*These
are some of the churches and organizations
that The Alliance will be funding across America:
LOUISIANA
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul did not "go in" to aid
hurricane victims. They were already there. They have been serving the
poor of New Orleans and the surrounding area since 1852.
TEXAS
Legacy Church
"My Friend's House" is a shelter that City House is building
in Plano for children birth through 9 years who are removed from their
homes due to abuse, neglect or other circumstances. Legacy Church began
"Adopt a family" for victims of Katrina and Rita and still
offers support and counseling for all victims. "Dallas Providence
Homes" provides supportive community housing for women who are
homeless as a result of family violence or addictions. "Legacy
Deaf Fellowship" began in 1986 with two members. It now has over
40 members, and is the only deaf ministry in Texas that has a pastor
and is self-governing. Ongoing projects too numerous to list.
ILLINOIS
Churches United
One of the first agencies called out nationally following domestic disasters,
provides material resources such as emergency clean-up kits, health
kits, and blankets, and focuses on long-term recovery needs for the
most vulnerable survivors in disaster-affected communities-including
those without insurance, the poor, the elderly, the disabled, and minority
groups.
MISSOURI
Christus-Victor Lutheran Church
Many of the tens of thousands of homes flooded on the gulf coast were
uninsured and had minor structural damage but were uninhabitable because
of mold. These houses are being cleaned out to the studs, dried, and
rebuilt to make them habitable. Surveys of flooded neighborhoods indicate
approximately 10-40% of the houses still need to be cleaned out. The
clean-out work has transitioned into rebuilding. Lutheran Disaster Response
has a multi-year commitment in the Gulf area to help with the clean-out
and rebuilding effort. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, are volunteering
to help us with this process.
MASSACHUSETTS
Lazarus House
Mother Teresa told Brother Tom Pettite, "Thank you for being here
but you really need to go home to your own countries and take care of
the poor. Especially in America, where the poor are not only physically
but spiritually poor."
That's exactly what Brother Tom Pettite did. Lazarus House opened in
1983 with four beds and an all-volunteer staff; growing to its present
30 beds and five cribs; adding a soup kitchen, "Bread And Roses",
which now feeds up to 300 people a day, and an emergency food pantry
that provides several days' balanced nutrition to dozens of families
each month. Its "Clothes Closet" began with a basement room
and now occupies two, thrift stores. Seeing yet another need, Lazarus
House began "Corpus Christi House", a beautiful, eight-bedroom
Victorian mansion that's holding its own in a neighborhood infested
by drug dealers, as a residence for people living with HIV and AIDS.
There's a pre-school child learning center, a free dental clinic, monthly
primary care medical clinic; and an advocacy program with full-time
volunteers who work with participants to help them find work.
MISSISSIPPI
Stewpot Community Services
Serving several hundred people hot lunch daily is just the beginning.
This organization does everything from clothing people to supplying
them with groceries and offers self-reliance programs. For the working
parent it supplies an all-year after school program for their children
who get homework help, mentoring and support in a safe setting.
Voice of Calvary Ministries
35 years ago, visionary leader John Perkins, dreamed of improving the
quality of life in this small rural village by developing leadership
skills among the town's young. By identifying a group of youngsters
who would stick with their education through college with the agreement
that they will come back to their hometown using their newly learned
skills to help rebuild the community. These people of all races work
side by side for a common goal. Through years of hard work and tremendous
persistence John Perkins achieved his dreams. His youth program continues
to serve more than 500 people every single year. Youngsters who stick
with the program through age 13 are offered jobs with VOCM.
ALABAMA
Upper Sand Mountain Parish
Almost 30 years ago, laypersons and pastors of 17 United Methodist Churches
got together to form a shared community service organization. They began
with basic emergency services, turned a church into a cannery, which
contains non-perishable products for wide distribution, in turn not
only feeding but also creating numerous jobs for the unemployed.
NEW
YORK
Rural Opportunities, Inc.
Founded in Rochester, New York in 1969, the ROI advocates the rights
of farm workers and the rural poor. Almost four decades later, ROI has
evolved into a major, multiple organizational program that not only
still advocates but also provides employment training, housing, education
and economic development services for farm workers and their families
in the six surrounding states. It still stands as the national model
of its type.
