Kuyper College Receives Service Award from GRACE

Nearly 200 people recently gathered at the Dominican Center at Marywood to honor the service efforts of Kuyper College and Westminster Presbyterian Church and to offer their support to the programs of the Grand Rapids Area Center for Ecumenism (GRACE).

Selected for their excellence in outreach, giving, leadership, innovation and diversity – the main components of the GRACE Ecumenical Service Award criteria – both Kuyper and Westminster received their awards giving thanks and appreciation for the organizing work GRACE accomplishes in bringing the faith community together around the issues of hunger, homelessness and racism.

Kuyper received the award for its dedication to integrated faith and learning which brings faculty and students directly into the heart of Grand Rapids—ministering to those who are homelessness and living in poverty.  Kuyper College President, Nicholas Kroeze accepted on behalf of Kuyper, describing the College as a “praxis” institution.  Kroeze credited the increase in their student body over the past years to the yearning of incoming students to bear practical witness to the love of God in the community.  According to GRACE officials, it is precisely the practice described by Kroeze that earned Kuyper the Ecumenical Service Award. 

Just a few of the ways Kuyper College engages in the community:

• Students have formed a Street Team to minister to individuals living without food and shelter; students, staff and faculty volunteer at missions and other agencies in Grand Rapids Heartside neighborhood.  
• Social work students have completed research identifying voids and overlaps in services to the homeless at Degage Ministries and will continue assisting the Heartside Agency Group with this work.

As a community that values and welcomes diversity, Kuyper has developed a diversity program that embraces and promotes an environment where people of diverse cultural, ethnic, and denominational backgrounds thrive. Faculty, staff, and administrators have attended GRACE’s Institutes for Healing Racism, Summits on Racism and the Partners for a Racism-Free Community (PRFC) Forums.  Kuyper has also taken the first step in the Standards and Credentialing process of the PRFC – by submitting their assessment they have decidedly demonstrated their resolution to fulfill their pledge to create a racism-free community.