Examples of Improved Ways to Do things For Others

I will be writing several blogs on examples of activities that build peoples self esteem or move them forward to beginning to do things for themselves through the coaching of others.

Christmas Gift Store
Many churches use an Angel Tree approach for Christmas gifts for poor children. But instead of doing it that way they cam up with a different version then above of a Christmas Store, Churches members still bought gifts for kids but they are delivered as an unwrapped gifts to a location in the neighborhood where the poor came to choose Christmas gifts for their kids. The prices are set at about 10% of retail value so the prices are low. The store is someplace in the neighborhood, in a church in the neighborhood or in the elementary school

The parent picks gifts they think their child would like and takes it home to wrap it and give it to their child at Christmas. Sometimes instead of paying cash a person agrees to work in the store for say two hours for each gift. Therefore even if the parent has no funds they can choose, wrap and deliver gifts to their kids. Imagine the difference in how a parent feels by being able to be the giver of that gift to their child

Back Pack Give A Way
A church in Colorado donates backpacks full of supplies at the beginning of the year for families who cannot afford them. This year, the school Family Resource Center set up a “Time and Talent” program for these backpacks. Every family that accepted a backpack agreed to give two hours of their time back to school in some form of volunteer work. Schools know that if they can get a parent to the school for a positive experience the learning and attention of their child improves. As of January, 100% of the parents had completed this commitment. Parents dignity and feelings of self worth is strengthened as they have been able to provide for their child’s school supply needs instead of being dependent on others.

Those Served Become Servers at a Church Soup Kitchen
New Prospect Missionary Baptist Church is located in Over the Rhine, a community just outside downtown Cincinnati. New Prospect serves a mostly African-American population in a neighborhood that has been left behind. Many of Cincinnati’s homeless live in Over the Rhine, and for many years New Prospect has attended to their nutritional needs through a soup kitchen in the church basement. Several years ago, a group of ministers and lay leaders in the New Prospect congregation decided to re¬examine the church’s relationship with the people it was “serving” in its soup kitchen.

The congregation designed a “Gift Interview,” of assets to explore the unknown talents of the people coming to the soup kitchen. They asked questions about the gifts and abilities people were born with; they asked about skills and the things people liked to do. They also asked about dreams and provided an opportunity for each person to express what they would do if they “could snap their fingers and be doing anything.”

What they found astonished them: here were carpenters, plumbers, artists, musicians, teachers, and caregivers, all coming to the soup kitchen at New Prospect. Here were gifted and talented people, people with dreams, and people with things to contribute. As the interviews proceeded, the people being fed blossomed as they realized they had something to contribute. As the pastor said, “Folks were telling us, ‘We don’t want to stay over here on the receiving side of the table. We’re not just recipients. We want to cross over to your side of the table, the blessing side of the table. We want to cook and serve, too. We want to belong by contributing.”‘

More and more, the original soup kitchen recipients served the food and those who had once been servers, accepted the role of recipient. They received food and sat at the tables developing relationships with those they ate with. When everyone involved in the soup kitchen could function as a server and a recipient of the gift of food, the power once associated with being the server disappeared and real reciprocal relationships began to blossom.