HAWAII
Angel Network Charities
Mary Olson, a divorced and a single mother, was alone with her kids
on Thanksgiving. Their holiday banquet would consist of hot dogs on
the beach, or so they thought. But when they came back to their apartment,
an elderly neighbor was waiting for them with a surprise. She had made
them an old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner. "It was a wonderful
experience of unconditional love," Olson said. The next day, when
Olson went to return the cleaned Tupperware, the old woman's apartment
was empty. No inhabitant. No furniture. Olson asked the building manager
where the resident had gone, only to receive a puzzled frown. That unit,
the manager insisted, had been vacant for months. It must have been
an angel, Olson still says. Whatever really happened, the event changed
her life and inspired her." I made a vow that day to myself, my
children and my God that I would do whatever I could to help take care
of those who needed help that live in my space." Angel Network
has mobilized 14 churches to operate a total of 46 Ohana Homes all over
Oahu. They make decent housing available to homeless families, not segregated
but mainstreamed in the community; mobilize volunteers to support and
work with the families; and focus intensive and holistic social services
on the families to help them develop realistic personal plans and get
the training, counseling and education they need to rebuild their lives
and find good employment and permanent housing, ideally within 12 to
18 months. Angel Network operates almost entirely on a volunteer basis,
with just one paid staff member, Mary Olson herself, takes no salary.
KENTUCKY
Cranks Creek Survival Center
Founded by 77-year-old Becky Simpson, in one of the bleakest hollows
of Appalachia, residents work together to give their neighbors a hand.
They also work together to find homeless people in the Appalachian hollows,
make them feel at home until they can get them back on their feet.
ALASKA
Crossover House
Run by doctors they go out to people on the street who refuse to ask
for help, with arms open and give all of them including the mentally
challenged help, regardless.
Bean's Café
Bean's was founded in 1979 by Lynn Bellew who came to Alaska in her
pick up truck with her daughter and was appalled to see poor Alaskans
dining from dumpsters. She started serving soup out of the back of her
truck. Today it's a well-equipped soup kitchen that serves hearty meals.
It also operates as a simple day shelter for homeless people, Bean's
offers simple, pragmatic social services helping some 1,500 people each
year with such needs as a safe place, medications, first aid, and referrals
to literacy training.
CALIFORNIA
Columbia Park Boys and Girls of America
Positioned in between two different gang territories, this club stands
out because for a $5 annual membership it offers the most amazing features
from midnight basketball to a profit-making graffiti-cleanup operation
owned and operated by the youngsters themselves.
OREGON
Sisters of the Road Cafe
In the city's Skid Row, in the Burnside neighborhood of Portland, a
non-profit cafe where everyone is welcome. They'll feed anyone. Lunch
is $1.25 if you don't have it a food stamp will do. If you don't have
that you can help out in the kitchen. (Sisters of the Road pioneered
the 1985 federal legislation permitting the use of food stamps by food
providers for homeless people).
VERMONT
Recycle North
Recycle North accomplished 3 things: by reselling the items in a flea-market
setting, it reduces the city landfill, it provides household staples
and needed items for the poor at low cost and homeless people are trained
how to repair, refinish, refurbish everything from used appliances to
furniture by experts, giving them highly marketable skills.
LOUISIANA
Access to Real Choices (ARC) Unlimited
Providing services for developmentally slow individuals by moving them
as far into the mainstream as they can go through creative job training
and tremendous support.
NEW
JERSEY
New Community Inc.
A group of Irish Catholic priests built towering St. Joseph Church from
old ballast stones more than a century ago, and turned it into a non-profit
organization which serves Newark's inner city with model low-cost housing
programs, day-care facilities, training and services for the homeless,
a well-equipped health club and even a gourmet restaurant.
MARYLAND
Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore (WEB)
Web gives Baltimore women in need the tools they need to create their
own jobs by training them to start and run their own small businesses.
It provides money, programs and support as they start up their very
own businesses.
WASHINGTON
DC
DC Central Kitchen
They collect usable leftover food from restaurants and institutions
and redistribute it to soup kitchens and other organizations that feed
poor and hungry people. They end up training numerous homeless, for
long-term employment in food-service related jobs.
CFLS/Third and Eats
A competitive restaurant in every way but owned and operated by a non-profit
organization. Its primary purpose is to provide real world training
for homeless people, offering them saleable job skills in the food-service
industry and employments references on their resumes.
TENNESSEE
The Church Health Center
Dr. Scott Morris, a Memphis doctor has volunteered his life to provide
inexpensive medical care to those who can't afford insurance. He has
gotten more than 200 volunteer M.D 's. 65 dentists, 100 specialists
and 400 community volunteers to help keep his program open.
