move. Pastor Dawson said he wanted to be in the heart of the community. And if you ever come to the south side of Madison, you will see that our church is in the heart of the community surrounded by HUD low-income housing, the Boys & Girls Club, One City Early Learning and Penn Park.”

In 2004, Mt. Zion had grand plans for the area it occupied bordered by Fisher, Dane and Baird Streets. Phase 1 was a modern sanctuary with classrooms in the basement and office and entryway. Phase II was to be a community service building that would house Mt. Zion’s ever growing community service programs. But the housing bubble of 2008-2009 put those plans on hold and the congrgation focused on paying off their existing mortgage.

When Allen came in during 2016, it completed that first phase.

“I think we owed almost $500,000,” Allen recalled. “In 2020, we paid off the mortgage. Right now, we are totally debt-free. We’re one of the largest buildings on the block and it is fully-owned by African American people. That’s something that we are very thankful and proud of.”

Allen has also been stepping up the church’s community service and charity work. In 2021, they formally incorporated their work in MTZ Charities, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It was the COVID-19 pandemic that really called the church into service.

“We went to work,” Allen said. “We closed the doors, but we still went to work helping our community. We went from door-to-door taking food to families, especially to the kids. There were some kids where the only time they got a meal was when they went to school. And at this time, they weren’t going to school because of COVID. We went and picked up meals from MMSD and we walked the doors. Most of these kids were home by themselves because their parents couldn’t work from home because they were working low-paying jobs. They had to go into work. We started something called Smartly in the Park where we took 3^rd and 4^th graders and took the electronics out of their hands and just taught them in the park during the summer. When fall came, we opened our doors and we called that School Without Walls. We allowed kids on asynchronous learning to come into the church. We provided them with tutors and WiFi. And if kids didn’t have them, we provided them with laptops or tablets and they were able to do their classwork here. The parents didn’t have to worry about trying to do it at home and work from home. We gave out about $30,000 to individuals who had been furloughed from their jobs or had some wage reduction. They often fall into the category where they aren’t poor enough to receive any funding. We wanted to help that group of people out. We gave out $500 to anyone who could prove to us that they just had some wage reduction or were furloughed from their job. We were able to bless a lot of people just through doing that. Different agencies saw what we were doing. It really didn’t get amplified until COVID, although we had been doing it for a long time.”

The greater Madison community began to take notice and offered to fund some of the church’s efforts. However, they couldn’t directly fund faith communities. And thus MTZ Charities was born. There is a lot of work to be done.

“Most of our programs have been running for years,” Allen said. “We’ve been running our food pantry for over 30 years. Our Academic Learning Center has been running for over 20 years. We’ve been faithful in trying to give out funding to those who are in need when it comes to housing, utilities or any type of financial emergency. From 2021-2023, we gave out over $150,000. That’s not from grants or foundations. It’s from the generosity of our members.”

While MTZ Charities does several programs on its own, it is through collaboration that they found they could have the greatest impact.

“We have a lot of collaborations,” Allen emphasized. “We know that we can’t do it by ourselves. We collaborate with a lot of different organizations top make sure we are able to meet the needs. Our food pantry partners a lot with Second Harvest, so that we can keep that going. Our Academic Learning Center is our after school program. Kids come after school Tuesday-Thursday. We try our best to help close the education gap that we constantly see and also to continue to enhance the students who are doing well in class. Our director partners with the local schools that the kids go to, talk to the social worker making sure that our kids are doing well in school. And if not, how do we improve. And if they are doing well and not being challenged, also try to figure out how to challenge them. We partner with Edgewood College and UW-Madison. They have sent students over to work with the students. We run a STEM program out of our ALC right now. There is a lot that happens through that.”

One of the shining examples of MTZ Charities’ impact through collaboration is its TRY Program, Transforming and Reaching Our Youth.

“We are helping those kids who are involved in the juvenile justice system. Those kids come from all over Dane County. We have been able to serve them with our summer program. Also every second and fourth Sunday, I go down to the Juvenile Detention Center and be with those kids, talk to them and give them some direction and motivation.

Last summer, they served 19 young people who had recently been at the Juvenile Detention Center.

“Some might be on ankle bracelets,” Allen observed. “Some are on probation. Some have been released back to their parents after they completed some time. They come here and we do some job training, partnering with the Urban League. We do some restorative justice partnering with the YWCA Madison. We do some financial literacy classes partnering with Kamal Calloway. They worked every Thursday with the Catholic Multicultural Center and Fisher-Taft Apartments. They worked in their gardens. Anesis did a group therapy for them. JP Hair Design came and taught them barbering and beauty hygiene. And they received four hours of credit that they can take over to MATC and said they completed those hours with him. And we paid them $200 per week to be in that program. We’re looking forward to doing that program again this summer, running for about six weeks. It was really impactful on those 19 kids. Only one returned back to the Juvenile Detention Center. We’re excited about that improvement we are able to have on the lives of those kids, just having a space for them to go. We’re trying to be more intentional about that. If you are able to have some place to go and see that people love you, it makes you think twice when you are doing some negative things.”

The infrastructure demands that MTZ Charities’ programs were causing made Phase II of Mt. Zion’s building plans a necessity. It was time to act.

Next issue: Phase II, the Community Life Center