Thousands and thousands of Third World refugees are languishing behind bars in the land of the free. They're not criminals.
Taking Action
The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst.
The Bush administration has launched an attack on laws and regulations protecting the environment that has most environmental watchdogs on the defensive.
It's a partnership that reads like a parable: Invest some talents around springtime, trust the farmer to sow good seed, then bring home the harvest all summer long.
BorderLinks, a binational organization educating people about the realities of the U.S.-Mexico border, has always been good at getting personal without thinking small.
Women's Re-entry Network in Cleveland is like many nonprofits—it is financially pinched and has a big-hearted but overworked staff that struggles to meet the needs of its clients.
In the spring of 2000, a sold-out crowd of volunteers and union organizers, parents and students, hourly wage earners and salaried policy wonks, mohawks and buzz cuts, Latino and black...
‘Every once in a while, a truly brilliant idea comes along: the wheel, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Cannoli...you get the idea." So say Tom and Ray of NPR's "Car Talk" radio program about the Good News Garages in Vermont and Massachusetts. Following the example of the folks in New England, people in Charleston, West Virginia, have established their own Good News Mountaineer Garage.
The agenda is simple. They fix cars and give them away. As Tom and Ray joke: "Not a good business plan!" Unless one is in the business of helping move folks from welfare to work.
"People want to help others—I believe it is a part of our basic nature," said the program's executive director, Barbara Bayes, who grew up in an impoverished area of eastern Kentucky, "and this program addresses the most difficult barrier for poor people in rural areas" in their efforts to break their cycle of poverty.
"In West Virginia, one out of four low-income people listed lack of transportation as the main problem in maintaining employment or getting to job training," said Bayes, citing the West Virginia Research Task Force on Welfare Reform. It was to deal with that problem that the Good News Mountaineer Garage was developed by the West Virginia Council of Churches, the state Department of Health and Human Resources, the Bureau of Family and Children, and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.
When one thinks about homelessness, it's unlikely that the terms "network" or "mentoring" come to mind.
Back in college, when you were asked to declare your major, "faith-based community organizing" with a minor in "direct action" probably was not an option.
A year of voluntary service has become a rite of passage for thousands of socially conscious young Christians.