MISSOURI
Grace Hill Neighborhood Services
This newly restored, historic, old stone church provides shelter, housing
placement, day care and counseling for homeless people in the seven
predominantly African American, St. Louis neighborhoods.
Hosea House
Founded in 1977 by a non-denominational group of people concerned about
the increase of homeless people. It has grown from a simple clothes
closet to a soup kitchen to a full-service community center distributing
more than 20,000 pounds of food to 4,000 people monthly also creating
jobs.
ALASKA
Earth
It started when the Carr's grocery store near O'Callaghan's home fenced
off a dumpster that had been a reliable source of free food. O'Callaghan
and friends got permission to take usable produce and canned goods from
Carr's to distribute to the poor. The program worked so well that Carr's
soon extended its permission to the entire Anchorage-area chain. More
than 100 volunteers, after training, report regularly to Carr's outlets,
pick up food, and dispense it to hungry people through their own churches,
civic groups or less formalized structures.
CALIFORNIA
Berkeley Cares
Help a homeless person by giving them a voucher that cannot be used
for drugs or alcohol.
California Emergency Food Link (CEFL)
A national model, which has been recognized by the US Department of
Agriculture, as well as numerous other hunger relief organizations.
Chrysalis
This organization finds jobs for long-unemployed, clean and sober men
and women at risk of homelessness.
Delancey Street Foundation
A full square block of stylish new buildings on San Francisco's busy
Embarcadero, featuring nearly 200 townhouses, well-kept parks, a Town
Hall, small businesses staffed entirely by ex-convicts, former drug
abusers and former homeless people.
Food From the 'Hood'
In South Central L.A., two adults joined together to rebuild their community.
What started out as a patch of weeds in a high school was turned into
a thriving business earning a healthy profit and teaching students the
art of entrepreneurship.
Fresh Start Farms
Hires homeless people to work an urban garden, growing fine, organic
lettuces that can be sold for high prices to the city's best restaurants,
providing the homeless workers with decent wages.
Homeless Garden Project
This hugely successful Santa Cruz, community supported, agriculture
program has over 110 participating members who pay over $400 a year
for weekly produce deliveries through a 26-week season, creating jobs
for the homeless.
Los Angeles Men's and Women's Project (Formerly
LAMP)
Located in Skid Row, started by one woman who used to be homeless herself,
they are now more than 12 years old and ranked as having one of the
most innovative and effective approaches to rebuilding the lives of
ex-drug addicts, or mentally ill homeless men and women.
San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG)
One of the nation's largest and most creative urban-gardening programs,
SLUG is responsible for some 100 neighborhood gardens all over San Francisco
and has added on strong economic-development and job-training components
and is continually coming up with more creative ideas to help train
and place the homeless.
HAWAII
Hawaii Self Help Housing
In the nation's most expensive housing market, "self-help housing"
brings together groups of families to support each other as they build
their own subdivisions.
The Institute for Human
Services
It's been some 24 years since the Rev. Claude F. Du Teil sought to win
the trust of Honolulu's most hopeless street people by offering them
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a safe place to rest, but citizens
of this tropical town still affectionately refer to this caring and
competent shelter, now called The Institute for Human Services, as "The
Peanut Butter Ministry." They stand by their "change-not-charity
philosophy" by restoring self-reliance and helping these people
in need back on their feet.
OREGON
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN)
They bypass the brokers by setting up PCUN's own hiring hall for the
farmers groups of union workers, thus ensuring agricultural workers
their rights.
WASHINGTON
El Centro de la Raza
A bi-lingual, multi-cultural center that focuses on the teachings of
Martin Luther King. A multi faceted organization that offers a variety
of programs from assisting with housing, food, transportation and clothing
it even has a soup kitchen that resembles a Mexican restaurant.
Martin Luther King Center
The first social need was clear: Homelessness. Taking advantage of every
small funding opportunity available, the center began trying to attack
homelessness on a variety of fronts, including emergency shelter and
prevention. During the past seven years or so, it has found ways to
finance and open four emergency shelters, a series of advocacy and support
services, and a wonderful prevention program called "The Housing
Exchange." It has spun off a separate housing-development association
that works and serves as the fiscal agent for the Washington State Coalition
for the Homeless.
NEW
YORK
Central City Cafe
Rev. Richard Stewart, a Buffalo native who has devoted his life in the
ministry to feeding hungry people wherever he's been; Buffalo, Houston,
Detroit and North Carolina, started an effort to buy cereal for one
hungry child in Houston evolve into an effort by many churches providing
breakfast for over 5,000 children. Ten years later, he was in the right
place to make a difference again today in New York Central City Café
is a hardworking soup kitchen in downtown Buffalo also offering training
and jobs.
