Gardening tools in place of firearms?

Community gardens could be social and economic game changers

About six years ago, Carl Awsumb read a front-page article in a Memphis newspaper about the amount of violent crime in the city and how it seems that practically everybody was buying a firearm and learning how to use it.

“I was so horrified by that,” he recalls.

That article was the necessary catalyst prompting Carl to nurture the growth of new found neighborliness through work on a community garden.

He was nearing retirement and eager to use his time to support the city he loves.  The garden, which was started as a raised bed in the parking lot of The Commons in Binghampton, seemed like a logical place to combat the negative perceptions and realities people seem all too eager to highlight in the city.

“Sometimes people are worried about what they’re going to do in retirement and I realize I had the easiest transition of anybody I knew,” Carl says, and he began to recruit others like him to help.

Today, a core of about 10 people contribute to the work and Carl sees people from all backgrounds that live in the neighborhood connecting with each other over the primal experience of growing food together, and realizing some modest economic benefits.

The group soon understood that to have the greatest impact they would need to engage young people and offer modest financial incentives.  Two years ago they began paying small amounts during harvest time — a dollar a pint for Cherry tomatoes, for example, that the children would then see sold at market for $3.

“Then we could start the whole dialogue about what you do with the other $2, for next Saturday, next season, next year,” Carl says.

In months when there is no harvest, there is a heap of work to do and a flat rate of $5 per hour is paid to people helping prepare for the next season.

“It gives us a chance to talk to them about the meaning of work and what they’re going to do with that $5,” Carl says.

Everyone understands that funds are limited and the money will not last, yet if they want to reap the benefits of next harvest, they can decide to continue working after the funds dry up.

It has not been easy to bring everyone together, he admits. Mistrust still exists between different groups of people in parts of the city, yet progress is being made as the initiative continues to expand.

The more Carl learns, the more he says he believes that urban agriculture could be an answer to many of the problems facing cities today, both economically and socially.

- Kristian Partington -

If you have questions, comments or a story to share, please contact kristian@axiomnews.ca.

Connecting friends through gifts, passions and knowledge

Binghampton United Methodist Church mapping assets through Advent Study

The gifts, skills, passion and knowledge of the Binghampton United Methodist Church (BUMC) congregation and its neighbors are converging in ways that church members hope will catalyze new possibilities in the neighborhood through expanded relationships.

People working in ministry can sometimes be seen as doing “for” someone as opposed to “with” someone, says BUMC lay leader Barbara Vann, so the congregation is always on the lookout for new ways to come alongside people in their community in a shared quest to learn from each other.

An Advent Study now being shared with community members seeks to expand conversation around what the diverse people of the neighborhood have to offer, especially those who might consider themselves clients utilizing services as opposed to friends with something to contribute.

Over the four weeks of Advent, people who come to the Food Pantry that the church operates will be given the opportunity to define their passions, skills, gifts and knowledge.

Sharing bread at the 2011 Christmas Party.

This gift inventory, as well as those discovered within the congregation, are being collected and will be shared during a Christmas luncheon on Dec. 19. The hope is that a greater understanding of what each person has to offer and how they can impact the community as a whole will emerge, Barbara says.

If a person takes the time to identify their gifts and talents and put language around them, they might instinctively look to others and wonder what gifts they hold inside, she adds — at least that’s what she found after this process of discovery was introduced by John McKnight during a community conversation event hosted by the Center for Transforming Communities last month. 

In the eyes of BUMC church member, Lisa Smith, this is a means of igniting new possibilities centered on friendship.

Lisa has lived in Binghampton all her life, and since 1999, she’s been working at the Food Pantry offering support to friends and neighbors.

The word the central food bank in Memphis prefers when referring to the people in need, however, is client.

Yet, Lisa has given herself license to change this perspective.

“No, they’re our friends because they live around me and they’ve been around me for a while,” Lisa says.

Stigmas would more readily lift if that language could shift in more communities, she adds, and people might feel less ashamed to visit the Food Pantry when times are tight, especially if they have an opportunity to honor and offer their gifts. 

The “Food Lady”, as Lisa is sometimes called by people in the neighborhood, has a unique perspective on the people she meets and has always had an eye for connecting the gifts and talents of the people she meets. She’s connected caregivers to people in need of childcare, for example, and seamstresses with people who want to learn to sew.

She sees the Advent Study as a way to help map some of these gifts and looks forward to the discussion this concept might inspire at the upcoming Christmas luncheon.

This is one more step in the neighborhood’s journey to becoming more like it was when Lisa was a child, at least in terms of connectivity among neighbors.

“It’s getting back to being a friendly neighborhood like it used to be,” she says.

