My Nonprofit Reviews

Like others who have shared their HomeFront experiences here, I have been involved with this excellent organization dating back to when it was known as the Princeton Exchange Club. My wife and I have supported HomeFront by volunteering our time, as well as by making annual financial contributions.

More recently, for over a year, I have been volunteering one day each week as a tutor of basic English grammar and composition at HomeFront’s Family Preservation Center in Ewing, helping to prepare women enrolled in HomeFront’s WorkFirst program to take—and pass—New Jersey’s General Educational Development (GED) exam, the equivalent of earning a high school diploma. While the English component of that exam focusses on the preparation of an original essay, graders take into account proper English usage, and the test also contains a series of multiple choice questions from which candidates must select the one correct answer in each instance.

I have found that many of the women with whom I have worked can pick out the correct answer from among five options, while most don’t know why their selection is the right one. Though I typically only get to work with each woman for two hours, with few exceptions, I have found that they emerge with a much improved understanding of the underlying precepts of our sometimes confusing language, better equipping them for the GED exam and whatever challenges they might face in their subsequent working environment.

More Feedback