Browsing by Subject "Community Development"
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Item Open Access Getting Carried Away: Preaching Jeremiah 32 as a Theological Framework Toward Reimagining Community and Economic Development as Prophetic Witness for Fairfield Baptist Church.(2024) Vickers, Sr. , EricThis project focuses on the praxis of prophetic preaching from Jeremiah 32 as the impetus for introducing, inspiring, mobilizing, and launching a community development corporation through the life of Fairfield Baptist Church of Redan in Lithonia, Georgia. The work of this thesis presents a personal account of prophetic preaching misrepresentation, recontextualization of prophetic preaching through academic grounding, historical and contemporary models, three original sermons preached from Jeremiah 32 as Theo-practical framing, and the challenges and opportunities for Fairfield to develop a CDC. The thesis attempts to outline the historical challenges and disparities for African-American communitieswhile seeking to lift the church as the vehicle for both spiritual change and social transformation. Pertinent to this work is the thorough investigation of what it means to live out the work of prophetic preaching and ministry. What is prophetic preaching? Why is Jeremiah the paradigmatic prophet? What is the telos of prophetic preaching for African-American communities and churches? How should prophetic preaching affect Fairfield Baptist Church of Redan?
Item Open Access Let's Make a PACT: Engaging Congregations in Neighborhood and Community Development via Participatory Democratic Structures(2015-04-29) Johnson, Sheldon KParticipatory democracy is a form of governance in which all of the people govern themselves in at least some public matters at least some of the time. This report explores how participatory democratic structures can be used in order to invigorate civic participation. This report will focus on developing policy recommendations for Partners Achieving Community Transformation (PACT), a 501(c)(3) engaging in neighborhood and community development in Columbus, OH. These development initiatives are place-based initiatives targeted in an 800 acre area known as the Near East Side (NES). PACT is interested in building partnerships with the numerous congregations located in the NES. This report leverages an in-depth literature review, case studies, and interviews with congregational leaders to advise PACT on how to use participatory democratic structures to achieve this goal.Item Open Access The World's Problem's Are Your Own: Septima Clark, Elza Freire and Grassroots Freedom Education in the American Decade of Development 1960-1970(2020) Colston, AaronIn the attempt to plan and mobilize teaching on a massive scale, literacy campaigns bring otherwise implied working theories of human and societal development out in the open. Aside from offering a lens into the role of ideas in political contest during the Cold War, the lessons of literacy campaigns in the United Nations-named “Development Decade” of 1960-1970 are useful for contemporary programs (such as the Algebra Project). This is in large part because literacy campaigns highlight how communities on the periphery of society can conduct planning and mobilize limited staff and resources to meet, replicate, and expand highly targeted goals, shifting the balance of power by setting an agenda when otherwise unable to wield state or monetary influence. The most important problems are which form of planning and which school of pedagogy.
This dissertation studies Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987) of Charleston, South Carolina USA and Elza Costa Freire (1916-1986) of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil as activist-educators who formed—and with their colleagues mobilized—literacy methods as part of a pedagogy of liberation. Clark and Costa Freire represent a “grassroots” school of liberation pedagogy while the Cuban literacy campaign of 1961 represents a “guerilla” school. While Clark and Costa Freire’s methods can be localized to the settings of Charleston and Recife—and also considered apart from the methods of the Ministry of Education in Havana—each one’s process toward campaigning indicates a shared intellectual context of development planning, even “solving” the problems posed by the exact same pre-existing literacy methods. Moreover, these three cities, like distant sisters, each unevenly transitioned from “slave” and “free” society. In the Cold War’s turn toward the “Third World,” literacy campaigns experimented in the politics of freedom where communities once owned could take ownership of their education.