Cherry Tree Club
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
177 Princeton-Heightstown Road
Princeton Junction, NJ 08550

Telephone: (609) 799-1753
Fax: (609) 799-0958
Contact: Wendy Schutzer, Director
E-mail: wlschutzer@aol.com

Organization Description and Mission

The Cherry Tree Club, a joint program of the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and HomeFront, provides a high quality, free and accessible preschool program for homeless and at-risk children in Mercer County, New Jersey. The mission of the Club is to provide a loving, nurturing, and safe environment that promotes healthy physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development with the aim of creating a firm foundation for each child’s future academic success. The preschool program consists of one lead teacher and a network of skilled volunteers, who offer educational and socialization experiences for homeless children, five days a week, forty-eight weeks of the year, from 10:00 AM to 3:30 PM. The school's multidimensional curriculum, which includes crafts, reading, music, supervised play, and computer work, is designed to prepare children for their future education. In addition, donations from local stores and restaurants allow the Cherry Tree Club to serve nutritious breakfast, lunch, and snacks to the students. Transportation is also provided.

Community and Population Served by the Organization

The Cherry Tree Club is a program for preschool-age children of Mercer County homeless families who live in temporary housing situations (including shelters, motels, and transitional facilities).

• Cherry Tree Club would like some students to research ways in which parents’ interest in, support of, and commitment to education could be increased, especially low-income parents or parents under a great deal of stress. What do these ways look like? How do they work?
  
  
• The Cherry Tree Club has anecdotal evidence that the children in their program go on to do well in school. Is this the case? How well are the children doing in school? How effective is the program? Does it give children the tools to succeed? The Cherry Tree Club is currently in the process of collecting some data with HomeFront on this issue.
  
  
• The Cherry Tree Club would like to collect background information on the children in its preschool. Where are they from? For how long have they been homeless? Where do they go upon completion of the program? And after that?
  
  
• The Cherry Tree Club faces many challenges stemming from their large dependence on the work of volunteers. The Cherry Tree Club would like students to conduct research on the utilization of volunteers. How could the Cherry Tree Club effectively manage volunteers? What are good techniques? Where could they find literature on volunteer management?
  
  
• With HomeFront’s help, the Cherry Tree Club acquired a laptop that has software for a child assessment tool. They are starting to implement a child assessment system. The Cherry Tree Club would like to use the data collected using the tool to determine the effect the Cherry Tree Club has on children as individuals and in a group population. How does the Cherry Tree Club affect children when they start the program?

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