🌿 We are joined by Jonathan Cummings of the local non-profit, Revive South Jersey.
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Tom (01:33.338)
So here we are on the Bridgeton Beacon.
And I want to give you a platform to sort of have the we just met conversation because we really did. And as opposed to me bringing a bunch of bullet points and trying to sound smart having done homework, I figured I'd let you lay it out and let the questions come from there. But sort of for anyone who doesn't know you personally, Jonathan Cummings, introduce yourself and go ahead jump right into the organization that we're discussing today.
Jonathan Cummings (01:52.373)
Sounds good.
Jonathan Cummings (02:04.757)
Sure. So I'm Jonathan Cummings. I am originally from Northwest Southern of Chicago but moved to South Jersey when I was eight years old and have more or less other than a almost seven year stint living in Mexico have been in South Jersey since we moved here when I was eight. And after moving back from Mexico in 2011,
couple of the churches that had supported us while we were there doing relief work. I ran a Mexican nonprofit organization there that had a grade school, so pre-K-3 up through fifth grade, a dental clinic, and then we worked up with some friends to help them start an orphanage. So I worked on, did that work down in Guadalajara, Mexico for almost seven years and then moved back.
And then Revive South Jersey was a nonprofit that was started in 2012 to seek to meet the needs starting in Bridgeton, but with the goal of reaching various places in South Jersey. And it was started based on conversations with different members of the community, because we really wanted to be conscious of other organizations and individuals already doing work. And so we said, look, where are there gaps in services? Where are there...
needs for partnership, et cetera, and how can we kind of come in and help meet those needs. And so through those conversations, it became clear that the primary need for services was with the Spanish-speaking immigrant community. And so that's where we started. So we started with partnering with some ESL classes, working together with Mayor Kelly, doing some things at some of the apartment complexes in the city of Bridgeton. And
And then it kind of flushed out from there. So currently, we work as Revive South Jersey and we also work in the community through a collaboration called Unidos Para La Familia. And in that we have kind of three primary pillars or kind of avenues of work that we do. We provide adult education. So we have a Spanish GED program where we provide all the instruction.
up through testing in partnership with Rowan College at Cumberland County. So everything is done in Spanish. There's lots of places that will do English instruction and then you can test in Spanish. We are unique in that we are one of the few, if not the only like one or two in the state of New Jersey that provide all the instruction in Spanish. So at any given point in time, we have 60 to 75 students that are in that program. We've seen over 120.
individuals get their diplomas through that program over the course of the existence of it. Then we also provide ESL in partnership with the Salem County VoTEC. So we have about 80 students that are part of the ESL program and then we also partner with the Mexican consulate to provide a service called the Plaza Comunitaria where we work to help
adults who may need to learn to read and write in Spanish and also get their primary or secondary certificate from Mexico in primary education. And so, yeah.
Tom (05:35.375)
And real quick, can you give me that organization name again?
Jonathan Cummings (05:40.233)
Sure, Revive South Jersey and then Unidos, yep, Unidos Para La Familia is the collaboration.
Tom (05:41.834)
No, no, no. I, I.
That one I got, what was the one you just mentioned?
Jonathan Cummings (05:51.293)
the Plaza Comunitaria with the Mexican Consulate.
Tom (05:54.994)
Yes, okay. So that's, that translates to community, like gathering or plaza. Okay. All right. See, it's a
Jonathan Cummings (05:56.958)
person.
Jonathan Cummings (06:02.229)
Community place, yeah, yeah. So I think it's kind of, it ties in with the consulate's efforts to be out in the community serving, like in other countries, serving their local constituents that live abroad.
Tom (06:16.634)
And one more clarification for anybody who's coming into this not knowing what ESL means, that's English as a second language. Okay. That was the first Spanish I didn't understand. So I was challenged. I was like, shoot, I missed that one and we have to go back.
Jonathan Cummings (06:26.101)
Correct, correct. So yeah, so between those.
Jonathan Cummings (06:33.598)
Got it.
