The poorest neighborhood in America is in the most powerful city in the world.

Sara Frazier, originally from Texas, moved to New York five years ago to study theater at NYU. In her first year in New York she had the opportunity to perform in a Broadway production and began to experience the type of success she thought would take years to attain. But she learned quickly that success in theater wasn’t a magic fix that would lead her to ultimate happiness.

In her sophomore year, God began to break her heart for the poor and oppressed of New York City. She felt a mounting tension between the gospel stories of Jesus’ radical ministry and her own comfortable, self-focused lifestyle. In August 2008 she followed God’s leading to move to the South Bronx, the poorest neighborhood in the United States.

Upon moving there, Sara’s goal was simply to know and love her neighbors well. In a short time, the people of the South Bronx became her new family and she could no longer imagine living life without them. But eighty-hour workweeks, during which the best parts of her intellect and creativity were being used to better the New York food business, were leaving her with less and less time to spend with her neighbors.

She knew God had something more for her. What had started as a humble ministry of serving the kids of her neighborhood in the hours between school and sleep was now outgrowing both her home and the schedules of the other young women who lived with her.

In November 2010, Sara quit her job in order to concentrate full-time on ministry in the South Bronx. Since then, she and a team of volunteers have banded together as a community called A House On Beekman. They are continuing to love and serve their neighbors with a new sense of mission, committed to joining God in the renewal of the South Bronx.

There are several ways to partner with A House On Beekman. We invite you to join our volunteer email list to find out how you can be involved in our different volunteer efforts and needs throughout the year. Click here to receive updated needs or to request more information on any of the following needs.

Use Your Specific Skills

• We love using people’s specific skills and talents to bring the Kingdom to the South Bronx. That may mean teaching guitar to a kid once a week if you are a musician or helping me write up a contract to purchase a new space for a community center if you are a lawyer. Click here to let us know what your gift is. In the near future we will be building a team of people from many different professions for a special project.

Help Us Research

• We are always in need of people willing to do some research for us. Things we might ask you to research: grants, programs we want to partner with, scholarships for our kids, etc.

Give Financially

• WE RELY 100% ON DONATIONS.
  • It takes $200/week to feed all these little faces.
  • For $500/semester, we can help a kid explore their dreams through trips to Manhattan and enroll them in extracurricular activities here in the city (something none of our kids are involved in).
  • We will provide a free summer camp this year for 50 kids that will cost $3,000.

• THE ARE TWO WAYS TO GIVE:

  • GIVE ONLINE
    • Log on to www.trinitygracechurch.com.
    • Click on the "Giving" tab.
    • Under the label "Give Online", click "Set up an account". After creating an account, fill in the amount of contribution and the payment method.
    • Select your contribution frequency in the drop down menu.
    • Be sure to Select the fund "Fundraising" and the subfund "South Bronx Initiative".

  • MAIL A CHECK
    • Trinity Grace Church
      
      21 W 38th St, Floor 2
      NY, NY 10018
    • Checks should be made out to Trinity Grace Church with "South Bronx" in the memo line.

Mentor / "Adopt" a kid or family

• Spend a few days a week regularly investing in the life of a specific kid or family, treating them as your own family here in the city.

Volunteer for after-school care

• Every day after school from 3 p.m. - 9 p.m. a handful of kids come to our house for snacks, homework help and a safe place to play and hang out.

Host family dinner

• Every Monday night at 7 p.m. we cook dinner for about 30 people. We need people to come to our house and cook the meal for us.

Live with us

• There are a couple of spots open in our house for men and women. Please pray about losing your life for the sake of Christ in the South Bronx.

Other tangible needs:

• As of now we have no way of recording the stories and memories being made in our community everyday. We need a camera with similar photo/video capabilities to this.
• We are in need of creative supplies like crayons, playdough, board games, books, etc.

• Follow us on TWITTER: @ahouseonbeekman
• Click here to CONTACT SARA
• Click here to RECEIVE REGULAR UPDATES on the tangible needs of our community and ways to volunteer.
• Click here to RECEIVE PRAYER REQUESTS and stories of life in the South Bronx.