Success Factors for Christian Community Development

A Christian doing community development should base their work on a Biblical world view. We propose the following development principles should be considered when Christians undertake development projects.
• The main emphasis should be upon changed individual lives, rather than changed social structures. Changed lives produce a changed society. The basis of this change is a personal relationship with Christ. The greatest permanent development results are achieved when “born-again” Christians are taught to multiply their newly acquired values and skills.
• The concept of self-help is indispensable to the development process. Development must lead to self-reliance. Self-reliance must be rooted a t the local level, within the pr actices of the community, and must be under God’s direction.
• It is preferable to start a project in communities where local initiative has been previously demonstrated.
• Success in community development depends upon the participation of those who stand to benefit from it. This is best accomplished by using committees re presenting the people. However, if the committee members do not know their role, there will be little participation by the people. It is crucial that committees undergo o thorough, intensive training.
• Development must be people-centered, not project-centered or technically-oriented. Any program must start where the people are, not where we think they are, or where we would like them to be.
• Help people identify and then meet their interests. A program should be designed to meet the interests of the maximum number of people that can be served within the context of those participating.
• Focus on the assets that are found in the community not the needs for what is not found in the community.
• Development should be concerned with methods that are simple and cost effective and use local resources, whenever possible. Development must be economically sound to be permanent. Financing and supplies should come, to a major extent, from the community. Outside input should be minimal or on the basis of “seed” funds. Supplies and materials, when needed, should be available consistently from sources within the country.
• A major criteria for success should be: Will the results be ongoing in the lives of people after the change agents leave? Development must encourage and promote community leadership. It is vital to find a person who will champion the program within the local community. This person must have the time, vision, and influence to make the program his own. Without such a person, most projects will fail to be fully effective. We learned early that there must be an influential person in the community who will assume responsibility for the project and see it as his and the community’s.
• Change comes about best when there are good role models whom the people can observe and follow. These role models should be people who others respect and desire to copy.
• Home visitation by the leaders, trainers, and trainees is critical. Through visitation in homes, real life situations can be observed and meaningful mentoring can take place on the spot.
• The people of the community must recognize that they have a high priority interest and have a strong desire to deal with that interest. They must also have sufficient confidence in themselves to feel that they can deal with it. Development should be indigenous, coming from the heart of the society. It is good to encourage people and to help them star t individual projects which are important to them. We want them to be successful, because they gain confidence and credibility through success.
• Whenever possible, community development solutions should be transferable to other locations and people in a such a way that their effectiveness is multiplied.
• The role of any outside helper should be as an encourager, catalyst, advisor, trainer, vision-giver, and co-learner, but not a doer or leader. Helpers should be willing to receive as well as to give. That is, they must be equals, not just givers or receivers. A good developer is a helper, a servant to the community.
• Much time and patience is required for lasting development to take place and to continue after the excitement of a new program dies down. In the beginning, the outside change agent is the initiator and the community is the receiver. Over a period of time, these positions should be reversed until outside input is eliminated. Development is a series of many small tasks and factors which lead to self-reliance. No single thing creates a successful development project. We found that a period of 9 to 12 months is required, just to enter the community and gain the confidence of the people. Then the training can begin. We also found that time, time, and more time must be spent with the people–living with, eating with, and relating to them. This process cannot be rushed. If it is rushed, lasting change is less likely to take place.
• It takes a minimum of 5 years for a program to become lasting and ongoing after trainers leave an area. Continuous work need not be going on, but periodic visits and training need to be done throughout. Less and less input will be required by the trainers as the local people take over more and more of the responsibility.
• Development should deal wholistically with man and not compartmentalize him into isolated segments. Man is a physical, spiritual, mental, and social being.
• In most third-world countries, a person’s physical health has traditionally been believed to be influenced by spirits. Here there is no separation into compartments—the physical-self and the spiritual-self. Both are seen as one and part of the whole.

Biblical Basis for Neighborhood Transformation

Neighborhood Transformation’s Cause Is:
Equipping churches to assist neighborhoods out poverty and people to maturity in Christ.
The Biblical Basis for our Cause
Participate in God’s mission to restore all creation to wholeness by being faithful witnesses in Word and Deed through Gods redeeming love and work.
• Luke 10:27 Love God totally in areas of your life which deals with whole person and reach out to your neighbor in love as you would for yourself.
• Luke 4:18 &19, Isa 61:2&3. Deal with the whole person by reaching to them in all areas of their life.
• Luke 9:1,2 & Luke 10, 1,8,9, Paul sends out 12 and 72 disciples to reach out wholistically to others
• Matthew 28:18-10, We are to teach all God has commanded us to do which is to deal wholistically with people.

What the Bible Calls Us To Do In Relation To Our Cause
• Love all people and reach out to them don’t wait for them to come to me.
• Love requires a relationship therefore must get to know people can’t just give people things.
• When we do things for people that they should be doing for themselves we actually hurt not love them.
• The goal is a ministry that deals with all areas of a person life thereby transforming them from the inside out and then these people in a given neighborhood are transforming their neighborhood in the same way.

How Our Cause Intersects With A Regular Person
• It gets people out of their comfort zone and into the neighborhood which is a hard step for many middle-class people to do.
• When we do things for people we (which we are inclined to do) we make them dependent on others which is not showing love. We have to equip people with a different worldview of empowering not doing things for others.

Do you have an interest in Neighborhood Transformation’s Cause?
There are many ways you can become involved where you are. Contact Stan@neighborhoodtransformation.net to learn about them.

Organic Community, Great Book

John Myers wrote a book Organic Community comparing a community that is designed and encouraged by organic growth versus a community that is designed by a master plan. As the title implies an Organic Community is what Myers heavily favors. There are nine elements he uses to describe the difference between organic and master planned growth.

Many of you have seen notes from Stan on books looking at different types of organizations from the Birth of the Chaordic Age, to Just and Lasting Change, to Good to Great, to The Starfish and the Spider, to the Tipping Point.

Back in 2004, MAI/LWI talked about the the upside down pyramid, but that turned out to be the wrong analogy.We have been attempting to try to describe a organizational style that fit the growth of our CHE Movement which has taken on a life of it’s own.

I believe Organic Community finally describes what a movement is all about and what both GCN & CNT have been trying to foster over the years. To whet your appetite Stan has again created his notes which you can see at: http://www.neighborhoodtransformation.net/articles/index.php

Great reading
Stan

Identifying Assets

As follow-on to a Blog I wrote a couple weeks ago on Assets we want to follow on with how to identify assets in a neighborhood.