Jonathan Cummings (06:39.301)
All good, all good. So yeah, so between kind of those three avenues of adult ed, we serve over 150 adult learners on a weekly basis, primarily through online instruction, but there also is some in-person components to that. Kind of the second avenue, which is very family focused, is we provide what we call family advocacy, or life coaches that will...
work with and meet with families to help them set and reach goals in the areas of health and wellness, finance, education, educational advocacy, relationships, and more. And we work with anywhere from 60 to 80 families on a monthly basis in that advocacy. Kind of a key piece of that is we also partner with the Camden Center for Law and Social
Jonathan Cummings (07:34.057)
an attorney that we fund through a grant that works from their office but located in Bridgeton. So we've been able to bring immigration services down to Bridgeton, primarily really helping individuals, knowing and understand what their rights and obligations are and ensure that they're getting the proper representation by attorneys that they may use. We do take on a few cases. The services are driven by...
funding from the Victims of Crime Act so we can represent individuals who've been the victims of crime and need specific representation to help them get a U visa or other specific visas that have to do with receiving services because they were a victim of a crime. And then the last piece of what we do is kind of focused around children and youth.
Tom (08:22.434)
Gotcha.
Jonathan Cummings (08:31.649)
And so that's programming that we do primarily in partnership with the Bridgerton Police Athletic League. And so that was something that started through conversations with parents that we were connected with in conversations with Bridgerton PAL. PAL really wanted to connect better with the Spanish-speaking community, and our parents really wanted some positive activities for their kids during the summer and then also during the school year after school.
And so back in 2017, we said, hey, let's start a summer soccer program. So that was started in 2017 and that has now grown to be a year round soccer, dance, karate, skating, music, tutoring, life skills, training, all that happened for about 200 kids on a weekly basis.
And again, all of that connecting these kids in a positive way with local law enforcement and really working to build community and relationships there. So yeah, that's kind of who we are and what we're up to and really trying in those three kind of avenues of service, provide a holistic approach to building community, providing opportunities for individuals and families to set and meet goals.
Tom (09:51.506)
Okay. Family advocacy, youth programs. And so you're now, if I heard you correctly, did it start with that facet of program sort of creation? Did it start with soccer? And then based on the ability to organize that, did it?
turn into all these things, I would imagine if you can run a league and the moving parts in a league, there's a lot of things that have fewer moving parts. Was it replicated after that?
Jonathan Cummings (10:24.313)
Right, so I mean again, we kind of came in really wanting to partner with the Police Athletic League and as you probably heard from the conversation, a lot of what we do is in partnership with other organizations, right? We have things we do about that we really work hard to partner with other organizations with their areas of strength so that we can provide the best service to our families and the community. So, Brist and Powell already had...
kind of this setup for running sports programs in the community. So we didn't want to set up another sports program. We said, look, how can we partner? How can we come in? And again, what are our areas of strength and what are yours? Well, you have this ability to run sports programming. What we can do is we can bring people and we can provide funding. So our organization has worked really hard to provide funding so that we can hire professional instructors. So we fund EDP or so that's...
youth premier soccer coaches that come in and provide the soccer instruction. We have professionals providing the karate and dance instruction. We hire Bridgerton School District teachers to provide the tutoring that the students receive. We have a professional music teacher who provides the piano lessons and instruction to kids at Indian Avenue School. So again, all of that is designed to really provide a high quality.
service to the kids and as much as possible really leave the connection and family involvement to the officers but they don't have to necessarily run anything specific. Now apart from this they do kind of have their own basketball program but that's the one they specifically run the rest we bring in professional instructors to provide the service.
Tom (12:11.362)
Gotcha, now I sort of understand where the connection points are and that would make you much more efficient rather than doing the work within your organization. It's partnering with people who've created their own module that serves the community, be it sports, be it education, whether it's language, whether it's legal, whether it's financial advisory, that type of thing. Makes a lot more sense than the picture I had in my head. Okay, cool.
And so started, this been running, oh wait, it's 11 years now. You said 2012, correct? All right, fantastic. Now what's the scope of the organization in terms of leadership or volunteers and are there ways for people to participate, you know, who find this to be a compelling message and initiative?
Jonathan Cummings (12:46.653)
Yes.
Jonathan Cummings (13:05.521)
Yeah, I mean, so again, by design, our whole goal is to get community members involved in what we do. So the majority of the individuals that work with us are members from the community. Many of them have at one point in time received services from our organization and are now turned around and employed by the organization. So
I mean we get involved in many different things in the community. I would say kind of an initial starting point for people wanting to connect with us as we do a few large events in the city. We do a Hispanic Heritage Day that this year will be on September 10th. So if people want to come out, check us out, see what we're about. We have about six, seven hundred people that will come out from Bridgeton and take part in that and it's just a great day celebrating Hispanic heritage through music, dance, food, crafts etc.
