 |
Your
roadmap to renewing communities
|
 |
|
 |
 |
||
|
The Power that Transforms By Barbara Elliott Prepared for the Heritage Foundation Resource Bank
Over the years I've had a chance to evaluate what works in changing human lives, and what isn't effective. And there are some characteristics that have emerged that are consistent in many of the faith-based groups that are doing exceptional work. The faith-based groups that are having a profound impact are those that are explicit about their faith, relationship based, holistic, character-forming, entrepreneurial, extend over time, and are rooted in neighborhoods. Programs that have a concentration of these characteristics tend to be much more effective than any others. Relational Rather than Commodities Based The worst kind of poverty is not material, but relational. Mentoring touches places money cannot touch. What mentors offer, is a chance to learn a new way of life, someone to show them a better way, encouragement, accountability - and most importantly, love. That means that a program that gives away free food and shelter is not as effective in helping a homeless person as one that also develops a long-term relationship with them to get at the root cause of their homelessness. It means that measuring the number of people served begs the question of how they are served. It means that meeting with an at-risk child for an hour every week for a year in a program like KidsHope USA to give them your undivided attention and love is more life-changing than giving them a toy at Christmas, school supplies, or new sport shoes. They need both. Giving needy people things does not touch the deeper needs of the heart. The relational approach is much harder, and takes a lot more time and effort, but is in the end much more effective. Holistic, Extends over Time Dysfunctional people need a lot more than a quick fix can give. They need a whole new way of life. People who have never held a steady job need more than job skills: they need life skills. Getting a job isn't as hard as keeping one. The holistic approach to coming along side families transitioning off welfare is most effective. Dr. Amy Sherman and others have created teams of mentors all over the country to give encouragement not only in finding a job, but also to teach time management, budgeting, conflict resolution, nutrition, and parenting, while helping out with practical things like transportation and child care. If all the needs are addressed holistically, and the change is sustained for a whole year, the people have a far better chance at becoming genuinely self-sufficient. Full immersion for prisoners at the Inner Change Freedom Initiative in Texas puts convicts into a round-the-clock life changing combination of mentoring, graduate equivalent training, community service, reconciliation with their victims, and spiritual training. Of the prisoners who had 18 months of full-time immersion, and a mentor for after-care, only a handful has returned to prison. The recidivism rate is usually at least 60%. This program drops it down to less than 10%. In both these approaches, it takes time, a year or longer of full immersion in a holistic program to learn a new way of life, before lasting change can come about. There are no shortcuts. Rooted in Neighborhoods There are already what Bob Woodson calls "agents of healing" in the neighborhoods all across America. Rather than trying to impose a solution from outside, we need to find the most effective efforts that grow from the grassroots up, which are run by people who live in the same zip-code as the people they are serving. They know the people and the problems in a way no outsider any can. Leaders who come from the inner city are now working on raising up a new generation of leaders who are renewing from within. We should focus on coming along side these existing efforts, and building their capacity. "Urban pioneers" like H. Spees in Fresno, or Bob Muzikowski in Chicago, have moved their young families from the suburbs into the inner city to deliberately create islands of health in troubled regions. More of us need to go and do likewise. The Entrepreneurial Touch Some of the most innovative social entrepreneurs are utilizing the strength of the market to help lift people from dependency. Monsignor Ronald Marino in Brooklyn is turning immigrants into entrepreneurs by teaching them marketable skills once they have mastered English, and then deploying them in teams to work as culinary chefs, graphic artists, or professional cleaning companies. His non-profit business, called Resources, lifts immigrants from China, El Salvador, Haiti and the former Soviet Republics out of dependency to become self-sufficient, productive citizens. And he does it without government assistance. Brookwood Community in Texas takes adults with multiple mental and physical handicaps who require 24-hour care, and offers them a home in the country. Brookwood utilizes them in on-site enterprises to produce greenhouses bursting with blooming plants, ceramics and pottery, silk screened cards, figurines, and a host of other attractive gift items. The participants acquire the dignity of meaningful work, which takes the place of therapy, while at the same time they produce revenue that covers a third of the cost of their care. Brookwood's $5.5 million budget includes no government funding. Changing the Parameters of the Debate for the White House Office Much of the debate since the creation of the White House
Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has focused on what
the government should or should not do. There are several things the
federal government can do: use the bully pulpit to trumpet the successes
of effective faith-based efforts. Remove the obstacles hampering faith-based
groups by reducing regulatory and licensing burdens. Level the playing
field, allowing faith-based groups to compete on equal footing with
secular providers for government contracts to provide specific social
services for the public good. Create incentives to encourage private
donors to give charitable contributions by allowing taxpayers who don't
itemize to deduct their donations. But the real question is: What can
the private sector do? We have to think outside the box - this is an
