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What makes Holistic Neighborhood Development unique?
Place-Based
One of the greatest indicators of one’s life-long economic mobility is the neighborhood in which one lives. HND asserts that place is the most important factor to consider when seeking long-term outcomes, and it is one of the most neglected lenses within traditional poverty alleviation tactics. Place allows us to go deep, work broadly, and invest in the long-haul for real results.
Proximity
We cannot solve anything from a distance. We have to draw near, enter into relationship, and open ourselves up to the possibility of mutual transformation. Transactional giving between strangers will never end poverty. You cannot serve someone out of poverty. HND leads with neighboring and relationship.
Integrative
Poverty is neither caused, sustained, or solved by any one thing; it is the dynamic intersection of multiple factors, systems, and circumstances. The “holistic” dimension of HND is about committing to comprehensive engagement that seeks innovative, integrative strategies for long-term outcomes.
Agile
Cities, people, opinions, policies, and economies can all change in the blink of an eye. Strategies that worked last year might night work in the next. Work done for months may come up empty and expectations may get upended at a moment’s notice. HND can create real change because it is flexible and adaptive, constantly committed to the best, healthiest approach, even if that means a radical course correction mid-stream. We do not seek the perpetuation of our program; it is always about the thriving of a community and whatever it takes to make that happen.
Impact-Oriented
Results matter. Not activity, not busyness, not arbitrary program numbers, but impact. They may be hard to come by, hard to define, or hard to measure, but they are core to what it means to commit to HND. We want to see lives and communities thriving, not dependent on external support year after year. We do not settle for less than true and lasting change.
Data-Driven
Flourishing communities is not just a big vision for us. It is a process we have developed with tools to track and measure the health of a place. This process will define and create the strategies that will lead to long-term, lasting change in your neighborhood.
Neighborhood Economics
FCS has chosen to work in historically Black and brown neighborhoods that are experiencing the concentrated forces of inequity. All too often, deliberately disadvantaged neighborhoods, get blamed for the conditions that are out of their control. And, at the same time, the solutions being devised don’t include them either. This is painfully obvious when we look at the way our cities think about economic development. Most of the systems and strategies we are using are creating problems, not solving them. FCS advocates that ending inequity and promoting prosperity means getting our economic scales adjusted to the unit of the neighborhood. What might it mean to change the paradigm and begin the pursuit and practice of neighborhood economics?
Comparing our Findings on the Church-Place Gap: World Impact
In this special series of Place Matters, we have been exploring the relationship of congregations to their local context. We have made the case that, for churches, place should matter too. Any understanding of a thriving congregation is incomplete if it does not include caring well for our neighbors and neighborhood. We partnered with the Barna Group to put some data behind this.
For this conversation to have any credibility, of course, we must engage a more inclusive and representative audience of leaders. So, we have been talking to our friend, the Rev Dr. Alvin Sanders, President and CEO of World Impact, about some similar research he and his team have done with Barna to engage Black and brown pastors who are serving in lower-income, majority-minority neighborhoods.
World Impact is an organization that exists specifically to offer training and equipping for church leaders working in lower-income, urban communities. So what did Alvin and his team discover when they asked about the role of congregations in the neighborhood? Are there signs of hope here? And if so, what can majority culture churches learn to close the church-to-neighborhood gap?
Connecting with Partners: Leadership Foundations
Within the ecosystem of a city, what is the function of congregations? Are they just there to serve the needs of the members or should they play a role in contributing to the health and vitality of the city, or, at least, the neighborhood the church inhabits? The Leadership Foundation is a growing global network of faith-based leaders and organizations from over 40 member cities. Leadership Foundations believes that if we can change our cities, we can change the world. And this change starts with relationships.
So how do they go about inviting their members from Dallas to Delhi into place-based impact? We are excited to have Lee Kricher from Pittsburgh, Oliver Rishmond from Chattanooga, and Dave Hillis from National speak about the work of churches in impacting their cities.
Listen in as one of our Lead Consultants, David Park, discusses the methods the Leadership Foundation is using to help churches engage in place-based work.