Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington, Inc.

The mission of the Adventist Community Services is to help the disadvantaged and disenfranchised in our community by empowering individuals through compassionate emergency care, life education, and community development to attain self-sufficiency and independence.

Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington (ACSGW) was established in 1983 as the collective health and social welfare arm of several local church congregations. ACSGW is a nonreligious nonprofit organization whose mission is to help the less fortunate in our community by empowering them through compassionate emergency care, life education and community development. ACSGW currently provides case management, food, clothing, emergency financial assistance, community health programs, and training, such as English as a second language (ESOL), general educational development (GED), computer basics, and other job training. ACSGW currently serves over 6000 disadvantaged families each year. Of those families served, many members are employable, yet unemployed or underemployed. ACSGW has been serving this population for over 30 years, and over the past four years has been growing programs that empower participants to attain long-term solutions to their general and economic health and well-being. ACSGW believes that empowering the individual by giving people the knowledge and ability to attain self- sufficiency creates healthy, thriving communities. One of the first steps in that process is for a community to decide on the shared goals and actions they are going to take together to create the kind of community that fulfills its shared vision. With this need in mind, ACSGW participated in a community-wide strategic planning effort in 2012. ACSGW traditionally serves, among other groups, clients within the ZIP codes 20910 and 20912. During the case management interviews of clients from those ZIP-code areas, contact information is collected from each client (or client family). All client information at ACSGW is entered into, and maintained in an electronic database. Student Service Learning (SSL) opportunities include data input, filing, newsletter preparation and mailings, computer repair, teaching assistance, social media content creation and postings and audio/video production.