Aubrey Gulick | Collegian
The High Rise GOAL program is rebuilding after COVID-19 guidelines forced the program to consider new ways to connect with the ministry.
High Rise allows students to connect with seniors and disabled residents at the High Rise Apartments in Hillsdale. The apartment is a government-subsidized housing unit primarily for elderly, disabled, and low-income residents, and located downtown on Manning Street.
The program provides weekly game nights and Bible studies to encourage residents to interact with one another and the students
While under restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, High Rise GOAL program kept in contact with the residents through outdoor meetings and phone calls.
“A lot of them don’t have a lot of family, don’t have a lot of people visiting them; and our main goal is to encourage and minister to them,” junior GOAL leader Will McIntosh said.
Although the program held outdoor events during the early months of the 2020 fall semester, it was unable to continue due to inclement weather.
During the winter, students engaged with the residents on the phone.
“We really only called our three to four regulars. There were enough volunteers who wanted to participate, so I was assigned one resident and I called her three or four times throughout the winter,” sophomore Micah Wooddell said.
“This year is going to be sort of a cold reset on getting the program back to where it was and then hopefully growing from there,” McIntosh said.
The program is focused on building relationships through community events that bring students and residents in contact with each other.
“High Rise is fundamentally a relational ministry organization, that’s what we do, we try to connect college students with people who live in High Rise,” McIntosh said. “The game night is just an excuse for us to talk to them and to get to know them and to see how they’re doing. The Bible study is more of that dual method of getting to know them, talking to them, but also showing them the scriptures.”
Both events during the week provide students and the residents with the opportunity to both pray and talk together.
“A lot of times the residents will just have something in their life that they want us to know about. After we pray about it, they’re really thankful and that means a lot to them,” Wooddell said.
Senior Anne Rolfe joined the High Rise program as a freshman, and has since made friends with an elderly lady living in the apartment building.
“I started coming to visit her just on my own, like on the weekend sometimes,” Rolfe said. “We’ve just got to be close friends; I call her when I go home for break. She says I’m her adopted granddaughter.”
Rolfe said that interactions like these have kept her coming back to the High Rise every year.
“I think what kept me sticking with the program was just seeing how encouraged the residents were by having college students there,” Rolfe said.
High Rise faced many challenges due to the restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chris Gauthier, the student program director during the 2020-2021 school year, worked hard to ensure events could still take place.
“It was really difficult to get into the building,” McIntosh said. “The people that Chris had worked with were helpful, but they had their hands tied by the building administration and the company that owns the building, so they weren’t allowed to go inside the building at all.”
High Rise held their first event outdoors this yearduring the first full week of classes. Although they only had one resident attend, they are hopeful for the future.
“We’re hoping to get it back on its feet and try, and get around the COVID regulations,” McIntosh said. “I’m hoping that building management will be more open to us getting inside the building.”
The program has provided the students and residents with an abundance of helpful resources, Rolfe said.
“We didn’t have a lot of eloquent wisdom necessarily, and we couldn’t do a lot to change the circumstances in their lives,” she said, “but it was powerful to see that just having someone that listens to them and cares about them, and prays for them, really made a big difference in their lives.”