“When I was little, everybody knew everybody, and it seems to be coming back around to that.”

- Kristian Partington -

Click here to download the Advent Study.

Please share your comments below or at info@ctcmidsouth.org.

Competition gives way to cooperation in Hickory Hill

Diverse group comes together for community transformation  

 

Dianne Love at quarterly Shalom Gathering

If the Center for Transforming Communities (CTC) is a spark to help ignite strengths and gifts in neighborhoods of Memphis, then the collaborative spirit Dianne Love sees in Hickory Hill is a sign of that fire burning brighter every day.

Competition gives way to cooperation in this part of Memphis as people from all walks of life gather under the auspices of Communities of Shalom to envision what is possible in the neighborhood while working together to make that vision a reality.

The Making it Happen Shalom Zone and its team of dedicated volunteers offer enrichment programs for youth and opportunities for adults to map their own assets and discover new paths in life. Dianne says what encourages her most is the fact that everyone is working together to achieve a common goal.

People tend to be territorial, she says, but in her Shalom Zone they have pushed aside any thought of ownership in the transformation process to focus on the strengths and assets of all partners and community members.

“We are from all walks of life at first contact,” Dianne says of the team of volunteers, noting that when the group first got together it was associated foremost with Capleville United Methodist Church.

 

“Over time, as we have worked these programs, the thing that is encouraging to me is that we have merged across the lines of denominations,” she says, and several churches and community organizations are working together.

The work is not about what is best for the agenda of individual partner organizations, she says. The focus is entirely on what is best for the neighborhood, and that focus is attracting more interest all the time.

"We’re having more and more people and organizations who want to join and be partners," she says. A growing relationship with the Police Department adds another layer of depth to the work of transformation in the neighborhood, for example.

Dianne was recruited by the CTC to the Communities of Shalom as president of the Parent Teacher Association at her children's school, and is site director for the Making it Happen Shalom Zone.

When asked about the greatest assets she sees in the group and the work it is doing to help catalyze change, she says it can be seen in the lack of competition among many partners. 

The partners “want what’s best for the community, at any cost," she says. "What can we do to make the community whole? What kind of resources can we offer to the community?"

Though times are tough, Dianne sees enrichment programs connecting the assets of youth and adults alike, and a diverse team of people are all offering skills to back these programs up.

"We kind of have our own niches of what we do . . . and as we put together those parts, it makes a whole," Dianne says.

- Kristian Partington -

If you have questions, comments or a story to share, please contact kristian@axiomnews.ca.

Photo courtesy of www.focusforthegood.org.

Faith and the Great Transition

Interview with Jay Van Groningen, Communities First Association

We’re hearing more and more of this economic and social shift afoot, what some are calling the great transition or the great turning. A critical field of action some have identified in this shift is that of what might be called the faith community or faith system.

Axiom News, through its work with the Center for Transforming Communities (CTC), spoke with Communities First Association executive director Jay Van Groningen recently on the question of a possible new role for faith given this transition. CTC is an affiliate of Communities First, which represents about 300 neighborhoods across the U.S. where local residents are beginning to see their gifts, committing to work together and taking ownership for their communities.

  

What do you see as the possible new role of faith in broader society, especially given some of the significant economic and social shifts/upheaval happening right now?

Jay: I don’t think that’s new at all. If you look back at the reformers, John Calvin (1509-1564), for example, had as part of his imagination that the city of Geneva would be restored because the people of faith, that is, folks who were followers of a sovereign God, would become co-reigners with him, making all things new.

Calvin had a theology and a practice of trying to develop leadership and programs and activities that literally brought prosperity, and he really promoted the common good as an essential component of the work of the church. Calvin even created an office within the church, the office of deacon, which had as its primary focus mercy and justice. How do you address the systems that perpetuate poverty, and how do you respond to folks who are poor in a way that leads to them not being poor any longer?

I think back also to Martin Luther (1483-1564) and his emphasis on Christian education. It was all around the idea of needing to equip people so that as Christian thinkers/leaders they bring a transforming power to their business, to whatever endeavor they get into. It was a desire to be a contributor to the common good, the redemption of all things, to be contributing to the kind of world that God smiles on, as opposed to the kind of world that God has to come and pour relief on.

So I would say this is not new at all. I would say that in fairly recent history the church has been abdicating its role as an agent, among other agents, of change towards the common good in community

But I don’t agree with the premise that it’s new; I think we’re rediscovering what historically has been a big part of the role of church in society.

I’ve been raised in an environment that says the Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof, so if he is the God who reigns, then let’s co-operate with him in making all things fruitful and good.