We also sponsor a reggae at the Riverfront, which will be October 7th this year. So that's where we bring in a reggae artist. The gentleman's name is Mystic Bowie and he has his group called the Talking Dreads. And they're a fabulous group that does incredible music. So that's, again, another fun touch point for people to come out, check us out, and see what we're involved in.
We do have opportunities for people to serve, especially for Spanish speakers. So with our GED program, we're always looking for instructors to help provide instruction in Spanish. There's also opportunities to volunteer as a native English speaker. With our ESL program, we're looking to connect our students with someone who's a native English speaker, just to, hey, jump online half hour, hour a week, and just let them be able to practice, but at the same time, having...
some language and cultural exchange that happens with that. So I'd say those are some of the initial ways we do have a couple events that we run each year to raise support. So if people are interested in supporting the organization, the primary event that we have locally is we do, we raise support for kids from Bridgeton High School to have
five full ride scholarships. We select five students a year that get to go to the local county college for two years at no cost and then an additional $10,000 a year to a four year school after that. So it can be up to $30,000 a year that these students can have it in scholarships provided to them over the course of their four years going to school. So that would be a great way.
Tom (15:51.458)
That's amazing.
Jonathan Cummings (15:52.881)
Yeah, so it's a pretty incredible way. We have some great partner organizations in that. Again, the Pappas Family Foundation is a great supporter of that. Percocci Brothers, which is a national organization, international organization based out of South Philly, does a lot of incredible work with us with that. And then various local partner organizations in Bridgeton also provide some great support there as well.
Tom (16:21.23)
Feel free to call out a few Bridgestone partners and we can make sure they get tagged when any of this hits social media.
Jonathan Cummings (16:29.237)
Sure, I mean, so I mean some of the things that we've done particularly locally Dannon we worked with them. They have a they have a plant based right in Bridgeton. They've done some great work locally and Most recently we worked together with them in Bridgeton City The local Bridgeton High School interact club and the Bridgeton Rotary Club and Ranch Hope
all worked together to install a butterfly garden over at the Bridgerton City Park. So that was something super cool and that we had the opportunity to take part in there. We received support from places like El Paisano, Bridgerton O'Neill Federal Credit Union, Fulton Bank, Century Savings Bank, TD Bank. A lot of these organizations are incredibly supportive in SPIRA.
very, very supportive of us and the work that we do, especially with the Police Athletic League and supporting the work there and efforts to encourage health and wellness, especially in the youth. So, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of great organizations and partners that exist in our community and happy to work together with them to make a difference.
Tom (17:47.958)
That's a good list of people to be tagging on LinkedIn next week for us. Yeah, from Dan into Inspira. Now, what we might consider doing, and I'll do my best to keep up, we should maybe cut a minute or two just of you talking about, again, here's a couple events and here's a couple way people can.
Jonathan Cummings (17:52.467)
Yeah.
Tom (18:16.342)
volunteer going back to some especially like if you guys have a need for Spanish speaking volunteers Why don't we do some of that and a spaniel so that we have some clips to put out on YouTube? I'll be curious just to see how those clips do when I set them out to a and
Jonathan Cummings (18:17.877)
Sure.
Tom (18:35.858)
check market as a Spanish language video versus what we always do, which is an English language video. That might be an, I might be calling you in a week saying, holy cow, let's make more Spanish language videos right away. But that, you know, with any luck. But anything you'd like to share, let's do that as well. And I'll make sure that gets appropriately cut and distributed.
Jonathan Cummings (18:59.509)
Sure, sure. So again, I mean, with regard to events, there's two great events that are coming up. If individuals are interested.
Tom (19:07.346)
Oh, no, no. No, I meant in Spanish. Like, let's do a Spanish version for YouTube and Instagram because I can tag it as a Spanish language. And my guess is people are doing, that's a whole market that Bridgerton Beacon isn't talking to. So let's, yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (19:10.993)
Ah, well I can do that. Okay, so we got the English part. You just want to... Yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (19:20.009)
Okay.
Jonathan Cummings (19:31.822)
Yeah. Sí. What? Well, good afternoon. I'm here in Bridgestone Beacon and I want to share with you some possibilities that you have for some events that are going to happen here in Bridgestone. On September 10 we have the Spanish Heritage Day, which starts at 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
In this event we have music, food, dance, a lot of festive things that the whole family can enjoy. In the center of Bridgestone there is an area called Riverfront. Everyone is welcome to come with us, with family members, to enjoy this day.
