WHAT IS IT ABOUT ORGANIZING THAT EMPOWERS PEOPLE?

What is it about community or broad-based organizing that empowers people?  Is it the individual meetings?  Is it the house meetings?  Is it the action research?  What is it in organizing that turns ordinary citizens from "nothing but ordinary people" into very powerful and influential people?  That dynamic is the pedagogy of action and reflection.

What is the pedagogy of action and reflection?  It was best described by Dom Helder Camara, the late archbishop of Recife, Brazil.  Dom Helder was the bishop to the poor who introduced into both Brazilian church practice and theology the structure of base ecclesial communities.  These base communities were, for the Latin American Christian, the equivalent of community and broad-based organizing in empowering the peasants to work for the transformation of their favellas and squatter settlements.  In an interview in which the archbishop was explaining the concept of the base communities, Dom Helder said,

We highly educated priests made the magnificent discovery that even illiterate people still know how to think.  They might not be able to read - but they can think, and think most profoundly!  So we discovered that it is impossible to work with the people without learning from them.  You teach and you learn; you teach and you learn.

What Dom Helder and his priests had discovered was the pedagogy of action and reflection!  And once they discovered it, the building of people of power was not far behind.                               READ MORE

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The Robert C. Linthicum GLOBAL INITIATIVES FUND - On April 24th, Robert Linthicum, the founder of Partners In Urban Transformation, retired from his position as PIUT's president.  To honor him and help provide for the continuation of his work with the world's poor, marginalized and powerless, PIUT has established the Global Initiatives Fund (GIF).  GIF is a matching fund for use with local (USA) and indigenous (Africa, Asia, Latin America) people's organizations that work with Partners In Urban Transformation or its affiliate, Millennium Tools.  GIF's goal is to strengthen these group's capacity and ability to build their own futures economically, educationally, socially, politically or spiritually.

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PARTNERS IN URBAN TRANSFORMATION calls the church to engage in public work for justice for the powerless.  Partners equips urban churches and organizations to build and use relational power for social transformation through the disciplines of community organizing              More About Us

FIGHTING POVERTY ... through Millennium Tools  Imagine living on less than $1 per day.  This situation is faced  by over a billion people - people like  you or me  - all   rendered powerless by destitution.  What can we do to fight   such outrageous poverty?  Partners' program, Millennium Tools, helps empower the extremely poor of the global south to build their own destiny.             Go to Millennium Tools