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Church honors three for service to Valley Stream

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Three prominent members of the Valley Stream community received awards for their civic engagement on May 20 at a celebration of the 89th anniversary of the Valley Stream Presbyterian Church, held at the Imperial Room in Inwood.

Blogger and girls’ program leader Kimberly Thomas and her husband, Deputy Mayor Dermond Thomas, were honored, as well as Bishop Emmanuel Asse, pastor and director of community relations at Gateway Christian Center in North Valley Stream.

Kimberly and Dermond Thomas moved to Valley Stream from Brooklyn eight years ago. Kimberly said that she started her Valley Stream Moms blog as a way to process her experience raising their two children, Olivia, 10, and Cole, 7. “When I first came to Valley Stream, I kind of felt that the community was a little disconnected,” she said. “I couldn’t find anything for a young mother who had a 2-year-old and one on the way.”

The blog went dormant for a while until Dermond was elected to the village board, she said, at which time she got back into it as she had access to more information about how the village operates. The blog “transitioned into something bigger and greater,” Kimberly said, and now has almost 950 members who share insights, grievances and support, and act as a collective local resource for each other.

Kimberly also developed the Sparkle Empowerment Program for Girls, which has 22 members and is in its fourth year. The program is designed to teach life skills and positive character traits to teen girls, and it has awarded $1,500 in college scholarships so far.

Asse was honored for his work at Gateway Christian Center and for founding the Ambassador for Christ International Outreach Ministry. He is the first Haitian-American chapter president at the National Action Network in Harlem and works with people of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds as a case manager with the Harlem Congregation for Community Improvement.

Asse said that the award signified to him the degree of success he has achieved, coming from a difficult past that included homelessness and thoughts of suicide. He has a forthcoming book, “Arise to Greatness.”

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