issue that public policy alone cannot solve. The Third Sector: Voluntary Associations There are three sectors: the government, the economy, and the voluntary sector. The conservative movement has put most of its energy into the first two sectors, focusing on limiting the function of government and on fostering a healthy economy (both of which are valid concerns.) But as a movement, we have not devoted much time or energy to the Third Sector. This vibrant segment of America is peopled by families and neighborhoods. It is composed of churches, parachurch organizations, community associations, charities, nonprofits, service clubs. These are the "little platoons" Burke wrote about, or the "armies of compassion" our President refers to. This Third Sector is the soil within which the other two sectors - the government and the economy - are rooted. It provides the cohesiveness that makes our society whole. It fosters the character and virtue which are the human content poured into the institutions of the government and the economy. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America early in the nineteenth century, he marveled at the thriving charitable organizations that pulsed with life. This observant Frenchman discovered a rich flowering of voluntary associations covering the landscape throughout the country. "Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions, constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds - religious, moral, serious, futile, extensive, or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give missionaries to the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it be proposed to advance some truth, or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society." (Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, 1845 - Chapter 5 ,"Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life") The reason for forming them had become a part of the American character. Many, though not all, sprang from religious conviction. The habits of the heart prompted Americans to care for one another voluntarily. And as they did so, Americans were fostering their own character development. This is the acquisition of civic virtue. This approach not only helps the recipients: it changes the givers as well. Alexis de Tocqueville shrewdly observed that American individualism ran counter to this tendency to serve others. He concluded that rampant individualism is tempered by these acts of serving others, which shaped the American character and moral habits to promote the best interest of all. The American Soul has Atrophied Several things happened to radically change the nature of America over the course of the twentieth century. These include urbanization, the loss of community, the pressures of two-career families, shifts in theology, and a host of other factors. We work longer hours, drive our kids to more activities, and spend less time together as families. We do more alone, and volunteer less. We are busier, but not happier. This disconnectedness has weakened the nation's spiritual and moral vitality. Americans who once helped individually have concluded it isn't their job, and have now nearly lost the capacity for civic virtue Tocqueville admired. The glue that held this society together for as long as it flourished was personal, face-to-face relationships. To the extent that we have lost these, we have become a different country. The Third Sector of private, voluntary associations has the power to transform lives by touching hearts. This realm has atrophied in the past century, and part of America's soul has atrophied with it. We have lost an important part of what made this country personal, warm, and luminescent. And there is nothing in the government sector that can nurture this part of the American soul. We have to do it ourselves, one heart at a time. "Bowling Alone" Robert Putnam, a sociologist at Harvard, in his recent book Bowling Alone, documents the country's creation of "social capital" over the past century, and marks the significant trends in the way Americans relate to each other. He concludes that we are in the midst of a spectacular breakdown of relationship throughout the country, exemplified in the droves of people who no longer participate in civic organizations. We have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, as measured by participation in service or sport clubs, political parties, the PTA, and even bowling leagues. The result is the loss of "social capital" over the past 25 years that is crippling. Churches have been historically one of the pillars of American civil society, and while attendance has remained reasonably stable, voluntary activity through the church has plummeted over the past 25 years. One of the weight-bearing beams of our country's culture is hollow. It was not always like this, Putnam shows us. Throughout the 20th century, there was a downturn in civic participation during the Depression, but a strong upward trend through WWII, and dramatic increase through 50s and 60s, which peaked in the early 60's. The sixties were the turning point and as a cultural revolution swept the country, one of the casualties was civic engagement. There was a radical decline throughout 70's, which flattened a little during the 80's, and dipped even deeper in the 90's, taking us back near Depression levels. The prospects for the future are even more dismal, because behavior tends to remain relatively constant for a given generation. The people who are volunteering now are largely the same people who did so in earlier years - they're just getting older. Those from Generation X and Y are the least engaged, and they will occupy and increasingly higher proportion of adulthood. Civic activists are a dying breed. The problem is that at precisely the moment we have fewer Americans civically engaged, our social are maladies stubbornly persistent: illegitimacy, drug abuse, violence in our streets and in our schools. We need to address the root causes by mobilizing the armies of compassion to address the moral maladies. The faith community is best suited to take on this task, although its energy lies largely dormant. Repairing the Disintegrating Family The family is under massive assault, and whether our culture survives or not may depend on whether the institution of the family survives. One cultural constant in all civilizations has been the view that a single mother is an incomplete unit. There's a reason - statistically, children with a complete set of parents fare better. Children born out of wedlock or reared in a home without a male figure are more likely to live in poverty, drop out of school, abuse drugs, commit crimes, and end up in jail. Period. Two out of three kids live with one parent in America's inner cities. The single most consistent factor in predicting juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior as an adult is the absence of a father at home. And the damage is present regardless of class, race, or geography. Trend lines for divorce and out-of-wedlock births in
America are one important key to the present malaise. Charles Murray
tells us that up to the 60's there were 3% births out of wedlock to
whites, and 21% to blacks. After the 60's, the trend lines tilt up for
both groups. In 1991, the figures were 22% out of wedlock births for
whites and 68% for African-Americans. This is at its root a moral issue,
which has profound sociological consequences. The political realm can
only address it indirectly. The faith community has the best track record
of persuading young people to abstain from pre-marital sex, become responsible
fathers and mothers, and stay married. Their efforts are sorely needed.