It is true that many churches have abdicated faith to kind of a private realm that doesn’t have influence outside my own private life, me-and-Jesus kind of thing.

But honestly that ignores a whole religious tradition that has historically believed you can’t isolate religion. If religion counts, it counts because it is a transforming force, that is, it is a force that has the world and its renewal as the heart of the theology.

 

So you say you see a recent reawakening and rediscovery of this original calling. Any thoughts on what’s provoking that?

Jay: There are several things that are provoking that. The younger generation for one has grown very disaffected with the religion of their parents, because it is a religion that doesn’t seem to have influence. It seems to have been so privatized that it doesn’t matter.

Younger folks today are demanding a kind of religion that has a power to transform, a power to contribute to the common good, a power to have a redemptive imprint.

So that’s one piece.

A second piece is that there is a growing awareness that in the impoverished communities there is no lack of churches.

Just as one example, my wife and I sold our house in suburbia and moved to a declining neighborhood in the city we live. In this declining neighborhood of 1,500 households, there are no fewer than 11 church buildings and 11 places where on a Sunday or Wednesday night there are active worshipping communities. And these 11 churches have so little influence on the place they occupy that the neighborhood continues to go down and down.

We’re now at a 60 to 40 ratio of owner versus rental. The middle class has virtually left.

Some of these churches have become commuter-based institutions that gather for the holy huddle on a Sunday.

What I’m getting at here is that there is a growing awareness that these 11 churches by and large in their recent history have been inoculated against owning responsibility for what happens to the neighborhood story; they’ve been so disconnected from it, and they don’t accept that as their role any longer.

They know that the kind of religion that doesn’t leave a redemptive imprint is in some respects a gutted religion.

So there is a growing awareness that you can occupy a space, but if you don’t see any influence on that space, what good is it?

There’s a growing dissatisfaction with a theology that doesn’t connect with God’s ongoing restorative presence in his world.

Maybe there is a third influence, and that is these mega-churches. Some of the leadership in these mega-churches have been brought to a place of repentance because while on the one hand they can fill many, many pews and testify to many, many personal relationships with Jesus, they are beginning to understand the isolation of their own members in the world.

In a way they’ve been feeding a privatized Christianity that doesn’t have impact. Some of those networks are now really focusing on mercy and justice in impactful ways in the world. They’re starting to address some of these questions.

 

Do you have any stories to tell of where you’ve seen this impact being made particularly powerfully?

Jay: My purview really is the 300 neighborhoods (connected to Communities First Association) where this inside out, this asset-based approach, is being worked.

Out of the 300, we have currently 60 of those neighborhoods where residents now literally respond to anything that affects them and their neighborhood; they literally have created their own citizen power and capacity to tackle anything they want together.

They’ve created a culture of “together we can.”

So that’s been remarkable.

What does that look like?

In one neighborhood, everybody is on welfare; that is, they live below the poverty line and they’re eligible for public support. And in this neighborhood there is an abnormally high incidence of residents who are receiving services from community mental-health agencies, which means there is an abnormally high presence of people with disabilities — mental, social, physical disability.

And in this neighborhood there is a higher-than-usual single parent heads of households ratio, and this neighborhood used to be one of the highest crime neighborhoods in the city.

A young Christian woman graduated from a Christian college with a strong sense of calling to go and live among the poor. Her name is Tracy, and she moved into this neighborhood and spent six months doing nothing but getting to know the first and last names of her neighbors, and asking questions such as, “If they could wave a magic wand and make one thing better, what would they like to see better?”

She was having conversations about things like, do they like this neighborhood or don’t they? What do they like about it? And if they could make it better, what would they want to work on?

And so now I’m going to advance the story six years

Today Tracy is the executive director of a small non-profit in this neighborhood and she has formed a neighborhood council made up entirely of the residents themselves.

It’s called SOAR, which is the first initials of four of the streets of that neighborhood. What that says is, to be a member of this council you have to live here.

In the springtime they do spring cleanup together in their neighborhood. Mind you, every single resident, but one, out of maybe 1,200 households, is a renter.

But they take responsibility for the condition of the neighborhood. They do spring cleanup; they do flower planting together; they do community breakfasts. Out of their meager incomes they rent an apartment at a community center; they had to go to the city to get an ordinance variance in order to do that. So they know how to approach the city around zoning.

They had traffic problems and the city wouldn’t listen to them. So finally they organized to the point where they were able to literally change the geographic landscape and the traffic flow so it wasn’t dangerous for the kids in their neighborhood any longer.

