"We learned a lot about the neighborhood."
This was the impression of a young adult volunteer who participated in several Rebuild The City
projects on the East Side of St. Paul, Minnesota, over the past 18 months, as part of the religious
community's involvement in housing and community revitalization activities in the Twin Cities
of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The volunteer, part of a synagogue group, worked alongside Christians and Muslims -- building
retaining walls and rehabilitating and painting homes. Individuals from the neighborhoods and
members of the U.S. national service program AmeriCorps were partners in the task.
These particular projects were organized through a partnership of several groups -- faith-specific,
interfaith and community organizations. In microcosm, the partnership mirrors the involvement
of the
religious sector in Minnesota not only to what is happening in the midwestern United States, but
also nationally, and often globally.
The faith community represents a substantial part of the U.S. volunteer corps. According to a
1996 study, Giving and Volunteering in the United States, based on a national survey,
55 percent of members of religious congregations volunteer. Only 34 percent of those
religiously unaffiliated participate in some such individual activity. The correlation is even more
telling when considering the fact that nearly 60 percent of those who were active in religious
organizations during their youth have participated in volunteer work, while about 37 percent of
those who were religiously inactive chose to offer their services.
In 1996, The McKnight Foundation, a Minneapolis-based private grant-making organization,
launched an interfaith initiative of Christians, Jews and Muslims called Congregations in
Community (CIC). The premise is that faith-based groups are sources of large numbers of
potential volunteers who are motivated to help and inspired to action by Scriptural mandates.
CIC plans to enlist 7,000 volunteers in the Twin Cities by 1999 in an initiative to strengthen
families and neighborhoods. Its partners in this effort include the Greater Minneapolis Council
of Churches, Masjid An-Nur Islamic Centers of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the St. Paul Area
Council of Churches, the TURN Leadership Foundation (a local Christian organization that
develops leaders across racial and cultural lines) and the Jewish Community Relations Council of
Minnesota and the Dakotas.
In 1997, CIC sponsored an interfaith conference called Faith Communities in Service: Responses
to Welfare Reform. At the meeting, a religious leader from the Basilica of St. Mary introduced
the Jeremiah Program -- a collaboration of businesses, congregations, educational institutions,
and governmental and grass-roots agencies that promote self-sufficiency for mothers and
children. Taking as its mandate the Biblical prophet Jeremiah's teaching, "Seek the well-being of
the city," the Jeremiah Program assists low-income parents in completing their education and
achieving economic independence. It also provides access to affordable housing, child care,
health care, support services and meaningful employment. As a representative of Masjid An-Nur
mosque emphasized to conference participants, "when somebody comes to our door or to our
congregation and says, `I need help,' we have to be very, very creative in the ways we figure out
what we can do. We need to see ourselves as people who will make a difference."
Historically, the religious community within the United States has been instrumental in social
movements on behalf of civil rights, children's rights and peace. Today, these movements are
taking new and expanded courses. For instance, America's Promise -- the organization that
emanated from the historic Presidents' Summit for America's Future in 1997 in Philadelphia
-- focuses on providing the nation's youth with five resources: a healthy start, mentors,
marketable
skills, safe places and opportunities to serve. All of these afford congregations an avenue for
involvement.
Uniting Congregations for Youth Development, a project developed by Search Institute -- a
nonprofit research organization dedicated to the development and well-being of young people --
is one model of service. It focuses on building the assets of congregations so they in turn can
develop assets that youth within the religious and secular communities need in order to succeed.
Another model incorporates service-learning opportunities that make it possible for youth and
adults to learn through their community activities. Participants have the opportunity to think
about, discuss and demonstrate what they have learned through their volunteer experiences.
Faith-based volunteering takes many forms. Externally, outside the church, synagogue or
mosque, it can include "hands-on" housing and community revitalization, food programs,
disaster relief, tutoring, child care, mentoring or job training. Within the faith community,
volunteer activities range from building maintenance, religious instruction and holiday
preparation to welcoming newcomers, developing and leading youth programs, assisting
members who are frail or elderly, and visiting the sick. In addition, almost without exception,
lay leadership roles in congregations and faith-based organizations are volunteer posts.