Programs like Don Eberly's National Fatherhood Initiative, Elayne Bennett's
Best Friends, and Mike McManus' Marriage Savers are all doing excellent
work. Teen Challenge and Victory Fellowship have discovered
that some of the most effective people counseling addicts are former
addicts themselves. Their life experience proves at least as valuable
as academic degrees, when it comes to changing lives. Teen Challenge's
staff has a high proportion of counselors with advanced degrees, but
they have them in theology and Christian counseling, rather than psychiatry
and social work. Their emphasis is on theological and personal spiritual
change, and it produces results. Teen Challenge has a proven 70-86%
success rate. The reason is that their graduates have a changed heart,
and because of that, they lead a changed life. (See Catherine B. Hess (1975) Teen Challenge Training
Center: Research Summation. And National Institute on Drug Abuse (1976)
An Evaluation of the Teen Challenge Treatment Program, United States
Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Government Documents, Washington,
D.C.) · 88% of the graduates did not require additional
drug treatment after leaving Teen Challenge. (See Dr. Roger D. Thompson, "Teen Challenge of Chattanooga, TN: Survey of Alumni" (1994). Dr. Thompson, Associate Professor and Head of Criminal Justice Dept., conducted the independent survey in conjunction with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.) The government can provide a useful service by removing
unnecessary obstacles to faith-based social entrepreneurs. Teen Challenge
and Victory Fellowship in San Antonio were threatened by the local Texas
Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, which claimed they were in noncompliance
with their licensing standards.
Public-Private Partnerships that Work Christian Community Development Corporations Civil rights leader John Perkins is widely credited as the grandfather of this movement, which he began in Mississippi. What began in one community as a holistic approach to renewal to spark both spiritual and economic development has blossomed into a national movement. Perkins and his protégés are convinced that in order to have a lasting impact on the community, you have to be a part of it, put down relational roots, and commit to renewing the entire person and through them, the entire community. He expanded the definition of the church as a place of worship to a vision of the church as a force of complete renewal, reaching out to the community by meeting the needs for affordable housing, locally owned businesses, education, and youth work - all of which are anchored in faith. The Power Center in Houston is one of the best examples
of a public-private partnership that mobilizes the strength of the church
to serve the community. Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell is a graduate of the
Wharton Business School who has led his Windsor Village congregation
into a comprehensive community renewal effort that turned an abandoned
K-mart strip center into a hub of buzzing entrepreneurial enterprises.
The Power Center practices "holistic salvation," serving the
community's needs by partnering to provide a bank, health clinic, school,
conference facility, pharmacy, community college, and entrepreneurial
suites for incubating startup businesses. The church offers 120 ministries
in everything from Bible study to alcohol rehabilitation, financial
planning, and job placement. Caldwell has now embarked on a new project
to build 450 affordable homes. The ministry is done through the church,
while the community development projects run through a separate 501
c 3. His efforts have already created nearly 300 jobs, and are expected
to add about $30 million to the local economy over the next few years.