There was a group of residents outside the neighborhood who didn’t like the high crime at one time, so they were trying to block off the street access into their adjacent neighborhood. Well, this committee said you don’t get to do that, we’re public, too. And so they were able to fight or ward off this attempt to literally fence their neighborhood in so there was only one in and one way out.

Anything that affects their neighborhood, they’re now able to take responsibility for themselves.

The most recent thing I heard out of this neighborhood was that there is more public transportation out of there than any other neighborhood, but it didn’t have its own shelter. The council was able to work with the city and the bus company, and now they’ve got their own shelter.

So they get to do life together. They name what they want to work on, and then they work on it together and they succeed at what they do.

There were residents in that neighborhood when Tracy first did her listening who said my only dream is to get out of this neighborhood.

Today some of those same residents say you couldn’t pull me out of here with anything. This has become a community of co-operation and care and mutual gift-giving for the common good. It’s so strong, residents choose to live there today.

Every neighborhood is different, of course, but what I’m telling you is we’re literally building citizen power and capacity to act on what the neighbors care about together; making life better.

 

How do you define faith when there are a number of belief systems at work, a variety of denominations and takes on faith?

Jay: So, do I dare to believe that there is a God — and I’m comfortable saying “God as you know him or her” — do I dare to believe that there is a God, and does that God continue to have a relationship with this world? And can I believe that that God is a generous God, generous enough to allow us a fruitful life, if we choose to live it together?

So, for me, faith is believing in the kind of God who says, “I’m still an active God in this world and I choose good things for you, my children, if you will also choose them.”

For me, faith is having a personal relationship with that kind of a God, and choosing to partner with God in the things that would please God.

 

What kind of premise are you working with in saying that?

Jay: For me, the premise is the Holy Bible; that’s where I’m rooted and I know that in other faith traditions they also have their equivalent standards and I think there is a great deal of commonality that can be found among them.

But I don’t know how else to answer that; again, for me, the Bible is my standard.

I accept that others have their standards and I’m not really that interested in going in too much depth or particularity in terms of working together for the common good, around what’s your standard?

What I’m really trying to find is, do you care enough to act?

And then we can have conversations around where is that care rooted, where do you draw that care from? So those kinds of questions draw us back to some of those discussions about standards and belief systems and systems of faith.

 

Right, but it begins with caring enough to act.

Jay: Exactly, and that’s the asset-based community theory — discover who cares enough to act, who cares enough about being part of a communal story and let’s do life together.

Religion doesn’t have to be the thing that tears us apart; it can actually be the motivating force that draws us together.

Please share your comments below or with michelle@axiomnews.ca.

1,000 examples of community strength in The Heights

Reflections on  what’s possible through cooperation

While 1,000 people were coming and going during a back-to-school party at Treadwell Middle School in September, Anna Terry had a chance to speak with one of the security guards who works there.

He grew up in The Heights and played basketball at Treadwell, he told her, and as he spoke to her about his younger years and his connection to the neighborhood, a look of pure nostalgia was written upon his face.

He was thankful to see the spirit of community alive and well that day, and Anna was struck then by how tightly the people of the neighborhood are woven, and how eager they are to work together to make it a better place to live.

Anna settled in the neighborhood about three years ago with a passion for community development and a sense that, of all the places she’d lived in the U.S., a home for her rested in Memphis.

“There’s a strong community spirit among the neighbors and residents and a pride in The Heights,” she says.

She recently began using her background in community development as the sole staff person running The Heights Community Development Corporation (CDC) in partnership with Binghampton CDC.

She is also working closely with the team of volunteers behind The Corners, a Communities of Shalom zone organized through the Center for Transforming Communities, which helps connect the strengths of various churches, individuals and other stakeholders.

The challenges are many — 1 in 4 houses are vacant and seen as blights on the neighborhood, and people are clamoring for a meaningful gathering space — but so are the opportunities, and in that back-to-school party, Anna saw all the necessary elements of community transformation present.

People were connecting with each other around their children and the school they attend, which is close to the hearts of so many who live in The Heights. Abundant generosity was in the air as a host of community partners drew upon their relationships to bring live music, a Model-T Ford, games, refreshments and horse rides to the party.

That spirit of collaboration sticks out in Anna’s mind as she reflects on the day.

“It was really nice to have a party that big and to not be that taxing on any one group or entity,” she says.

“At the end of the day, I was tired but I wasn’t beat down; it was a sort of sweet exhaustion.”

Looking back, the nostalgic security guard and joy on the faces of children as they rode a horse for the first time are lasting impressions of a day that proved what’s possible when people come together.

As the work of community development continues, Anna says these impressions will carry forward.

- Kristian Partington -

Please leave comments below or e-mail to kristian@axiomnews.ca.