Reach City Church CLE Brings First Large-Scale Event to the St. Clair Neighborhood on August 24

Reach Fest won’t be your typical back-to-school giveaway. In partnership with local organizations, Pastor Leonard Tanks says it's a whole lot more.

“The main goal of Reach Fest is honestly just to love,” says Tanks, the pastor of Reach City Church. “It’s love, [to] serve and give back to our community.”

Pastor Tanks founded Reach City Church five years ago. The church has held its services in the Saint Martin de Porres High School on St. Clair. This past February, the church moved into its own space and decided to create an annual back-to-school celebration to expand on its community outreach with a spin.

“We’ll have some school supplies, just not an abundance of it just because there’s so many other people [who] do,” says Pastor Tanks. “It’s so [many back-to-school events] happening so we just [thought] Hey, what else can we give back to the community?”

Reach Fest was essentially supposed to be a three-day-long event with each day representing a pillar: Friday would be the day of love, Saturday would be the day of service and Sunday would be the day of gifts. Due to time, they decided to combine all pillars into one day.

To bring Reach Fest to fruition, Reach City Church collaborated with Councilwoman Stephanie Howse-Jones, the Famicos Foundation, Convoy of Hope and LaBarberia Institute of Hair.

The festival will be located at 1418 E. 49th st and will take place from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. The celebration will kick off with a giveaway of $5,000 worth of gas at 2 p.m. at 4902 Superior Avenue. Local barbers will be in attendance giving out free haircuts, there will be a giveaway of 300 bags of groceries, over 150 boxes of diapers and school supplies. Vendors and food trucks will be present as well.

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