Communities can no longer be thought of as complex masses of needs and problems, but rather diverse and potent webs of gifts and assets. Each community has a unique set of skills and capacities to channel for community development. ABCD categorizes asset inventories into five groups:
• Individuals: At the center of the approach are residents of the community that have gifts and skills. Everyone has assets and gifts. Individual gifts and assets need to be recognized and identified. In community development you cannot do anything with people’s needs, only their assets. Deficits or needs are only useful to institutions.
• Associations: Small informal groups of people, such as clubs, working with a common interest as volunteers are called associations and are critical to community mobilization. They don’t control anything; they are just coming together around a common interest by their individual choice.
• Institutions: Paid groups of people who generally are professionals who are structurally organized are called institutions. They include government agencies and private business, as well as schools, etc. They can all be valuable resources. The assets of these institutions help the community capture valuable resources and establish a sense of civic responsibility.

Individual Assets
The most important assets are found in the people in the neighborhood. The assets are found by asking a series of questions that gets people talking and sharing about themselves. They are:
• What do you like about your neighborhood?
• What would you like to see different in your neighborhood?
• What groups are you involved in, within your neighborhood?
• What do you like to do:
o With your hands
o What do you feel passionate about
o What knowledge do you have that you might be willing to share with others
• What would you like to learn if training were available in your neighborhood?
• How can we pray for you?
Persons Name and Address_______________________

Associations and Institutions
While associations and institutions are both important to ABCD, they are different. Consider the following comparison of the characteristics of institutions and associations:

Associations
How Governed: Power by consent
How Decisions Made: Choice of members
Who Designed: Designed for and by each other
Who Decides What To Do: Members
Who Runs: Citizen volunteers
Who Are Beneficiaries: Citizen members
Function: Freedom
What Drives: Capacity of members
Amount of Control: Very little

Institutions
How Governed: Controlled environment
How Decisions Made: Involuntary; powered by $
Who Designed: Designed for production
Who Decides What to Do: Needs a client or customer
Who Runs: Service/ not a servant
Who are the Beneficiaries: Consumer/client
Function: Produces services
What Drives: Drive to meet need
Amount of Control: Tight hierarchical control

Example Associations: Civic Events, Fitness Groups, Block Watch, Ethnic Associations, Church neighborhood groups

Example Institutions: Police & Fire Departments, Schools, Non-Profit Agencies, Clinics, Churches, Libraries

The gifts of institutions are important, but they must be steered in support of what the citizens want and need, not what the institution wants and needs. Typically poor communities are inundated with social service organizations that exist to do a particular job or provide a particular service, but they need a client. In regard to which does really work with it is the associations because they represent the neighborhood people not institutions which are mae up of professionals.

In the past community developers were taught to do Mapping of Needs which has four disadvantages:
• The emphasis is on professional helpers who are the primary identifiers of needs and providers of solutions.
• Using a Needs Map fragments the community because it breaks the community up based on professionally determined categories because professionals are specialists instead of generalists.
• Both citizens and service providers often internalize the needs map as negative truths about the community thereby becoming a self fulfilling prophesy.
• People who are good at describing their community as broken often get promoted as leaders by outsiders.

While doing asset mapping starts with counting up what is there, identifying what the community already has that can contribute to solving problems and realizing goals. Who and what do we have and what can they do? Key principals are:
• People in every community care about something that they are willing to do something about
• Discover assets by building relationships
• Keep citizens at the center
• Mobilizing the building blocks (assets) of the community

Therefore if you want to see transformation focus on assets and possibilities not needs or problems.

RELIEF, BETTERMENT OR DEVELOPMENT?

I have been facilitating the Multiplying Light and Truth On-line Book Study for the last two weeks with about 14 participants from varied backgrounds. It is going well. Participants read two chapters of my book and then go on-line to view a video role play and answer several questions with their answers automatically being sent to all participants for their comments.

A key item this week is the difference between relief, betterment and development which some participants admit that they have a problem identifying the differences. This is critical if we are to implement a CHE or Neighborhood Transformation ministry. If we do not understand the difference then we will definitely have problems in empowering others to help themselves. The River Crossing story told in the book and shown as the video really represents the differences.

When a person is carried on another person’s back which demonstrates Relief. Many times those carried get left in the middle of the river when the carrier gets tired. They are stuck there and cannot get off. In a church this is represented by food and clothes give away programs. It is doing things for people.

When a person is taught how to cross the river with instructions, modeling, coaching and encouragement this represents betterment. In a church setting this could be demonstrated by tutoring children. This is helping them improve their life by coming alongside them.

Development is when the person taught how to cross on their own goes back and teaches the person on the island how to get off. They teach the same way that they were taught. This is represented by 2 Timothy 2:2. Too many times we only think of this verse for spiritual things but it applies in all areas of our wholistic approach to ministry. This is where the person taught empowers others to do the same.

We have a chart which compares the three which you can see by going to our web site under Articles and find Comparison of Relief, Betterment and Development: