We are communities of people living out our faith and values to collectively transform our society and bring about justice locally, nationally and globally. Our local congregation-based community organizing is affiliated with and contributes to the vision of Gamaliel Foundation.

Gamaliel Foundation is a Chicago-based organization with over 60 local and regional grassroots affiliates in the United States and South Africa. It is one of the largest networks of faith-based community organizations, representing over one million clergy and lay people and 1,600 congregations.

This project is an effort to structure ourselves to effect the systemic changes necessary to advance the values we have claimed. People with faith in a good and just God and people who share these values will organize to bring about shared abundance, sacred community, unrelenting hope, equal opportunity and justice within our communities and throughout the world.

Our communities are facing complex development problems, which contribute to poverty, through Metro equity campaigns. These campaigns seek to prevent urban sprawl by significantly stopping the flow of public or private money away from older communities at the center of the region into sprawling, segregated suburbs.

We also seek strategically to develop the solidarity capacities of our faith communities through JustFaith adult formation for social mission. This congregation-based formation, begun in Catholic communities, is expanding ecumenically.

Local workshops to develop participation in JustFaith are another context for utilizing event-building social-web tools described in this proposal. This substantial adult formation helps community members develop a biblical perspective on many social issues.

Sustaining this formation helps develop faith communities to participate more fully in their wider communities in more active ways. This is a vision of local parishes and congregations as communities of salt and light.

WHAT WE NEED:

CBCO leaders, and their few professional staff, are very busy mobilizing a wide span of busy citizens. The same is true for their national-networks, which support local CBCOs contractually through training and coaching services.

A a remix of social-web tools and content can be demonstrated at network conferences.

Careful development and evaluation of a useful new tool set and a package of affordable services is needed for a successful demonstration project. Demonstration tools and services should then gain underwriting support for methodical diffusion through a pilot program.

Technology availability and modest digital-divide hurdles must be overcome.

Location