Why partner with religious congregations?

Our collaborative works to encourage the sharing of knowledge, skills, and resources among our faith-based and community-based partners. As untapped resource for young people, faith-based organizations have many assets to bring to our project development. They offer volunteers, provide space in which programs are held, and provide expertise in other areas, such as counseling. It makes sense for youth-serving agencies to partner with faith-based congregations to fill in gaps in service and provide a wider array of support for local young people.

Some ways that faith communities have parntered with the social services are below:

To augment one county's small shelter, the agency has invested in long-term relationships with the county's faith communities. Through an interfaith organization called Love INC. of Lancaster County, congregations can join together to pay the rent on apartments in which homeless clients can live for up to three months. Some churches use their parsonages for housing; at one least one congregation bought a double-wide trailer that it uses for this purpose. In the last six years the program has grown to include 18 transitional apartments where homeless families and individuals can live while awaiting something more permanent. Part of that expansion was driven by agency staff, who talked their own congregations into participating.

The city of Nashville is currently developing a "Faith Community Directory" that will cover all faith institutions located in or providing outreach services to the neighborhoods to the south and east of the Vanderbilt University campus. The Directory will serve as a prototype for a county-wide directory. The Directory has three primary purposes: to help provide information for those within the religious community so that congregations can learn about each other; to help people locate and learn about the opportunities for fellowship and support being provided by religious institutions in their neighborhood; and to help social service agencies recognize and take advantage of the opportunities to partner with these congregations in order to better help their clients. For example, an agency might partner with a church to offer parenting classes located in the church's neighborhood. The religious institution could not only provide space for the agency's classes but offer volunteers from the congregation to provide mentoring or child-care to participants.

What is capacity building?

An old Chinese saying says: "Give a person a fish, and you fish them for a day. Teach a person how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime."

Youth ImPact stresses community change through capacity-building, not direct services. Why? A current best practice of community development is the creation of projects that are sustainable, that address root causes of an issue, and are not simply a "band-aid." Capacity-building is a process of implementing activities critical to the long-term viability of an organization, and empowering organizations to become more effective, sustainable social service providers. Capacity-building examples include: researching and developing new programs, developing or designing a program curriculum, purchasing program-related equipment and durable supplies, implementing systems to keep records, etc. Direct service, on the other hand, is about implementing program activities, purchasing food, paying management costs, holding events, and paying staff. Our partners are challenged to create or augment projects that fall under the "capacity-building" category. We are creating change in the community and within organizations that answers the questions, "Where does the problem stem from? How can it be fixed?"

Parable of the Baby-Savers

The story of the "Baby Savers" illustrates the importance of asking that question.

One day a couple of people saw three babies coming down the river in baskets. They both jumped into the water and started swimming toward the babies. One of the Baby Savers was able to reach a baby in time to save it, but another wasn't that good a swimmer, and one of the babies went over the waterfall. The Baby Savers were heartbroken, and then felt even worse when they looked over the waterfall and saw a whole bunch of broken baskets on the rocks below. The Baby Savers spent the rest of the day working themselves to exhaustion, caring for the surviving babies, trying to find them places to stay, and trying to raise awareness among the rest of the townspeople (who weren't really interested, although a few complimented the Baby Savers on their wonderful humanitarianism; this made them feel pretty good).

They also spent some time beginning to set up a network to try to make sure that additional babies wouldn't go over the waterfall. In the meantime, they saved many babies, but still more went over the waterfall, because they came in groups of three and there was no way to reach them all at once. Over the next few days the Baby Savers saved dozens more babies (although they lost even more), recruited some more members for their efforts, and had a tremendous battle with the town government to get some money to start a Baby Saving agency. As time wore on, conversations like this one were heard more and more often.

"I am so tired. Since I was made Director of the Baby Savers Agency, I just run from baby to baby and meeting to meeting trying to make sure everything is taken care of. My staff is starting to hate swimming, and our home life is falling apart because we're always stressed out. We were talking about taking a vacation last night, but I know I would feel so guilty."

And, "I understand how you feel, but we've got to take care of ourselves. Anyway, I'm glad you got a raise. I hope the rest of us can get one soon, too."

And, "I heard there's a conference about "Avoiding Baby Saver Burnout" next week at the new hotel in the next town. I'll bet the town will pay for you to go. Everybody knows how important your work is and what an incredible professional you are."

That was the day that R.T. appeared on the scene, coming from the forest across the river. R.T. was from the town, but had been away for a while. Upon seeing the new Baby Saving center that had been built along the river bank, R.T. asked the Baby Savers what was happening. They explained that they had been working for a long time now to find ways to save and care for these babies that come down the river in baskets. "There are hundreds of them, and more on the way!" one said. "We've build this station, and in town we're building a whole new clinic and residential complex to take care of the babies we're saving."

R.T. asked, "Where are the babies coming from?" He said, "I would like to see if some of the people in your agency could come with me up the river to try to see where the babies are coming from."

They sadly explained that they hadn't time to investigate, and besides that was not their job. They explained further that not one staff could be spared because they were all needed to keep the babies from going over the waterfall. They described how much effort it takes just to pull babies out of the river and make sure that they're taken care of, and that furthermore they had to give a report to the town government, and then, for the first time since this problem began, they had to start taking time for themselves. They were all going to a burn-out prevention conference.

R.T. tried one more time: "But don't you think we could put a stop to all this if a few could just figure out why the babies are ending up here in the first place, and try to work to stop it from happening?"

Unfortunately, his pleas went nowhere, and the babies kept on coming.