-
Guest Post: Chris Marlow of HELP End Local Poverty
This month’s guest blog post is by a dear friend to Austin New Church and Restore Austin – Chris Marlow. Chris is the founder of HELP End Local Povery. HELP is a global tribe dedicated to ending extreme poverty by rescuing orphans, restoring their hope and renewing their communities. Being that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, we’ve asked Chris to write a blog concerning those children who are most abused – orphans:
The global orphan crisis seems to have captured the hearts and minds of people inside the church, and also outside the
church. It is deeply encouraging, as many have chosen not to ignore or look away from this crisis.The more conversations I have, the more people want to understand how we got here. And by “here,” I mean the orphan crisis. How, in a world of such deep wealth, intelligence and connectedness, did we come to a place where millions of kids are suffering, alone!
Let’s take a look at some possible factors:
War
When you research the global orphan crisis, war becomes an obvious target. When men and women die, kids are left behind to fend for themselves. Even when good Samaritans, or extended family take in these orphans, they also suffer. Therefore, you can track a chain-reaction destabilizing effect on war-torn countries, that last for decades. It’s truly crippling!
Extreme Poverty
Poverty is quite hard to process. We live in a world where 1 billion people don’t have access to clean water. Now think about this for a second; How can a people-group function, if they don’t have a clean water-source? Of course there are other issues, such as, political uprisings, famines, and natural disasters that causes economic collapse. For instance, Zimbabwe is a country that for years could not afford to keep the power grid working, they could not pay for food to be imported into the country, and they had civil uprising, which caused a collapse in their farming structures. All these issues lead to extreme poverty.
Disease
The fact remains, that diseases such as aids, and malaria wreck havoc on people-groups that don’t have access to proper medicine. A child in Africa dies every 30 seconds because of malaria. There are some 15 million aids-orphans around the globe, that have lost parents to this crisis. Again, it’s easy to see how this would effect a society, foe generations.
Lack of concern
However, the biggest reason that there are some 144 million orphans in the world today, is a simple lack of compassion. There is simply to much wealth and intelligence to assume we can’t do anything about this crisis. And above all that, in general the church (for decades) failed to respond on a mass-scale. Christians, like myself, simply ignored the plight of the orphan. More than war, or extreme poverty, or disease, (as bad as all of those things are) the biggest reason, in my opinion, is the lack of concern by the masses.
Hope
With that being said, we now live in a generation that refuses to ignore this issue. We’re also not scared to tackle the problem. There is hope that we can turn the tide, we can make a difference, and we will fight no matter what. It’s hard for people to understand extreme poverty, it’s next to impossible to comprehend war, and we still struggle with diseases. However, this is where EVERYONE can help. We can simply just care, and also, get our friends to care. When that happens, we can become intentional, and focus on solutions that can change the scope of extreme poverty. Scriptures like Isaiah 1:17, Isaiah 58, Luke 4:16-22, Acts 11:27-30 , Gal 2:9-10, and James 1:27 are being taken seriously, again!
My hope and passion is that the church will lead the way, and fight for the orphan. That we will unite, sacrifice, and take action to make a change, to show the world the character and nature of God through His people, the church.
We can end this crisis, we can crash into eternity doing something to cause impact, and we will rescue orphans, restore their hope and renew their communities.
Chris, thank you, and the team at HELP! We look forward to the partnership between HELP, Restore Austin, and Austin New Church!
