The fourth annual Hope Day is set to take place after a year’s hiatus. 

Hope Day is a community celebration in the style of a carnival. The event happens on June 3 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at O’Hara baseball field in Oakland Beach, with free on-site registration. Volunteer tents will have free services for all who attend. Ten professional hairdressers and barbers have volunteered to give haircuts. Other tents will offer free crocs, a photo booth, hot lunch, groceries equivalent to four meals for a family of five, a kids zone with a bouncy house, a health tent, job information tents, family portraits, and fire truck and police cruiser rides.

Eight partner churches are working alongside Warwick Hope Assembly of God to fundraise and plan. They follow the guidelines of the Hope Day Network, a group that connects local Hope Day events in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. The network hosts a vision casting in New York in January with all the site coordinators, which they follow up with monthly Zoom meetings. The group formed with the help of Convoy of Hope, a Missouri-based nonprofit humanitarian organization, which gives the framework for similar events to organizations around the nation. They provide nonperishable groceries to all of them, but funds come from within the local communities, mainly through churches, businesses, and anonymous donors. A brunch in March hosted by the Warwick Hope Day planning committee with representatives from all churches in Rhode Island and some in Massachusetts helped generate interest for the eventual goal of having multiple smaller hope days throughout the states.

Pastor Matthew McIntosh is the Warwick site coordinator. He started Hope Day in Rhode Island after working at the original events in New York, which began 12 years ago. Telling about the purpose of Hope Day, he said, “The mission of the church is to care about the community, and this is a way for us to link together to do it. We want Warwick to know we love it. We know that not everybody has it easy in life, at all. This is a way to show them our support.”

In view of the greatest commandment, the volunteer site coordinators and service providers will treat each attendee as a “guest of honor.” The leadership board expects 900 of them this year, three times more than last time’s scaled-down drive-through. Twenty-five to 35 volunteers handed out 10,000 save-the-date flyers door-to-door in the Oakland Beach area in the beginning of May, and they will do it again this weekend.

This will be the first open-air Hope Day in Rhode Island since its first iteration in 2019, which also happened at Oakland Beach. The next year was a smaller drive-through at the Warwick Boys and Girls Club in the same area. The most recent event happened the year after, a similar drive-through event at Warwick Veterans Memorial Middle School. On that day, the volunteer teams donated 190 food boxes and 440 grocery bags to 307 people.

Two weeks after Hope Day, a follow-up service will be hosted at all participating churches. Under tents outside of the church buildings, pastors will hold a gospel service, and a free chicken dinner will follow. In previous years, the attendees filled the tents to capacity.

Various groups and companies will have tents as well. Christian musical artist Crimson Rain and singer Reflect (Benjamin Scuderi) will perform live, as will the RI Chainbreakers dance team. At least 16 community service organizations will have information booths and registration. Westbay Community Action, the Warwick Public Library, Bloom-A Place for Girls, Operation Stand Down, and Meals on Wheels will be present. Electric Boat will have job applications for their welding program available.

This Saturday, 25 to 35 volunteers will go out canvassing for a second time in the Oakland Beach area with 10,000 fliers in hand. One of them, Kerilyn Button, says she cannot wait for June 3rd. “I did it two years ago, and it was a pretty awesome day, seeing the outcome of all of the funding provided, and people coming and being dumbfounded by everything we were giving out for free.”   

This year, the eight partner churches to Warwick Hope Assembly of God are: Christian Hill; Faith Baptist; Faith Christian Center; Lakewood Baptist; North Kingstown Assembly of God; Norwood Baptist; Renaissance; and Victory.