Fundraising Campaign Tithes

Campaign Tithe Projects Build Community
Locally and Globally

An article by Pam Petersen, Unity of Phoenix Board Member and Chair of Tithing Committee as seen in the September / October 2007 issue of Upward Venture Newsletter

In May 2007 the Unity of Phoenix Board of Trustees announced two ministry tithe projects inspired by the success of our capital Fundraising Campaign. We selected the Valley of the Sun Habitat for Humanity and The Hunger Project as our major Campaign tithe recipients because their empowerment programs truly advance our ministry vision of being “a magnifying power for the miraculous transformation of the world!”

Founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity is a Christian-based organization that, like Unity, invites people from all walks of life to build community together. Habitat’s mission is to eliminate substandard housing by creating strategic partnerships to build and renovate homes, and to serve as a catalyst for social awareness.

Arizona ranks 40th in the nation in the percentage of residents who own their own homes, and 1.2 million Arizonans currently live in substandard housing. Habitat volunteers have tackled this challenge locally by completing over 400 homes in Maricopa County alone, and Unity of Phoenix intends to help. In addition to tithe money, we are committed to tithing our time and our talent by participating in Habitat builds throughout our three-year Campaign. We anticipate this project will provide hands-on volunteer opportunities for teens and adults in the areas of construction, clean up and hospitality during at least one weekend in each Campaign year. In this way, we can continue building our own Unity community by helping others build theirs!

We are also committed to infuse Habitat and its families with our ongoing love and prayer support. Habitat families are working families who wish to purchase their first home, but cannot qualify for traditional loans. Habitat offers its families a 0% interest mortgage, thereby making home ownership more affordable. Monthly mortgage payments are made to Habitat’s “Fund for Humanity,” which then reinvests all proceeds in land acquisition and new home construction. This system has allowed more than 750,000 people worldwide to purchase Habitat homes. To qualify, Habitat families must have a stable two-year income and credit history, earn between 30-60% of the median income in the metropolitan Phoenix area, demonstrate a need for adequate housing, and attend classes in home maintenance and budgeting. Family members must also complete 400 hours of “sweat equity,” including 100 hours helping to build someone else’s home.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the Hunger Project is a strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of chronic hunger on our planet. The Hunger Project’s African epicenter strategy transforms 10,000 lives by empowering clusters of villages to build self-reliant communities and end their own hunger by working together to meet all of their basic needs.

The epicenter strategy unfolds in four distinct phases. Phase 1 focuses on mobilizing local resources and gaining the support of local government officials. For an entire year, the Hunger Project conducts Vision, Commitment and Action workshops where villagers create a new vision for their community, take a stand to achieve it, and develop action plans. Out of the VCA workshops, people with natural leadership abilities emerge and the Hunger Project provides these leaders with additional training and support to launch village-level projects. The success of these projects helps overcome people’s sense of resignation and dependency, and builds confidence that they can take development into their own hands.

The promotion of gender equality is at the heart of all Hunger Project programs, because the severe subjugation of women is a root cause of chronic hunger. Thus, the culmination of Phase 1 is the election of an epicenter committee with equal numbers of women and men, who will be responsible for all future epicenter activities.

In Phase 2, which also takes about a year, the villages come together to build the epicenter facilities. The chiefs donate five acres of land for the epicenter building and community farm. Although the Hunger Project hires a contractor to supervise construction, the epicenter committee provides volunteer labor to make concrete blocks and build the community center. Subcommittees are created to manage each function of the epicenter, including the medical clinic, school and food bank. The Hunger Project also begins HIV/AIDS and gender inequality workshops to teach the facts about AIDS and invite people to examine the dangerous gender behaviors that fuel the spread of the disease.

For the next three years in Phase 3, villagers operate epicenter programs in partnership with the Hunger Project. Once the epicenter is fully operational, the surrounding villages make rapid progress in meeting all their basic needs. The community farm provides food security and introduces new farming techniques. The food from the community farm goes to a food bank, where it protects the epicenter against shortages and allows farmers to store their food and take it to market when prices are good.

During this phase, the Women’s Empowerment Project provides intensive training for selected women leaders in legal rights, leadership skills and reproductive health. The Hunger Project also establishes a micro-credit bank, and its African Woman Food Farmer Initiative organizes women into credit groups and gives them access to credit, savings and training. The all-women loan committees run the epicenter bank and typically require loan recipients to keep their girls in school. Government certification of the bank means the epicenter is now mobilizing enough savings and generating enough income to meet its day-to-day costs of operation.

At this point, in Phase 4, the epicenter is fully self-reliant and the Hunger Project steps aside. In five short years and a minimal cost of $40 per person, the community has transformed a culture of dependency, resignation and gender discrimination into one of responsibility, self-reliance and gender equality. In the process, it has achieved substantially lowered infant and maternal mortality rates, safe water and sanitation, a significant slowing in the spread of AIDS and malaria, sustainable livelihoods, and a changed consciousness regarding the value and role of women. To date, the Hunger Project has initiated 87 epicenters in eight African countries including Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Mozambique. Sixteen of these epicenters have achieved self-reliance, and the oldest epicenter in Senegal has been self-reliant for nine years!

Unity of Phoenix is excited to partner with the Hunger Project in its epicenter work. We will be “adopting” an epicenter near the completion of Phase 1 so we can track its progress and surround the community with our love and prayer support.

In year three of our own Campaign, we also hope to send representatives from our Unity community to visit an African epicenter to experience this miraculous transformative process at the grassroots level and report back to us. Thank you, thank you for making these tithe projects possible by your continuing support of this ministry. Together, we can change the world!