Jonathan Cummings (20:26.649)
We also have an event on October 7th, Reggaeton, where we will have an excellent artist who will be presenting for about two and a half hours of Reggaeton. So, welcome to come with us. Again, it is October 7th, which starts at 5 or 6 in the afternoon. On this day we will pass on more information.
in Facebook for the family. Also, if you are interested, we are always looking for people who are interested in supporting us with the program we have of GED, which we offer instruction in Spanish to people who want to obtain their GED in Spanish. And we always look for people who can...
support in science, mathematics, in teaching people, in reading, writing. Well, if you are interested, you can call us at 856-455-5509. Again, it's 856-455-5509. Thank you very much and enjoy your afternoon.
Tom (21:52.726)
Gracias. We needed some, we finally, we're finally speaking to half the population. It's overdue, and I can only tell you that Sister Doris Sacred Heart, 1988 through 1992, would be disgusted with me. She would be disgusted with me. So.
And the other thing is I spend about half the year in Florida, so half of the time I'm ordering in Spanish or interacting with people who speak Spanish at least, you know, half of their day. It's a missed opportunity as a podcaster, for sure.
Jonathan Cummings (22:27.061)
Sure.
Tom (22:33.778)
I'm going to love putting that out. What I'm curious to see is if I'm going to be able to drop the audio into a tool that will then create the transcript and then I'll drop it into another tool that will create an English language conversion for anybody who, because I'm thinking maybe I'll post the Spanish one on LinkedIn, not the English one at all, but I'll try and get the English words as subtitles on the screen. So that I mean, it's one thing for us to talk about, you know, supporting the Spanish
Jonathan Cummings (22:57.551)
Oh yeah.
Tom (23:03.152)
It's another thing for us to talk about supporting the Spanish community in Spanish. It's a heck of a lot more street cred when you're doing it that way. And it's not my terrible Spanglish. The latest humbling I got was I was at a restaurant, and I'm on Babel, and it's a Brazilian restaurant.
Jonathan Cummings (23:10.25)
Sure.
Jonathan Cummings (23:14.602)
Yeah
Tom (23:26.846)
And I've been, but I've been learning Spanish. And so she, she looks at me at 15 minutes into my meal and she says, you've been working on your Portuguese, haven't you? And I said, absolutely not. That's Spanish.
Tom (23:43.956)
Oh, so there's a.
Jonathan Cummings (23:45.813)
It's all good, it's all good. It's important to make the effort, that's all.
Tom (23:49.634)
It speaks to the value of everything you're doing. Yeah, yeah, I think there's probably a lot more sort of...
Jonathan Cummings (23:51.966)
Yeah.
Tom (23:58.018)
Think about it this way, how much more sort of juice does your community have? Your local area, your county area, the South Jersey area, sort of how much more juice do you have in economic development or social conversations within the state if we're able to represent amongst each other with clear communication? And in large part, Spanish and English would accomplish a lot in that respect.
If you literally knew how to speak your neighbor's language, I think that's probably an argument for a stronger community in terms of how do we lobby together for our common causes.
Jonathan Cummings (24:43.029)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's made an incredible difference. The immigrant community in Bridgeton has done wonders for the town, for the downtown. You go into the downtown and what 85% of the businesses that operate in downtown are Hispanic owned. So I mean, they're incredibly hardworking individuals care a lot about their local community and it's done wonders.
for it and there's a lot of wonderful things about the community and culture. So that's one of the things that we're trying to do is really work together, pull together local businesses and see how we can promote the area and really draw people in the area to benefit from the great restaurants, from the great shops, the artists and work and all this stuff that is there to enjoy right in downtown Bridgeton. Yeah, just happy to be part of the community and happy to work with so many great...
people not only our team members who are awesome and incredible but just community members who come in. I mean our students who take part in GED and ESL work 10, 12, 14 hour days and then jump into the classes to then continue to learn and progress and better themselves and better help their kids. So it's pretty incredible.
Tom (25:59.11)
Is there anything we haven't touched on that we should mention? It's we've got some events. Do we have everything you want to mention? Do any initiatives?
Jonathan Cummings (26:07.389)
I think so. Yeah, I think we've covered just about everything. I mean, to be honest, one of the main challenges we have is we were overrun and we just don't have enough opportunity to provide services because we've got wait lists for everything. So just to kind of give you an idea, our ESL program has 80 seats in it that are completely full and we have 159 people on the waiting list. So it's awesome and a bummer all at the same time. Yeah.
Tom (26:32.45)
That's awesome. I mean, in some respects, it's awesome. Yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (26:37.521)
I mean, so the need's there and people appreciate what we do, but I mean, it's just we're overrun with need.