The "faith factor" has proven to be potent in criminal rehabilitation in a model which commands the attention of forward thinking leaders. Prison Fellowship International has pioneered with a program in Texas, which is based on a successful model in Brazil. The Inner Change Freedom Initiative in the state prison west of Houston is the first of its kind in the U.S., which has now been replicated in Iowa, and is slated to begin elsewhere. This 18-month program is explicitly faith-based, privately funded, and voluntary. A public prison is opened to a privately funded faith-based program, which operates within the parameters of the state facility, but remains separate from it. It is available only to inmates who are willing to comply with the strict regimen, and who are scheduled for local release into the care of a mentor. Although the program is explicitly Christ-centered, it is open to inmates of all faiths, and has several Muslim participants. The regime is comprehensive. These inmates spend virtually every waking hour in literacy or high school equivalency classes, Bible study, one-on-one mentoring, reconciliation efforts with the victims of their crime, or community service, like building housing for the poor. The object is to bring about a transformation of the spirit, and to equip the inmates with the education, life skills, and spiritual maturity necessary to succeed when they are free. A strategic key is discipleship and mentoring: a mentor from a local church accompanies each of the inmates into their new life, once they are released. While two out of every three prisoners ordinarily return to jail after release, the results of this program have been very encouraging, with fewer than 10% of its graduates who have completed the entire 18 months returning to a life of crime. Mentoring Makes the Difference: KidsHope USA Another example is the highly successful mentoring program KidsHope USA, founded by Dr. Virgil Gulker, which pairs one church with one public elementary school, and one caring adult with one at-risk child. Volunteers from the private sector come along side the public schools, and operate with the schools' permission and cooperation, but each KidsHope chapter coordinates its own program through a director who is privately funded by their church. With 140 partnerships up and running throughout the country, this model has steered clear of the "church and state" issues because the mentors do not proselytize on school premises, but they do offer life-changing relationships to thousands of children in need. As a fully privately funded program, KidsHope costs the government nothing, while it bolsters the flagging field of public education that is clearly under-performing in many schools, particularly those in lower income areas. And it is providing revitalization for the churches involved, which are discovering this is a powerful way to reach out into the community. Mentors have a chance to give the one thing churches are charged to give: love. Kids at risk come from all social strata in our country. Violence is not limited to the inner city, as we have seen in the spate of shooting sprees all over the country. Many of the perpetrators have been middle class white kids. But they have one characteristic in common: these kids are loners. They have an acute relational deficit. And that makes them dangerous. Mentoring is one way to fill the gaping hole in the hearts of troubled kids. The increase in teen suicides and violence is evidence that the need is huge. Cultural Solutions for Cultural Maladies These are cultural maladies, and they transcend geographic, racial and political boundaries. They can't be solved by policy alone. They can't be addressed with funding alone, regardless of whether it is public or private. Something else is needed here -- a change of heart, a change in the climate, a change in the civil society that is healing broken people at the grassroots level. We need cultural solutions for cultural maladies. The people having the greatest success in doing the hard work of scooping up battered and broken human beings, and loving them back into wholeness, are in the faith community. There are scores of quiet street-saints, unsung heroes on the front lines of our cities, pouring out grace and compassion every day. They are empowering the impoverished and encouraging those who have lost hope. They are walking into gang-infested neighborhoods to broker truces, transforming prisoners, helping families transition off welfare, and mentoring at-risk children. These remarkable people are renewing entire sections of cities, building and repairing homes, imparting job skills, adopting foster children, and caring for the sick and dying. Theirs is a compelling story. Some have left professional life and moved into the inner city to reclaim a neighborhood. Some are bi-vocational, holding down one "tent-making" job that allows them to do work in the faith-based sector. Some have started a second career, and have become social entrepreneurs. Some are high-powered executives in the "halftime" of their life, looking for deeper meaning in life. They are boomers and busters, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They are protestant, Catholic and Jewish. Together, they are changing our cities from the inside out. Our job is to find them, and help them do their job. And for those people who have the courage to join them on the front lines, the rewards are great. Updating the Conservative Agenda Twenty-five years ago, the conservative movement was small. A handful of intelligent strategists deliberately set about building an infrastructure of institutions - one of which is the Heritage Foundation-to stem the tide. State think tanks and policy groups have been deliberately planted in the years since, and the Heritage Resource Bank has helped to nurture cooperation and collaboration among them. The conservative movement can rejoice that the communist empire has imploded, and that the welfare state is being rolled back. The next task for the movement to tackle, I would suggest, is to put the Third Sector on the agenda. We need to be just as deliberate in renewing the civil society of our country as we were in resisting communism and rolling back the welfare state. The next battle is an internal one. We need to do some serious thinking about how we can take what exists institutionally, and deploy some of our brainpower and manpower to grow the intermediary institutions, including faith-based groups, to restore the moral fiber of our country. We need a city-by-city strategy to identify promising efforts at the grassroots level, and breathe life into them. Coming in from outside with a plan is not as effective as finding people already on the ground at the neighborhood level who are doing the work, and know the turf. Bob Woodson is doing it through the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. The Leadership Foundations are doing it in cities across America. I'm trying to do it. We need many more people to join the effort. This is an effort that necessitates some paradigm shifts. It brings together unlikely allies. If you are willing to step outside your normal political comfort zone, you can discover there are people all over the country who have a real passion for renewing our communities -- and who are willing to join arms despite political differences. If we can agree to seek private means to change lives and renew communities, we can be allies. How Think Tanks and State Policy Groups Can Help We could spark a renewal in the private sector, if we
would put some of the energy of the think tanks and state policy groups
into expanding what works. There's a real need for effective intermediary institutions
to help the faith-based sector grow and prosper. For those people willing
to embark in this field, we will be happy to share what we have learned
the hard way. The Center for Renewal has devoted nearly four years to
identifying effective faith-based efforts, and enhancing their capacity.
