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‘The Best Link Between the Generations’
It Takes Two Villages
This past school year, fifth-grade students at private elementary school Village Academy (Powell, Ohio) joined residents at nearby Worthington (Ohio) Christian Village to form the Two Village Singers.
Julie Sapper, choir director for the academy, created the choir with help from staff at the Christian retirement community. “Since I am a music teacher and music is the universal language, I decided that forming a choir of children and senior adults would provide the best link between the generations,” Sapper says in an article published in WCV’s newspaper.
The seniors and children first met in January and built relationships between joint rehearsals. “I assigned partners of seniors and students,” Sapper says. “They shared pictures . . . and wrote letters to each other.”
The senior adult residents practiced as a group two afternoons each week and worked out tricky bits on their own with help from CDs while the children practiced during their school day. The group performed together at two concerts this spring with show tunes as the repertoire.
www.wcv.org
Neighbor Intensive
Solidarity (Placentia, California) leads after-school programs, a teen center, mentoring and tutoring groups, and even gang intervention in several Southern California neighborhoods, and recently began working with street children in Sao Paulo, Brazil. But the nonprofit organization’s first priority is church members.
“We exist to empower believers who can then change community problems,” says executive director Thomas Nixon. “Solidarity can’t solve these problems alone—everything we do is designed to help Christians get into relationship with a lost and broken world.”
Solidarity began in 2000 as a Bible study among eight college students, including several from Hope International University (Fullerton, California). Like many idealistic young people, the students identified discrepancies between their own church experiences and their understanding of Scripture; unlike many young people, the group tackled the problem by radically changing their own lives.
Today a staff of 11, a board of directors, and a corps of volunteers organize not only the outreach programs but the involvement of Christians around the country.
“We offer one-day, weekend, and weeklong experiences, each focused on what it means to participate in the kingdom of God,” Nixon says. “We try to help participants understand the compartmentalization when we talk about ‘serving’; it’s not about doing things for poor people on our schedule to create a feel-good experience and return home, but about sharing life long-term.”
Solidarity also stresses asset-based community development, an approach that involves the resources and residents of a neighborhood in solving its own problems, and runs a screen printing business to help raise funds.
Whatever the method, Solidarity defines transformation as change in the heart of the believer as well as the community.
“We focus on the people who come, not just the work to be done locally,” Nixon says. “Hopefully they’ll return home with a new philosophy about ‘mission’ work.”
www.solidarityrising.org
Jennifer Taylor, one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD's contributing editors, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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