreshing to be part of a family again. As an only child, spending time with small children has been a new experience for Dimmer, and she said she has learned a lot about marriage and family life from the Wales’ example.
“It was just kind of cool to think about ‘ok, if I have kids, this is how I want to start raising them.’ It was just lots of little things to think about,” Dimmer said. “I don’t know if the program was intentionally meant to do that, but just from a parenting perspective, that was kind of neat. Obviously they’re a great example of a Catholic marriage, so that’s been cool.”
According to Wales, the program provides a great opportunity for students to find a mentor and gain the perspective of an older friend.
“You can talk about life while you’re folding laundry or get some dating advice from somebody who’s not your mom but who’s ten years older than you are,” Wales said. “I think that’s really valuable. That mid-generation gap is a really special sort of mentor-protege type of arrangement. That’s what we as families want to offer.”
While College Baptist Church and several other local Protestant churches have had similar programs for some time, St. Anthony’s has never had one. Someone at St. Anthony’s heard about College Baptist’s program, and a women’s discipleship group decided to start a similar program at their own church this past February.
“I think the idea first came up last year in a conversation between Emma Lindley, Kathryn Wales, Amy Gaetano, and myself,” program coordinator Lisa Whalen said. “We thought it could be something that students would enjoy and that might be helpful to some St. Anthony’s families. We didn’t really pursue the idea at that time, but later the same topic came up. Numerous students were interested, so Emma contacted Friar David and got his approval.”
More students than families signed up for the program, Wales said, and only a few families not affiliated with the college volunteered. While fewer people signed up than the program’s founders had hoped, Wales said she is optimistic the program will grow over time.
“We decided to keep our expectations somewhat low, and chose to think maybe not many people will do this at first,” Wales said. “But if it’s good, if students are really benefitting and families are really benefitting, then it’ll grow. It’ll grow just by word of mouth.”
Each interested family and each student filled out a form that helped Wales match students with families, she said. Whalen also helped pair students and families.
“I’d say the hardest part — aside from finding time to sit down at the computer — was matching students with families,” Whalen said. “I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, and I hope that as many people as possible will have a positive experience with the program.”
Wales said it was disappointing that no men signed up for the program.
“I really wanted a boy who could chop wood,” Wales said. “We have all this wood back here, and we have a fireplace, and it’s just not something that my husband can justify learning how to do. I know some guys just want to use their hands, they get tired of all this cerebral work. So I was waiting for this boy to come along, and then not a single boy signed up.”
Wales said she hopes more boys will sign up in the future, but that she isn’t sure how to recruit them.
“Hopefully this first round with only girls will inspire some boys. I don’t know how we’re going to change that exactly,” Wales said.