Tom (26:45.574)
It's exactly like a shop owner who looks at his shelves at the end of the day and says, and sees that they're all empty and he's not, he, he has two ways to look at. Oh, hey, great. I sold everything or holy cow, how much more could I have sold if I had twice as much stuff on the shelves and that's the situation you're in. Hey, amazing. What we do is incredibly necessary and it's being embraced. Oh boy. But it seems like.
Maybe we could double or triple ourselves and be in the same situation and that would be what you probably want to grow towards or eliminate the need for some of the things so that you never needed to grow to that scale to begin with because you're addressing it at scale kind of thing. But with that said, if we've addressed what you want to get out there, I'm going to put you on the spot. And
put you in a corner and we're going to ask a question that's a hotly debated topic amongst the many hotly debated topics in the area. Mexican restaurants, your go-to and as a former resident of Mexico. It was a year plus, right?
Jonathan Cummings (27:49.309)
Have close.
Jonathan Cummings (27:53.768)
Yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (28:04.785)
Almost seven years living in Mexico.
Tom (28:06.042)
Okay, so maybe we allow you to have a scale on authenticity and a scale on just what you like. But the floor is yours. Good luck not alienating any of your friends.
Jonathan Cummings (28:19.465)
Well, I mean, I would say again, as with the organization, a lot of what I do even just with eating is partnership. So over time, built a great partnership with Los Molcajetes, which is over on Irving Avenue. Excellent food and excellent people. So they partner with us, they help provide the food when we do our scholarship events. They donated food to the soccer program. So they've just been a great community partner for us, which is important to me, but also
provide wonderful food. So they're my go-to. I really enjoy them and appreciate all that they do for the community.
Tom (28:57.382)
I love that place. They make wonderful food. Yeah, and there's, you could argue three or four places right off the top of my head, and I'm a novice. I know there's probably more than that, because, yeah, so many.
Jonathan Cummings (29:01.225)
They do. They do.
Jonathan Cummings (29:11.037)
There's lots of great places. That's not to knock any of the other places. There's wonder, I mean, and like I was saying before, I mean, I think that's one of the things that we wanna try to do to help Bridgeton in general is just highlight the fact that you can come down here and take your pick from anywhere, four, five, six, seven great Mexican and other opportunity to other restaurants that are in the area. Yep, yep.
Tom (29:34.018)
Jamaican-Peruvian.
You know, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I haven't worked my way through all the great Mexican yet, but I have dipped into some of the, like the Peruvian. This, there is, you're right. It's like that little downtown area for anybody who's not, you know, dipping in there because they think that, you know, maybe they don't, maybe because they don't speak Spanish, they're like, oh, I, you know, walk in, trust me, read the menu, order something, or ask a couple questions. Like you will not regret, you won't regret the portions.
Jonathan Cummings (29:45.426)
Yep.
Jonathan Cummings (30:03.857)
Nope. Never.
Tom (30:05.872)
These are the quality. That's been my experience. All right. Well, you did kind of skirt out of that like a politician. I'm not going to lie. That was well handled. You didn't, you didn't, we didn't get you.
Jonathan Cummings (30:07.346)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan Cummings (30:18.319)
Yeah
Tom (30:21.642)
All right, well, I will say, Jonathan, if this has been a good platform and you think we've covered any of that messaging, if you want to give Low Smoke Ajetes a shout out en Espanol, let's do that too. I'll make a clip. We did a clip for them a few months ago that got a whole bunch of traffic and they were very interactive with it. Like they were sharing it and stuff. If you want to give them a quick shout out in Spanish, I'll stand here pretending like I know what's going on.
Jonathan Cummings (30:41.242)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Jonathan Cummings (30:48.321)
We are very happy that we can work together with our community. And one of the organizations, the businesses that support us a lot is the Moquejete. They always support us with our events that we have, especially the event that we have in Terra Nona, where we raise scholarships for students from the high school in Bridgestone.
and we try becas for them. So we are always very happy that we can work with many in the community and especially the moquejetes, for what they do for the community and the good food they provide us. Thank you.
Tom (31:31.81)
Good stuff. I heard Terra Nono in there too.
Jonathan Cummings (31:34.405)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's where we host the event, the scholarship event. Is that terra no and then we bring in a little smoke ahead of this food.
