Sunday, February 24, 2008

"Just Neighbors" demonstrates tough choices in poverty

"Shoes or food? Poverty forces families to choose." This is the line that greets you at http://www.justneighbors.net/

Just Neighbors is an interactive, educational program that helps participants understand the root causes and tough choices of poverty. I found this info on a blog of one of your fellow APB readers (thanks, cathistegall!). I haven't seen it yet, but I think it looks quite interesting and I'm going to look into getting the materials to evaluate them for next year's programs. They have a 5 min slideshow on their site to tell you more details about it, but these are some of the things you'll see there:
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"The mission of Just Neighbors is to raise awareness of the root causes of poverty and homelessness.

Just Neighbors brings to its participants a deep understanding of the reality of poverty and a deep empathy for people living in poverty. Congregations, nonprofit organizations, colleges, universities, and high schools are using the program to change attitudes, to recruit volunteers, and to empower them as advocates for their neighbors in need."

"The entire Just Neighbors experience is designed to foster a sense of community among the participants. It is an engaging, thought-provoking curriculum that offers a wealth of resources and materials along with the flexibility to make the program work in the widest possible range of settings and organizations. "

"We created the Just Neighbors multimedia curriculum to raise awareness of the root causes of poverty and homelessness as the first step in establishing community-based responses. The Just Neighbors program includes nine interactive multi-media sessions. It is designed as a series but has a flexible structure that you can adapt to meet your congregation’s needs and interests. Each session is designed so that a group can complete it in one hour. Depending on your purposes, your group may decide to complete the entire program or any number of individual sessions—even only one. "

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I too found it provocative and love how it brings the awareness and advocacy to the community level. I'm not sure when social justice separated from the church, but this seems like a great program to bring it back! I'm waiting to see what our community thinks about it.