GRAND RAPIDS CHARTER TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Wedgwood Christian Services is in its 60th year of business. Since it's start in 1960, the organization has helped over 300,000 individuals and welcomed dozens of programs to help children and families in need. Whether it be support through substance abuse, sex trafficking and neglect, or other areas of concern.
Rumblings of the organization started in late 1950, when Jean Boelkins and Dorothy Huizenga set out to reform the child welfare system. They founded The Christian Home for Boys, which would later merge with The Christian Youth Home (for girls) and operate under the name Wedgwood Acres Christian Youth Homes.
Decades later, Wedgwood Christian Services' (WCS) CEO, Randy Zylstra said the name may have changed, but the goal has remained the same.
"Our mission is to extend God's love to children, adults and families through a variety of counseling and educational support services," he said, "Very inclusive and not exclusive. We accept everybody where they’re at. We don’t try to coerce people, bribe people, threaten people. We help them process who they are, what they want to become and we do it in a way that we believe is extending God’s love to them."
Peri Stitzel saw this love firsthand, after ending up on Wedgwood Christian Services' doorstep at 13 years old.
" I was blessed back in 1967 to be rescued from a very abusive home. Wedgewood was the seventh placement for my life. I started being in youth homes at age five. Basically I just wasn’t wanted," she said.
Stitzel came from a background of physical and sexual abuse, and had a hard time giving her trust.
"I didn’t know what love was. I had never felt love," Stitzel said.
Within one year of her time at WCS, Stitzel said she was sent to a church camp, where she accepted God into her life and began "re-learning" how to live.
"I was used to being hit. Spankings were beatings, and I had them from various places as well. People just lose their temper, but Wedgwood was different. They never hit me. They never raised their voice...I was like a dry sponge soaking up all they had to tell me," Stitzel said.
Stitzel, with continuous support from the staff at WCS, went on to open a daycare for twenty years, building a family with her husband and two children. She later wrote a book titled, "From Broken to Beautiful." She credits her outcome to WCS and God.
"Christ broke the cycle for me to become an abuser. I didn’t become an abuser like the history of so many are...I ran a daycare in my home for children, because I wanted to at least touch children’s like so that a few of them would not be hit by the babysitter," she said.
Zylstra said on an average year there is about 8,000 individuals in need of WCS. He anticipates having the business run for another 60 years and said it has stayed running due to wise managerial decisions and support from the the community and churches in West Michigan.
" Feel encouraged about the fact that we’ve been able to touch a lot of lives...Doing the right thing for the right reason is actually going to transform lives," he said.
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