Often, congregations link up with groups from other sectors of the community -- faith-based or
not, as the case may be -- to form broader-based partnerships. The Jeremiah Program described
above is an example of this multi-sector arrangement. The most convincing evidence that a true
partnership has been established is when all parties rise above their distinctive organizational
goals to achieve a collective vision, based on shared values. One example of this might be the
endless number of "in-kind" resource mobilizations that are initiated -- book and school-supply
campaigns, donations of personal hygiene items for shelter residents, food bank projects and
adopt-a-room programs for nurseries housing children in crisis.
For more than a quarter-century, a diverse, vibrant contingent of interfaith organizations have
linked Minnesota's Jews, Protestants and Catholics, serving the state's needy, regardless of
particular religion. Muslims, increasingly, are becoming involved in these groups. From direct
service to advocacy, from fundraising to educational projects, a veritable supermarket of service
choices is in place to spark the interests of volunteers, responding to the needs of the hungry,
homeless and otherwise disadvantaged.
What is happening in Minnesota occurs elsewhere, in various forms, as well. Here, though, are
some brief examples of the types of organizations flourishing in the Twin Cities, engaging vast
numbers annually:
Metro Paint-A-Thon. Since 1984, over one weekend each
August, thousands of volunteers are mobilized to scrape, prime and paint the homes of low-
income senior citizens and people with disabilities. Christian volunteers, as a rule, work on
Saturday, and Jewish volunteers participate on Sunday -- allowing each group to observe its own
Sabbath. On the second weekend of August 1998, 8,000 volunteers from 72 congregations, 91
corporations and 39 civic associations painted some 250 homes. Corporations donated all
supplies -- thousands of gallons of paint, brushes, ladders and other materials.
Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing
(MICAH). This regional advocacy, education and service organization linking more than
100 Catholic, Jewish and Protestant congregations and groups works to ensure decent, safe and
affordable housing throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. MICAH recently formed a Family
Shelter Network that provides more than 3,500 bed nights of shelter, and created the Homeless
Family Support Program that offers rental assistance to homeless families.
Minnesota FoodShare. Formed by Catholics, Protestants and
Jews in 1982, this group ensures that the state's citizens will have a healthy supply of nutritious
food. In 1997, the 250 local food shelves comprising the FoodShare network distributed more
than 24 million pounds of food to more than a quarter-million people -- over half of whom were
children. That same year, the group launched its first "Eat Breakfast Campaign" -- hosting
nutrition fairs for 3,000 students at seven elementary schools, to emphasize how a good breakfast
each morning can provide the stamina so vital to achieving good grades.
Nechama (the Hebrew word meaning "comfort"). The
brainchild of a Jewish volunteer who went from Minneapolis to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1993 to
help with flood relief, this organization mobilized some 400 Jewish and Christian volunteers
during the 1997 and 1998 floods, tornadoes and heavy storms that ravaged the upper midwestern
United States. Nechama's volunteers traveled more than 1,000 miles on two dozen deployments
(sandbagging operations, for instance) to help families and communities defend themselves and
their properties against impending disasters and recover
from natural disaster. Nechama also raised more than $50,000 to rebuild a synagogue in flood-
torn Grand Forks, North Dakota, and to assist other flood relief efforts in the region. Nechama is
a project of the Twin Cities' Jewish Community Relations Council, and works closely with the
American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
Joint Religious Legislative Coalition. Since 1971, the JRLC
has enabled the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant communities to have a voice on social justice
legislation before the Minnesota State Legislature. On issues ranging from hate crimes to the
death penalty, from services for immigrants to campaign finance reform, the JRLC has been in
the front lines of research, grass-roots activism and advocacy. Under the group's unique
arrangement, all three faith sponsors must agree on any position to be taken on any proposed
legislation. If any faith group dissents, the JRLC will not address the issue. After 27 legislative
sessions and a host of prospectively contentious matters, no faith group has invoked its veto
authority. (In 1996, the JRLC extended observer status to the Minnesota chapter of the
American Muslim Council.)
There are countless untold stories of religious community volunteers acting for the common
good. It emerges, quite simply, from tradition, belief and practice. The scope and scale of these
activities are immeasurable. Suffice it to say that on a daily basis, at an expanding rate, people of
faith act upon their values individually and collectively to make the country, and the world, a
better place in which to live and to raise a new generation of citizens.
__________
Paula Beugen is director of Avodah B'Yachad - Service Together, a component of Congregations
in Community, an interfaith action initiative sponsored by The McKnight Foundation. Jay Tcath
is executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.
