Now Booking Summer 2023 Mission Groups

What is Fortress?

Fortress is 501(c)3 nonprofit organization serving children and their families in Fort Worth’s Historic Southside, a culturally vibrant and historically rich community that has faced decades of systemic racial and economic inequalities. Fortress Summer operates Monday-Thursday each week of the summer and provides academically and spiritually enriching programs for children living in our community with the goal of interrupting the well-documented summer slide while engaging our students in a safe and fun learning environment. As an organization, Fortress is dedicated to building bridges from poverty to promise for the children and families it serves, and we are grateful to invite churches to come alongside us as partners in that work!

Why should my group do missions at Fortress?

Fortress is dedicated to interrupting the cycle of poverty by working with our families and children to equip academically, ignite spiritually, and engage relationally. That last word – relationally – describes the heart of everything we do. We live by the words of Dr. James Comer who said, “No significant learning occurs without significant relationship,” and with that truth in mind, we are very intentional about developing and maintaining long-term, trusting relationships with our families. Mission groups build relationships with Fortress students over the course of a week and bring in the resources we often don’t have on our own, providing activities, lessons, field trips, and experiences that our students will remember long after your week is over.

So how do short-term missions fit into this model?

Groups who serve at Fortress tend to return year after year. In fact, from 2017 until the pandemic, 90% of our mission groups returned the following year to complete another week of service with us. This results in your youth building long-term relationships with our students, one week at a time.

We take the social-emotional needs of our students very seriously. Because we know that kids experiencing generational poverty often experience relational trauma and attachment issues, we introduce youth groups to our students as “buddies,” and well before your youth set foot inside our building, our students are prepared to know what buddies do, how they help us, and how long they are with us. This sets the expectation ahead of time for our students of what role your youth play in our program and in their lives.

While you are with us, your youth will bond with our students in ways that, in their own words, “affect [us as a youth group] more than we affect [the Fortress kids]”. Outside of your time with our students, our staff will work intentionally with your youth group to dismantle the concepts of “saviorism” in mission work and to equip them with the tools they need to continue serving their own communities at home long after their week at Fortress has ended. Although the relationships built between youth groups and our students are beautiful and uplifting, the impact of your mission week is not seen in the fruits at Fortress, but in how that mission work extends beyond a trip to Fort Worth and into a lifestyle and calling your youth carry back into their own communities.

What will my mission group do during a week at Fortress?

The youth in your group are paired as buddies with Fortress students and spend most of the day with those students participating in spiritual and academic activities, as well as eating, playing, worshiping, and hanging out together. Groups may choose from one of two age groups to work with while they are at Fortress. These two options are assigned a name to help us differentiate when booking and assigning tasks. Silas groups work with our preschool and kindergarten students (ages 3-5) and Barnabas groups work with our elementary students (ages 6-11). Whether your group is a Silas or a Barnabas group, you will plan a variety of activities for your Fortress students, including Bible skits, arts & crafts, games, and field trips.

After our students go home at 2:00pm, our staff focus their attention on working directly with your teens in what we call Southside 360. Southside 360 is an educational workshop we conduct each afternoon to provide insight into the realities of urban poverty, to challenge the myths and stereotypes about families living in poverty, and to identify our role as Christians in serving the poor in ways that are uplifting, dignifying, and meaningful. We will also learn about the rich history of our neighborhood and discover how the intersection of race and poverty affects our community.

Groups are welcome to stay on-site at Fortress. We are equipped to house up to 60 people overnight, including shower facilities, commercial kitchen and food storage, laundry, and sufficient room for dividing groups by gender. Groups typically bring air mattresses, cots, or sleeping bags to use for overnight stays. Fortress prepares and serves breakfast and lunch daily, and the materials and ingredients to prepare dinner are also provided Monday-Wednesday as part of Southside 360.

What are the requirements for a mission group?

Group Size: To meet the needs of our programs and stay within our building and program capacity, groups may vary in size from 8 to 30*, including chaperones. *Each week, Fortress can accommodate two groups of up to 30, or one group of up to 60.

Group Ages: As a licensed childcare facility, we cannot permit ongoing volunteers on site who are within the age range of our enrolled students. For that reason, all group participants, including the children of adult chaperones, must be 12 years of age or older.

Faith Background: Due to the “Vacation Bible School”-style of our summer program, summer mission groups have numerous opportunities to share their own faith practices and to see ours in action. We do not limit group participation on the basis of denominational affiliation or doctrinal practices; in fact, we encourage diverse and inter-denominational representation! Therefore, our requirements of summer mission groups are simply as follows:

Groups must be from a Christian church or organization that can affirm our guiding beliefs.
Groups must be willing to teach Bible lessons that are both age-appropriate and broadly applicable. Because we are not affiliated with a specific church and serve a diverse community of students and families, Fortress and its volunteers abstain from teaching lessons which deal with divisive issues within churches, such as views on baptism, gender roles, and other doctrines which are widely debated among Christian churches.
Groups must be willing to work cooperatively inter-denominationally with our staff and other mission groups to fulfill the mission of Fortress.

If you have specific questions or concerns about how your doctrinal practices will align with our work, you can read our full faith statement. Please do not hesitate to reach out to the program coordinator or to a member of the Fortress executive leadership team with any questions or concerns.

Fees: Groups who wish to use our facilities for overnight stay will pay $125/person, including chaperones. Groups who do not wish to use our facilities for overnight stay will pay $100/person, including chaperones. These fees cover the costs for all meals from Monday morning to Thursday afternoon; a mission week t-shirt; and program activities. The group fee also helps support our programs, which are provided free-of-charge to our enrolled students. First-time groups will also be asked to pay a non-refundable deposit which is applied to their balance.

Program Obligations: Groups will fund, plan, and lead two primary activities: 1. A full week of Bible lessons and activities for students, using a curriculum outline provided by Fortress; and 2. An off-campus field trip.