Food link
The organization's board just reaffirmed, a formal commitment to move
beyond "the charity paradigm" to involve the food bank actively
in micro-enterprise development as a way to bring jobs back to the city
and attack hunger by addressing its root economic causes.
Maura Clarke-Ita Ford Center
It's an impressive model in its pragmatic, goal-directed and holistic
approach to providing poor and predominantly immigrant women the tools
they need not merely to survive but thrive. Named after and inspired
by two religious sisters, natives of Brooklyn and Queens, who were martyred
after giving their lives to working with poor people in El Salvador.
It helps hard-working citizens in Brooklyn's "Burnt-Out-Bushwick."
Work Ownership Resource Center (WORC)
WORC offers two to three training programs annually from five of its
six regional offices in Geneva, Elmira, Rochester, Steuben County, Seneca
County and Ithaca. Anyone interested in opening a small business attends
three-hour evening sessions weekly for eight to 12 weeks, taught by
the staff and special guest speakers. Attendees also receive weekly
one-on-one counseling, and upon completion small loans (then up to $5,000
and up to $10,000 after successful repayment) for startup funding. WORC
also has downtown office space for small businesses to operate out of
during their initial startups.
CONNECTICUT
Hartford Food System
This organization identifies the challenges that keep Hartford's poor
people hungry. Working with other non-profit groups making sure that
everyone in the community is working and fed.
DELAWARE
National Council on Agricultural Life and Labor
(NCALL)
Their mission is to provide affordable housing for poor people who are
already working.
MAINE
Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association
This model program, a 1994 winner of the Harry Chapin Self-Reliance
Award, has been promoting organic farming and gardening in Maine for
more than 20 years through a growing membership and a popular annual
country fair; in the past two years, it has been extending its reach
to lower-income families and children through community gardening.
MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Can
It started on a Valentine's Day as a one time charitable event and as
a recycling business created to provide jobs and job training for homeless
people. Now moved from its original quarters into a Roxbury warehouse,
Boston CAN covers more than 28 percent of its $250,000 annual budget
through recycling revenue.
Coalition For A Better Acre
Much of the group's focus has been on housing, it has facilitated more
than 400 low and medium-price housing units in the neighborhood, along
with poverty, it has also dealt with joblessness, crime and even absentee
landlords. It has brought together the community's economic development
with community organization.
Madison Park Development Corp.
As the first non-profit group ever given development rights in Boston
as well as in the nation, Madison Park built its first two housing complexes,
using the high-rise design then in style, in the early '70s. Smith House,
a 12-story, 132-unit senior citizen building, rose in 1973, with the
seven-story Haynes House for 220 low-income families following in 1973.
Making it a national model for the kind of miraculous work that can
be done to restore inner-city neighborhoods ravaged by bad public policy
and poverty.
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
New Hampshire Community Loan Fund Inc.
"All of our loans must demonstrate long-term benefits to the poor,
leverage other money, and go to places where money would not otherwise
be available. Our goal is to do what the banks cannot or will not do."
Betsy Black and they have been doing this for over 20 years!
RHODE
ISLAND
House Of Hope Corp.
Started by a group of six members of a Catholic church in the early
'80's when they became interested in homelessness, more prevalent, at
the time, in California and New York. Soon it approached their hometown
and they began operating an emergency shelter, which quickly expanded
and ended up providing temporary and transitional housing for all homeless
families as well as help for them to regain self-reliance.
IOWA
Iowa Citizens For Community Improvement (CCI)
Traditionally, inner-city organizations have used CRA to compel banks
to deliver services to poor urban communities. By successfully defining
the act's requirement that banks "meet the credit needs of the
local community" to incorporate farm regions, CCI has been able
to persuade Iowa's three largest bank holding companies (Norwest, Firstar
and Brenton) to add many provisions to help our low to moderate income
farmers.
KANSAS
The Land Institute
The Land Institute trains and sends out missionaries to spread the important
word of saving the land. It offers in-house training for this unique
purpose, self-reliance and tremendous support for all.
MINNESOTA
Community Campaign for Housing Now
Its offices are in the Unidale Shopping Mall, a one-level facility that
looks like any other mall until you realize that the department store
is a thrift shop, the grocery store is a food shelf, and the storefronts
house all non-profit agencies.
