First Baptist Church in Fort Dodge is partnering with the Fort Dodge Community School District to provide transportation to students for summer school.

The church’s Wheels of Hope first started in 2013 in conjunction with Upper Des Moines Opportunity to provide transportation to the needy.

“The goal of it was to provide transportation to individuals who found themselves in poverty situations, and for whom transportation was an obstacle for moving ahead,” the Rev. Jim Laupp said.

Originally, the program was intended to take people to local service agencies and to get groceries.

“Funny thing is, it went nowhere,” Laupp said. “No one who was at that time a client of Upper Des Moines signed up to use what we were trying to design.”

The church, though, received a grant from American Baptist Churches USA for the effort to cover fuel costs.

“That money just sat in the bank account,” Laupp said. “Even as I talked with different individuals, as I listened to different presentations by different groups, nothing was really coming around for us to use this, to meet a need that had been revealed as being here.”

The ministry was then refocused to serve other local agencies, beginning with Early Head Start, as well as YWCA.

“We began providing twice-weekly runs out to Walmart for their clients,” Laupp said. “That’s been going for a little over a year now, and is well used Monday afternoons and Wednesday mornings.”

Wheels of Hope also provides transportation to Iowa Central Community College, for people to take GED classes.

“Again, that’s one of those things where someone who is pursuing his or her GED is trying to take a step to get ahead in life, in a positive direction, and transportation may be an obstacle for them to do that,” Laupp said.

Since June, Wheels of Hope has been delivering FDCSD students to Feelhaver Elementary for summer school.

“The difficulty is, parents don’t have any way to get their child to summer school, and obviously school’s a very important thing,” Laupp said.

Laupp himself drives the route on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, collecting eight students at 7 a.m. to be at Feelhaver by 7:45 a.m. for breakfast.

He then takes the students home at the end of the school day.

“There’s one student whose parents can get him there but aren’t able to get him back home, so I actually pick up to nine students from the school to return them home at noon,” he said.

Whether helping Fort Dodge’s students or its needy, the ministry is an important one for the church, Laupp said.

“Ultimately, it’s to share God’s goodness with the community in very practical ways,” he said. “We want people to see that God is present, God is active, and he is active in his people, and that is often through his people doing things for people, helping to lift them out of a situation or move forward, to give them hope. Hope is a very powerful thing. Hope drives people forward.”

He added, “When they have hope, they’re willing to do a lot of things to move forward.”