We have formulated tools for evaluation, and provided training to help
faith-based groups build an infrastructure to become effective and document
their successes. We have identified "best practices" and staged
seminars to teach them to grassroots leaders, utilizing effective social
entrepreneurs as our faculty. We have planted effective models that
have worked elsewhere in America and can be replicated (including KidsHope
USA and WINGS welfare-to-work life-skills training). We have leveraged
giving to the local faith-based community more than four times our own
expenses. And we created a directory of outstanding examples of what
works in the faith community: check our website at www.centerforrenewal.com. There's a network of potential allies already on the
ground in 23 cities throughout America. The Council of Leadership Foundations,
which is headquartered in Pittsburgh and led by Reid Carpenter, is a
non-partisan alliance of community renewal organizations which have
succeeded in bringing together "people of faith with people of
good will" to address the needs of the city. They are rallying
the forces of the church to come along side other sectors engaged in
civic renewal. This group is positioned to become a significant intermediary
organization in the civic renewal movement, as it identifies and trains
upcoming leaders and deploys them in city-wide strategies.
One thing the think-tank and public policy organizations could do which would be extremely helpful in fostering the health of civic renewal would be to embark on serious research to build a body of literature on the performance of faith-based groups. Analysts should be deployed to form alliances with universities to direct research. So far, John DiIulio is the nation's leader in this field, and a growing body of literature is also coming from the Hudson Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and several other institutions. Much more is needed. But beyond doing studies, we will have failed these groups if we do not give them hands-on assistance. Most of them are woefully underdeveloped right now in their institutional capacity. Even those that have a well-established track record, like Teen Challenge and Victory Fellowship, are still scraping by on nickels and dimes because they are not positioned to tap into the philanthropic world. Most of the people running their facilities are former addicts themselves, and have no training in drawing up a budget or writing a proposal. They don't know whom to ask for money in the private sector. They don't have powerful people on their boards with connections. And all the articles in the world, and plaques of commendation don't put money in their budget. If we believe they are doing valuable work, then we need to help them do it. The White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives can do some important things to promote the growth of this sector, and it intends to. But the role of the private sector in rallying to the cause is even more important, in the long run. People of faith are being called to support faith-based initiatives because it is spiritually and morally right to do so. This debate is far more important than who gets the government dollars. It's about the soul of our nation. A few closing thoughts: How we address this issue may determine in a significant way how our country develops. We are materially rich, but morally impoverished. And only in the realm of this Third sector, the private, voluntary realm, can we renew the roots of American order. We should let the faith community do what only the faith community can do best - inculcate virtue, strengthen moral fiber, teach personal restraint, reconcile enemies, and give hope. We in the private sector need to focus on creating the space for these efforts to grow. This is about is renewing a culture, from the grassroots
up. There is no quick fix. Cultural disintegration is the most serious
sort of devastation, and that Probably few of you have been in the neighborhoods I have been talking about. If you have, then maybe you understand why I am passionate about sparking a civic renewal. It's a world I knew existed, but had never really known myself. I had never gone to churches where my children were the only white kids in the congregation. I had never met teenagers who had had 13 of their friends killed. I had never talked with convicted felons who were starting a new life with a transformed heart. But since I have, I cannot stop until others go on this journey and meet them. If you are willing, come with me, and I will show you where they live. I will help you find them in your own community. And you will never be the same. When Mother Teresa asked people to join her work, she asked them if they would like to do "something beautiful for God." I am asking you to do the same. This is about something much bigger than policy. It's about our hearts.
|
|
||
 |
 |
||
 |
 |