Guest Post: Alissa Magrum of Communities in Schools
This month, Restore Austin’s guest blog is not by just a great partner, but by a great friend. On a corporate note, the partnership between Restore Austin and Communities in Schools is out of this world, and based off of that alone Alissa and I had the opportunity to speak at the annual TAPE Conference last week. However, on a personal note, I think this partnership is what it is, not only because we have mutual visions for people and the city, but because of a deep friendship that has formed. This is one of the greatest outcomes of a true partnership for me. Sure, we get to work together for the good of the city, and that is amazing, but it is even better, when those people you work with have become amazing friends…So, here is Alissa’s blog:
I just read some tips to writing good blogs. Two of the tips: make your opinion known
and keep it less than 250 words. I’ll try to do both.Austin New Church and Restore Austin are invaluable resources in this community! DONE! Just kidding. Specifically, they are incredible and amazing partners to Communities In Schools of Central Texas (CIS). Their pure desire to serve the community to make it stronger is apparent every time we interact. It is this pure desire, coupled with boundless energy, caring people and true passion that makes them effective. They provide support to CIS in so many ways. They donate school supplies to our students. They make our CIS counseling rooms bright and therapeutic. They sponsor our families around the Holidays. They raise funds and awareness by running on Team CIS. They respond during crisis. They volunteer at special events. They help us however we need help.
This is how they do it. And it works. We tell them the needs in the communities we serve. They LISTEN to those needs. They either respond directly or connect us with another resource in the community (usually another church plant) to meet the needs. Repeat again and again.
Seems simple and it works! Another key to the success of our partnership is a strong and trusting relationship. This mutual trusting relationship helps us achieve our mission of helping kids stay in school and prepare for life. Amen!
Do you want to get involved with us? Click HERE and become part of the change this city needs and deserves!
Alissa Magrum
Director of Volunteer Services and Community Partnerships
Communities In Schools of Central Texas
Twitter: ciscentraltx
Alissa, thank you very much for your partnership with Austin New Church and Restore Austin…we look forward to a long relationship of affecting the individual, collective and social good of this city!
Guest Post: Neighborhood Engagement, by Armando Rayo
I met Armando about 2 months ago over some amazing breakfast tacos and great Mexican coffee. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Armando was not only a genius in his line of work, but was very passionate
about it. In fact, on March 6th Armando will be doing a community project leadership training for Restore Austin at Austin New Church. To find out more about the training, click HERE. I asked Armando to do a guest blog for Restore Austin to kick our year off…enjoy!Neighborhood Engagement – A balanced approach
I love it when people give back to their community, especially in neighborhoods. It’ a great way to connect with families, get to know neighbors and neighborhood leaders and you get to find out what the “real” needs are as well as understand what people truly want for their neighborhoods. Working in communities, I’ve seen resurgence in helping out neighborhoods from clean-ups and graffiti removal to starting community gardens and hosting potlucks or block parties. In Austin and across America, more people are involved in “neighboring.” The Volunteering In America report (link: www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/TX/Austin) shows that more people are working with neighbors to fix a problem and attending community meetings, but you don’t need a report to show you how people are engaged in Austin; just go outside and see for yourself!
Helping out neighborhoods is a great way to strengthen communities and this type of engagement can be successful if you use a balanced approach; balancing passion, needs and aspirations.
- Take one part passion: what you care about – what drives you to create positive change
- Add needs to the mix: what is the real need – the critical issues
- Finish it with aspiration (or start with it!): what are the aspirations for the people living in neighborhoods – what do they care about?
We often times, just think of our passions and the need and we forget to ask what neighbors care about (I confess, I’m guilty of doing this in the past). Taking the time to ask people why they’re involved or what issues are important to them builds bridges and trust, especially in low-income neighborhoods. Ever wonder why some projects work in some neighborhoods and not in others? Part of the reasons projects don’t get traction or even work is because neighbors weren’t involved in the process; they weren’t asked for their input and so people don’t come out to support the effort. This is why it’s important to take the time to ask people what they care about; what their aspirations are for their neighborhoods and getting them involved. Taking the time to balancing these three approaches will help not only you with your project but neighborhoods in the long-run.How will you incorporate this approach in your next project or maybe you have already? What did you learn? Pass it forward!
Adelante,
Mando
Director, Community Engagement – United Way Capital Area/Hands On Central Texas
VP, Engagement – Cultural Strategies
armando.rayo@unitedwaycapitalarea.org
Thank you Mando, we look forward to this partnership!
