<\/a>Sister Hilda of Divine Word plays Candyland with the child of a Lantern Center student.<\/p><\/div>\n
The Lantern Center offers hospitality, educational opportunities and advocacy to adult immigrants at no cost. Students can work one-on-one with tutors to improve their English skills, prepare for the citizenship exam, learn practical life skills and meet people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. In 2002, the center was opened by the Dubuque Sisters of the Presentation after research showed a great need for these types of services in the area. Since then, the Lantern Center has served more than 1,700 adult immigrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we\u2019re able to meet the needs of our community because of the generosity of our volunteers,\u201d said Megan Ruiz, executive director of the Lantern Center. Each year, volunteers give between 3,000 and 4,300 hours of their time at the center.<\/p>\n
Among those volunteers are a handful of Divine Word College students who spend a few hours each week working directly with immigrants. More than 90 percent of the students at Divine Word College are international students. Many of them know what it\u2019s like to move to the United States and not speak English, so they bring a unique perspective to the immigrants whom they tutor.<\/p>\n
Much like the spirit of the passage from Matthew 25, the staff at the Lantern Center have never turned away an immigrant seeking the organization\u2019s services. \u201cNothing compares to how rewarding this position is,\u201d Megan said. \u201cThe adults who study here, we befriend them and welcome them to the community, and they\u2019re just grateful beyond words.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Pictured above:Presentation Lantern Center founder Sister Corine Murray; Fr. Tom Ascheman, SVD; Lantern Center executive director Megan Ruiz; and Sister Carmen Hernandez celebrate the Lantern Center\u2019s Matthew 25 award from… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4415,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions\/4415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbvmconference.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}