Tom (31:42.818)
We interviewed Terra Nono, I want to say it was just over a year ago. I think we have a five part series with them on the Bridgestone Beacon website. There's a winery section where we interviewed seven or eight winemakers last year, and that's been a fascinating thing creeping up in the, or flourishing in the area for a couple of decades, but there's so many and they're so good. That's, that's a, that's, that's a good shout out. Well, and
Jonathan Cummings (31:53.749)
Hmm.
Jonathan Cummings (32:02.761)
Sure.
Yeah, it's been great for the area for sure.
Tom (32:10.05)
Who knew that you could drive 14 minutes to a place that has, you know, a tasting room, an excellent, you know, like tapas menu or even entrees, you know, that's, or cedar rose, terra nono, there's just so many. So, yeah, we should get back into the winery discussion business. That's a fun topic. And if.
Jonathan Cummings (32:23.817)
Yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (32:30.491)
It is.
Tom (32:31.794)
If we can ever be useful to you going forward, don't hesitate to reach out. And for any of those events, if you want to send us a video of yourself doing a promo with any of your partners, we can get that audio cleaned up. If you try and light it well and try and get decent audio, we'll step up and do our best to promote any positive messaging that we can.
Jonathan Cummings (32:55.973)
Alright, perfect. Sounds wonderful. Thank you.
Tom (32:58.73)
My pleasure. Thanks for taking some time. What did I miss? Oh, this episode. You might find this interesting, actually. This episode has sponsors, in part, the Bridgerton Chamber of Commerce, but also a New Jersey-based company called Selfie Background Check. You might find this interesting. You can run a social media background check, a traffic criminal...
everything, like if you're in the job market, apparently the databases aren't necessarily perfect and people, like a lot of these checks get run just by name, middle, initial, like it's not always social security. And so it's kind of like running a credit check on yourself. If you're about to go interview with jobs or you just graduated from college, it's a way to just do a quick check to make sure there's nothing there.
Jonathan Cummings (33:47.89)
Mmm, sure, yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (33:55.325)
Right.
Tom (33:55.414)
to trip you up and or if you just want to do, there's one product is like a social media check that runs it through the same process that corporations do and what will get flagged and it will actually clean up your, the things that are going to get flagged for you. And, uh, yeah, that's only like 30 bucks too, for a one-time service, but then there's also like monitoring. Isn't it? Yeah. This is all it's.
Jonathan Cummings (34:14.633)
That's cool.
Jonathan Cummings (34:18.961)
Not bad, that's awesome.
Tom (34:23.902)
It's, I applaud the product. It's super ingenious. I, I weep for, I weep for its necessity, but, um, very sort of cool way to at least enable the consumer to know what's going on, on their behalf. Um.
Jonathan Cummings (34:27.42)
Okay.
Jonathan Cummings (34:37.16)
Yeah.
Tom (34:38.222)
because I don't think they had access to this kind of thing without breaking the bank or like actually hiring investigators to do the multi database compilation stuff. It's more complicated than I thought, but yeah. Thank them, thank the British Chamber of Commerce and we hope to hear from you soon. We'll do our best to spread the word.
Jonathan Cummings (34:42.549)
Sure.
Jonathan Cummings (34:49.992)
Yeah.
Jonathan Cummings (34:57.821)
Sounds great, thank you my friend, appreciate it very much.
Tom (35:00.37)
Certainly, take care. Bye bye.
Executive Director
Since graduating college in 2000 with a degree in Accounting and Business Finance, Jon has worked nationally and internationally to serve families and strengthen communities. Directly out of college, Jon went to Uganda and worked to help establish medical clinics and fresh water in areas of need. Upon returning from Uganda, Jon worked for Fulton Financial Corporation supervising reconciliations, returns and adjustments and LOC payments. In 2004, Jon and his family moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, where he worked running a Mexican non-profit. During that time, Jon was able to remodel an 8,000 SF school and build it to serve 60 children from 3 years old through 5th grade. Attached to the school was a dental clinic providing services to members of the community and it also served various surrounding communities through a mobile dental clinic. In addition to this, through the non-profit, he worked to help friends start and establish an orphanage that currently serves nearly 30 children in a family-living environment where whole sibling units are permitted to stay together and live there.
After returning to the states, in early 2012, Revive South Jersey was started to specifically target the needs of families in Bridgeton and Cumberland County. Revive South Jersey helped start the Unidos para la Familia collaborative in partnership with the Pascale Sykes Foundation in 2014. Through the work of Unidos and Revive they serve over 250 Hispanic families through Spanish GED test prep, life coaching, conversational ESL classes and various community development activities. …
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