Sabathani Community Center
Clarissa Wall, a product of the community, has worked at the organization
for 22 years, and her pride shows through. She is ready to cite statistics
about the center's traditional food-shelf operation (More than 11,000
individuals serve each year.) More important, the people here know the
meaning of self-reliance, and their pattern of growth demonstrates an
intelligent evolution from feeding people toward providing them the
resources they need to become self-sufficient and feed themselves.
NEBRASKA
Rural Affairs Center
Operating with a staff of approximately 20, one of the center's most
significant victories was "Initiative 300", a Nebraska constitutional
amendment which limits corporate farming in Nebraska to corporations
owned by families who actually work the land. In addition to the policy
studies, which continue, the Center has also begun a series of hands-on
projects aimed at bringing people, life and community back to Nebraska's
farms and small towns.
NORTH
DAKOTA
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Food Distribution
Program
Red Gates is an American Indian advocate who's responsible for ensuring
that there's enough food to go around on a North Dakota reservation
with 90 percent unemployment. There's no real hunger on the Sioux reservation,
not in the traditional sense, insists Red Gates. No one is malnourished
and no one starves. But he knows that the commodities program he runs,
along with Food Stamps, WIC, school breakfast and lunch programs, are
the only reasons that the Standing Rock Sioux have enough to eat.
OKLAHOMA
Teem
The Education and Employment Ministry. "To rebuild Unemployed and
Underemployed individuals through a program of self-help so they can
take responsibility for their lives."
Neighbor For Neighbor
More than 30 years ago, Father Dan Allen, a Catholic priest caused quite
an uproar when he became a strong advocate for civil rights and racial
integration, at a time when the community around his North side Tulsa
parish was undergoing racial change and most of his white parishioners
weren't happy about that. NFN started in a little farmhouse next door
to St. Jude's Catholic Church and grew out of his commitment serving
over 38,000 poor and hungry Tulsans annually with a broad, holistic
range of emergency and supportive services that doesn't stop with just
handouts!
Oklahoma Bean Project Inc. (Grateful Bean Cafe)
The cafe has already become a popular lunchtime spot for neighbors and
business people who drop in to the well-kept building near downtown.
The cafe provides jobs and job training for a combination of job seekers
off the street and unemployed people referred by the state employment
service. Workers are paid minimum wage an hour to start, of which $1.25
is placed in a fund and withheld until they've completed a 90-day training
period, at which point they receive the money back. About $900, in a
lump sum! In theory, all workers rotate through all jobs in the cafe.
Many employees use the experience to move on to bigger and better things.
SPARK (Support Program of Arts and Reading
for Kids)
Housed in the former church building that Second Presbyterian Church
left when its congregation moved to the suburbs in 1972, its staff of
three, supplemented by lots of volunteers make a special effort to involve
the parents with their children in hope of building stronger families
and helping them break the cycle of poverty.
SOUTH
DAKOTA
The Lakota Fund
Respected micro-loan organization based on the Bangladeshi "Grameen
Bank" concept is returning locally owned small businesses to reservation
towns where unemployment has been endemic.
Slim Buttes Community Farming Project
Hands-on and down to earth, Tom Cook literally spreads home gardens
across the landscape of southwestern South Dakota.
Life Enrichment Center Inc.
A day center for indigent elderly people, complete with human and animal
friends.
ARKANSAS
Good Faith Fund
Sets up teams of four to six unrelated people interested in borrowing
small amounts of money to start up their own small businesses.
FLORIDA
Farm workers Self-Help
Broad range of self-reliance and assistance services in a desperately
poor orange-grove town.
Health Care Center for the Homeless
Model medical clinic for homeless people mobilizes voluntarism in Orlando.
Neighborhood Housing Services of Jacksonville Inc.
Rebuilding a neighborhood one block at a time.
GEORGIA
Atlanta Inn for Children
A 24-hour childcare center available for people with low-income families
working in the hotel industry.
Cafe 458
A soup kitchen that looks like an upscale eatery but is actually a non-profit
restaurant for Atlanta's homeless. They get reservations through referrals
and permission to dine there as long as they agree to participate in
Café 458's program, which aims at getting them back on their
feet and back into the community.
KENTUCKY
Community Farm Alliance
Organizes small farmers to stay on the farm and to work together for
economic survival. Provides referral and counseling to small farm operators
faced with foreclosure and other debt crisis, coupled with legislative
action and lobbying efforts to stop the policies that push farmers off
of their own land.
