Rural poverty webinar coming in March

Event continues “Struggle is Real” series by Self-Development of People

by Darla Carter | Presbyterian News Service

Molly Hemstreet and others discuss leveraging assets around the textile industry in Morganton, North Carolina. She will be among the guests featured in a rural poverty webinar being hosted by the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People March 10.

LOUISVILLE — Rural poverty will be the focus of the March 10 installment of “The Struggle is Real,” a virtual discussion series by the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP).

Registration has begun for the 2-3:30 p.m. Eastern Time dialogue and listening forum, which is the third in an online series that started last year.

Partners from Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio will share insights about rural poverty and the importance of building community partnerships. This comes as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) works to achieve the Matthew 25 goal of eradicating systemic poverty.

The Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson

“The purpose of ‘The Struggle is Real’ series is to really interface with organizations and ministries, ministry partners who are engaged in the issues of eradicating poverty, not so much to have just an audience of church people, but to be informative and to connect our churches, our Presbyterian churches, to these organizations and to these individuals who can help them in some way do the work that they’re doing,” said the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, SDOP Coordinator.

Also, “I think it’s important to lift up the infrastructural issues, all the kinds of things that are affecting communities in rural landscapes, and the fact that we have churches that are working in these rural landscapes … addressing the issues of abject poverty that we see happening in some of these areas.”

Guests will include:

• Frank Taylor of Winston County Self-Help Cooperative, Jackson, Mississippi
• Molly Hemstreet, Founder of Opportunity Threads and Co-Executive Director of The Industrial Commons, Morganton, North Carolina
• Jim King, CEO and President of Fahe, Berea, Kentucky
• The Rev. Rebecca Barnes, Coordinator of the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP)
• The Rev. Wayne A. Gnatuk, retired Presbyterian minister, Lexington, Kentucky.
• The Rev. Dr. Amariah McIntosh, Senior Pastor, Phillips Temple CME Church, Toledo, Ohio.

Margaret Mwale

“We are fortunate to have both Presbyterian leaders as well as community leaders, and that is very intentional because one of the things, I think, that increasingly we’re recognizing is that the more opportunities we have for these conversations with each other as partners, the church and community, the better all around, because as a church, we don’t exist in a vacuum,” said Margaret Mwale, Associate for Community Development and Constituent Relations for SDOP.

Watch Johnson and Mwale preview the webinar here.

The Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People is one of the Compassion, Peace and Justice ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Its work is made possible by your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing.

Join SDOP and Presbyterians nationwide in celebrating SDOP Sunday on March 13. For more details email sdopevents@pcusa.org or go here to get more information and download the newly released SDOP Sunday Resource.