Love in Action:
West Side Presbyterian Church

The hardship of knowing you can’t feed your children, or that the place you call home desperately needs repairs you can’t afford, is a double-edged sword. In addition to the fundamental primary struggles, there’s the despair of feeling unseen or, maybe worse, thinking nobody cares.

The revelation that there are people—strangers—who see, who care, and who are willing to devote their time to helping can be life-altering for both the recipients and those who make the time to offer their support.

Hundreds of such “strangers” can be found among the congregants at West Side Presbyterian Church in Ridgewood, where supporting humanitarian mission partners means far more than writing a check from afar.

West Side has worked directly with countless organizations in its 114-year history. The current roster includes groups from Ridgewood to surrounding communities and at least one with global impact. Every year, the church selects a couple of them as the focus of a Christmas-season fundraising campaign that augments its year-round support for those organizations.

Marc Oehler, pastor and head of staff at West Side, confirmed that in December, the church’s Love in Action Advent Campaign 2025 exceeded its goal of raising $30,000 for two longstanding mission partners: Rise Against Hunger, which describes its purpose as “growing a global movement to end hunger by empowering communities, nourishing lives, and responding to emergencies,” and Appalachia Service Project, which aims at “making homes warmer, safer, and drier for Appalachian families” with the help of youth and adult volunteers like those at West Side.

Rise Against Hunger

As many relief organizations do, Rise Against Hunger (RAH) relies on the kindness of strangers to support their efforts to feed the malnourished. In addition to simply raising both money and awareness, however, RAH conducts events at sites like West Side, where volunteers pack thousands of meals with (some instruction from the organization) to be sent to food-insecure locales in the U.S. and abroad.

To say the meals are no-frills would be an understatement. Still, they provide the most basic, lifesaving nutrition in a form that can be packaged and transported safely all over the world by RAH, then prepared for consumption in conditions where there might be nothing more than hot water to work with.

Over the course of a two-hour session, 60 to 70 volunteers pack 10,000 meals consisting of a sealed vitamin packet and a scoop each of soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, and rice. Some volunteers team up in groups of four or five to fill the bags assembly-line style, while others weigh, seal, or place the finished meal packs into boxes for shipment. RAH loads the boxes into a truck, and off they go to parts unknown.

West Side hosted three such events last year, including one that consisted of a morning and an afternoon session. “That was a first for us,” says Christine Park, interim associate pastor for children, youth, and families. All told, West Side packed 40,000 meals for RAH in 2025.

Over the years, the church has been responsible for meals shipped to locations ranging from Ukraine, to Vietnam, to Jamaica, and various sites in the U.S. “We are grateful to be able to support families facing food insecurity and struggling to provide for their children,” Park notes.

Appalachia Service Project

As with Rise Against Hunger, West Side has a long history of supporting Appalachia Service Project (ASP) through members eager to lend a hand. The difference is that, with ASP, volunteers sign on for a solid week away from home and spend long days working to repair or improve homes that might otherwise become uninhabitable.

Construction experience is not required for volunteers. ASP provides a training manual, but also plans the projects. Numerous volunteer groups each contribute a week’s worth of work to a project that might take six to eight weeks to complete over the course of a summer, explains Boyd Lowry, West Side’s chair of mission and social concerns.

The summer of 2025 saw West Side high-schoolers Julia Grant, Allison Impomeni, Devon Jenkins, Lana Jepsen, Olivia Lai, Olivia Schmookler, India Tatem, Lauren Trotta, Poppy Ushewokunze, and Christina Weispfenning head to Clay County, West Virginia, with adult leaders Genevieve Lowry, Nicole Oehler, Gib Warren, Roger Widicus, and Judy Widicus to pitch in on a couple of essential projects.

“One of our groups worked on a wheelchair ramp for a man who had been homebound for a year; the ramp was 78 feet long when completed,” explains Nicole Oehler, West Side’s interim director of youth engagement and one of the adults who made the trip. “The other group put in a header the first day so the roof could be replaced safely, then shored up the foundation under the footers and laid layers of floor from the subfloor up to the laminate floor covering.”

Boyd Lowry says ASP volunteers gain not only the satisfaction of working hard for a good cause, but also a chance to overcome their own challenges. He recalls one young lady a few years ago who was afraid of heights but found herself climbing a ladder to help work on a roof.

“It was an opportunity for her. She was willing, and it was a safe environment. That’s where kids learn,” he says.

Taking part in service projects like ASP can help youth recognize that faith isn’t confined to the inside of a church. “When we talk about growing in the church, we’re not talking about liturgy and sermons,” Lowry says. Rather, a willingness to literally get your hands dirty in the service of others “is what West Side represents.”

For her part, Nicole Oehler said ASP trips foster genuine connection among individuals who otherwise would probably never be in the same room together.

“One of the families made a hot lunch for our group every day. The other had each of us sign the beam we installed,” she says. “We arrived prepared to work hard and exhaust ourselves, but we could not anticipate the way we would be fully loved in return.”

West Side Presbyterian Church is located at 6 South Monroe St., at the corner of West Ridgewood Avenue, in Ridgewood; for more information, visit their website at www.westside.org. Learn more about Rise Against Hunger at www.riseagainsthunger.org, and about Appalachia Service Project at www.asphome.org.

Photographs courtesy of West Side Presbyterian Church and Harris Fleming

Harris Fleming is a freelance writer who lives in Waldwick with his wife (a Ridgewood elementary school teacher) and teenage son. He attends West Side Presbyterian Church, where he was baptized way back in what his son refers to as “the black-and-white days.”