Livingston Economic Alternatives in Progress
(LEAP)
Innovative economic-development efforts seek to improve the lives of
farmers and rural folks in the Appalachian foothills.
New Directions Housing
From the kitchen table of a small urban church, to millions of dollars
in quality affordable housing.
LOUISIANA
Crescent City Farmer's Market
Originally it began, as a three-month demonstration project, but became
such a success it was turned into a permanent market. Fresh produce
for city folks means fresh income for local farmers.
Hope House
Sister Lilianne, a Dominican nun, and Brother Don, A Christian, provide
loving care and support to the residents of one of the nation's most
vicious public-housing projects. They select families with potential
for finding employment and offer transitional housing, free rent, utilities
and help them strategize a plan of action with goals and a budget to
get back on their feet again and succeed.
Southern Mutual Help Association
Lorna Bourg, a local woman, and Sister Anne Bizalion, A Dominican nun
from France began helping the area in 1965 from the idealistic view
that the idea behind the program was, "Not to service poverty but
to end poverty." Inspiring neighbors in Cajun country to work together
to help themselves.
MARYLAND
Light Street Housing
Corp.
Founded by a coalition of local church congregations they have 1 and
a half employees and operate on an annual income of $60,000. Located
in Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood. Light Street acquires and
renovates housing that poor and working people can afford.
The Love Center
In a very poor Baltimore neighborhood creates programs that not only
feed people but also help empower them. Now also developing a full-service
community center in an old industrial building.
Maryland Food Committee
Their mission statement: "Is to completely end hunger and malnutrition
in Maryland. In order to accomplish this, we will help feed people today
while working to achieve the permanent end of hunger."
Northwest Baltimore Corporation
Founded in 1968 in a changing community that was losing its middle and
upper-middle class residents and becoming more predominantly poor. The
NBC began by creating methods of communication and cooperation rather
than rivalry and mistrust among neighbors. Today it helps more than
70 community organizations that form its membership in Baltimore's Park
Heights neighborhood.
United H.O.P.E. Community Organization
Dynamic local group doesn't wait for funding to find constructive outlets
for neighborhood youth, from dramatics to dance to gardening.
MISSISSIPPI
The Initiative Inc.
Breaks the cycle of poverty for homeless families by providing them
quality housing in the complex's single-family houses, with Section
8 picking up the rent, while providing day care and tutorial programs
for each family's youngsters, case management and counseling for the
adults. Families normally stay in the program for two to three years
while the adult completes educational, career and personal objectives
based on an individualized plan worked out with a case manager. Services
ranging from drug and alcohol counseling to higher education are provided
by a partnership of 28 public and private human-service agencies.
Operation Shoestring
Started by a group of local church people because they were concerned
about the needs of the poor people in their community. Today this has
expanded into a successful organization aimed at building self-sufficiency
in one of Jackson's poorest neighborhoods.
NORTH
CAROLINA
Self-Help
Founded by Bonnie Wright and Martin Eakes in 1980 out of the back of
a Volkswagen! They find ways to save the workers' jobs and access credit
for them, especially in minority communities, predominantly African
American Cities in Schools of Charlotte/Mecklenburg County. Regenerating
urban school systems by mobilizing volunteer assistance and support.
Helping Hands Center
Trains and organizes poultry factory workers around the workplace including
rights and mobilizes public opinion in support of that quest.
The Rural Advancement Foundation International
USA (RAFI-USA)
An independent non-profit organization that deals with the problems
and preservation of family farms and ensuring safe food.
SOUTH
CAROLINA
Charleston Affordable Housing Inc.
Rising out of the ruins of Hurricane Hugo, this agency continues to
create
decent housing those low-income families can afford.
Charleston Crisis Ministries
Now the state's largest provider of services to help homeless people
in all fields including training to become self-sufficient.
The Cooperative Ministry
Mobilizes Columbia's church community to provide a full range of services
to homeless people, from emergency help to jobs and self-reliance.
South Carolina United Action
Tough, no-nonsense community organizing in some of the South's poorest
rural sections.
Trinity Housing Corp.
An extremely effective church-based effort which provides safe and
affordable transitional housing for homeless families. Trinity Housing
also offers support services to the people who live there to help
them get back on their feet by becoming self-sufficient.
TENNESSEE
Downtown Clinic/Service Center
In downtown Nashville, this innovative medical clinic is a full-service
primary-care center and emergency medical treatment facility, with a
strong mental illness component, operating as a free, no-questions asked
service to Nashville's homeless people.
