Reisterstown church builds wooden desks for students learning online

Desks at home have spiked in demand as kids have had to shift their studies toward learning online for the last 10 months. One Boring-based church is helping to supply.

Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church, located at 5300 Dover Road in Reisterstown, built wooden desks for children in need on Saturday for about four hours, beginning around 8 a.m.

About 10 members of the church formed an assembly line to construct the desks using plywood, nails and nail guns with the plan being to donate 10 desks to the North East Social Action Plan in Hampstead and 10 desks to the Community Crisis Center in Reisterstown to be distributed to students needing workspaces.

“Pleasant Grove is blessed to have several men who are skilled at woodwork and they took some of their scrap lumber and put together a sample desk,” said Dick Harden, pastor of Pleasant Grove UMC. “Then they [the church carpenters] put together a materials list of what was required to make the quality of the desks better and raised some money to purchase it.”

Out of about 80 members Pleasant Grove was able to come up with donations of about $700 to get the materials needed back in November.

According to Harden, only 22 members attend service on Sundays to avoid the potential spread of COVID-19. Rather than raising money traditionally by way of passing an offering plate, the church used an electronic service sent to members of the community alerting them of them of the mission project.

“There’s a lot of kids that need a designated place to [study] and the desks will provide a place for them to get their school work done in a efficient manner,” said NESAP executive director Donn Dietrich.

Pleaseant Grove has sponsored and supported NESAP annually with donations for almost 40 years, since NESAP began.

“This project has been driven by the pandemic and with everyone being at home, these desks will help students balance their schoolwork,” Dietrich added.

He also explained that families will be able to begin receiving the desks early next week on a first-come, first-served basis, along with food giveaways.

NESAP has a variety of ways that constituents are able to support their organization that can be found at nesapinc.org.

Pleasant Grove UMC also encourages folks that would like to assist with future mission work before the Christmas holiday, reach out and find more information through their church website at pleasantgroveumcmd.org.