The Elephant Men
Two men who grew up in an inner-city housing project east of downtown
Memphis began this mentoring and role modeling with children at the
age of nine. "Protect your children with the strength of an elephant."
This keeps the kids off the street, out of gangs, and teaches them skills
to hopefully become self-sufficient, responsible young adults in their
community.
Room in the Inn
All of Nashville's churches work together to provide organized, economical
food and
shelter for the homeless by sharing this task. Giving those in need
who require a safe haven time to catch their breaths while getting their
lives back together.
TEXAS
Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS)
One of the nation's most well-known and effective community-organizing
efforts has literally changed the face of San Antonio.
Projecto Azteca
By building their own small houses while organizing their communities,
Rio Grande Valley families turn traditional "colonies" from
rural slums into livable communities.
South Plains Food Bank
One of the nation's most innovative food banks and its inspired effort
to make dehydrated produce a staple for America's homeless.
Trinity Ministry to the Poor
Creative organization in Dallas provides everything from food to jobs
for homeless people.
VIRGINIA
The Carver Promise
An impressive and highly successful organization where college students
get involved
by mentoring and providing friendship to inner-city students all the
way through their completing high school.
First Nations Development Institute
This national organization provides technical assistance and funding
for all American Indian economic-development projects all across America.
Home base of the Virginia Peninsula
Based in Newport News, this central non-profit agency ensures efficient,
effective response by consolidating all the community's resources and
services for homeless people. This includes training of skills.
The University of Richmond
If every college in the U.S. did half as much to encourage community
activism by its students, there probably wouldn't be a poverty problem.
They teach, "Reclaim meaning in our lives through service to others".
WEST
VIRGINIA
Center for Economic Options for Women
Remarkable organization for women that creates jobs with initiatives,
ranging from a sewing cooperative to teaching women how to operate heavy
road-construction equipment.
ARIZONA
The Bridge
One of the most innovative programs around mobilizes church and civic
groups to support homeless families as they work to recover their lives.
Homeward Bound
Another creative national model from Phoenix, works the system to secure
decent, affordable housing, then gives homeless families the resources
and training they need to make it work.
COLORADO
Brothers Redevelopment Inc.
Organizing around housing issues, Brothers has improved housing for
more than 20,000 low-income working Denver families in need.
Colorado Women's Employment
and Education
One of the nation's top models for moving single mothers from welfare
rolls to payrolls through practical, common sense job training and support.
IDAHO
Idaho Rural Council
Provides information and community organizing aimed at keeping family
farmers working and successful on their farms.
MONTANA
Alternative Energy Resources Organization (AERO)
Common-sense incentive program makes "sustainable" agriculture
pay off.
NEVADA
The Children's Cabinet
Reno's "central control tower" for problems involving children
and their families, this consortium of agencies identifies holes in
the safety net and does whatever is necessary to fix them.
NEW
MEXICO
The Gathering Place
It's A Navajo arts cooperative, a literacy program and much, much more!
Zuni Sustainable Agriculture Project. Restoring the best of the old,
capturing
the best of the new, they're bringing traditional farming back to the
Zuni reservation.
UTAH
Salt Lake Community Action Program
Exceptionally effective program goes beyond emergency services to provide
powerful advocacy by moving poor people from dependency to self-reliance.
Single Parent Employment
Demonstration (SPED)
A pilot state welfare-reform program that really seems to work, it turns
welfare from an entitlement program into an employment program for the
single parent.
WYOMING
Nutrition And Child Development Inc.
Not just a great day-care center, it spreads quality care throughout
Wyoming by providing training, assistance and free food to those who
open and run family day-care operations.
Poverty Resistance Inc.
Formerly a homeless woman, now a lawyer, she organizes Casper's homeless
to feed themselves, speak out for themselves, and work together toward
building new lives.
ILLINOIS
Bethel New Life
One of the nation's top community-development corporations, restoring
quality homes and businesses to a Chicago neighborhood devastated by
"white flight."
Breakthrough Urban Ministries
Varied services for homeless people, highlighted by a profit-making
neighborhood cleanup business that trains people for jobs and hires
them for cash.
Heifer Project International - Urban Project
A worldwide agricultural program brings its agricultural development
concept to the inner city.
Suburban Job-Link
The jobs are in the suburbs; willing workers without transportation
live in the city.
This simple initiative provides free transportation for all willing
workers.
.
INDIANA
The Calumet Project
Jobs are fleeing Northwest Indiana's decaying industrial belt, but
this organizing project does its best to keep them home.
The Heartland Center
Conducts serious research into regional poverty issues
and promotes change by making its findings public.
Wesley Community Services/Survival Skills
Teaching "Survival Skills" to welfare mothers in urban Indianapolis.
MICHIGAN
Detroit Self-Employment Project
Training program with a startling track record for providing welfare
recipients the tools they need to become self-reliant by owning and
operating their own businesses.
Focus: HOPE
The nation's first and most successful "teaching factory,"
turning inner-city youngsters into high-skill, high-tech workers.
Genessee Area Skills Center
Battered Flint, home of "Roger and Me," houses one of the
most innovative
High schools in all of America.
Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF)
Renovates housing in Grand Rapids neighborhoods and gives the people
who live there the information and resources they need to keep up their
property and payments.
Small Business Development Center (SBDC)
Proving that disabled people are just as capable as able-bodied Americans
of
supporting themselves, if they are simply given the tools to do so also
job places them.
Warren-Conner Development Coalition
Non-profit coalition organizes neighbors to create employment and train
workers in
East Side Detroit.
OHIO
Association for Better Community Development
Inc. (ABCD)
Organizing communities and creating jobs by building firms that provide
needed community services in Akron.
Cleveland Works
First they train workers. Then they get them jobs, by the thousand!.
Ohio Hunger Task Force
Statewide anti-hunger organization provides both advocacy, conducting
research and publicizing hunger and poverty issues, and direct service,
channeling government food and funds and skills to family day-care operations.
The Open Shelter for Homeless Men
The charismatic leadership of creative director Kent Beittel makes this
Columbus institution one of the nation's most innovative shelters for
homeless men. Offers support and training.
Rural Action
Twenty-year-old activist organization in rural eastern Ohio builds housing,
creates jobs and shines a light on community problems. One unique model:
It runs an office supply store in college town, Athens, as a job-training
and moneymaking resource.
Women's Entrepreneurial Growth Organization
(WEGO)
Down-to-earth training in entrepreneurship turns welfare mothers into
business owners.
PENNSYLVANIA
ASSETS (A Service for Self-Employment, Training
and Support)
Boosting the economy of rural Lancaster, by teaching unemployed people
how to run their own businesses, then helping them get the financing
and ongoing support they need to make it happen.
The Bernardine Center (Super cupboard)
A shining light in one of the East Coast's worst slums, this center
goes beyond handouts as an innovator of the innovative Super cupboard
program, which gives poor women and families practical assistance in
such important basics as budgeting, cooking and nutrition.
Super Cupboard II
After the success of Super cupboard (see above) Super Cupboard II helps
recipients move from welfare to work.
Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth
(PCCY)
Citywide advocacy group investigates problems involving children and
youth, then seeks practical solutions and works to give them the support
they need.
Women's Opportunities Resource Center (WORC)
One of the most successful, entrepreneurial training programs for women
in the nation. It stands by its graduates, helping them secure venture
capital and start up of all small businesses.
WISCONSIN
Community Action Coalition
A '60s Community Action Agency that stayed, the CAC provides both emergency
help and self-reliance building for affluent Madison's "invisible
poor."
Esperanza Unida
One of the most innovative programs in the nation, "United Hope"
started as a non-profit auto-repair shop earning its own way while training
young men for high-paying jobs as auto mechanics, and has spun off dozens
of equally creative concepts.
OHIO
Children's Hunger Alliance
Founded in 1970, they have been feeding hungry minds and bodies®
to achieve its mission: To break the cycle of childhood hunger in Ohio
through education, leadership, advocacy and service. The work of Children's
Hunger Alliance is strategic in: educating and advocating for long-term
solutions to hunger with legislators, policy makers, corporate and faith-based
communities; providing food and education for children-today-so that
those most in need have resources to succeed; and, engaging communities
and their leaders to expand use of Child Nutrition Programs-the USDA
safety net for children.
________________________________________________
Please
note that this list will continue to be updated quarterly to include
more organizations of all denominations across America. If you know
of any organization that helps other Americans which is not on our list
and in need of funding please contact us at: info@TheAllianceforaBetterAmerica.org
*Please also know that we are not yet set up to receive funding. We
are seeking private funding and then we will be applying for our non-profit
status based out of the state of Nevada and serving all of America.
Thank
you very much.
Wendon Swift
Founder and Volunteer
The Alliance
for a Better America
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