mission yearbook

Land use in Latin America and systemic poverty

To end systemic poverty, we first must understand its root causes by asking good questions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, two good questions to ask are, “How is the land used?” and “How are the people who live on that land treated?”

Watch Jesus and do the same

As a college student, Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri remembers feeling judged by Christian friends who asked, “Have you repented?”

Minute for Mission: Self-Development of People

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the tradition even as I delivered them to you. — 1 Corinthians 11:1–2 The Ekvn-Yefolecv project located in the Birmingham, Alabama, rural area is a recipient of a Self-Development of People grant. This project is creating an ecovillage community that provides the opportunity for individuals and kin to efficaciously revitalize the Maskoke language, traditions and worldview while embodying a collective commitment to environmental sustainability, and to serve as a replicable archetype for other Indigenous communities to manifest similar models. The ecovillage has a trifold focus: language and cultural preservation, ecological living, and sustainable economic development.

Empowering girls through education

An African proverb says: “If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a nation.” One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” because “education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty.”

Breaking the chains of poverty

Roland is now in high school and is among a group of student panelists presenting on the topic “Social Economic Reforms for Sustainability,” organized by the National Christian Youth Fellowship. The invitation to be a panelist is merited by outstanding academic achievement and each of the panelists performed exceptionally on this day.

Hymns from the heart of the Black church

Whenever the Rev. Carlton Johnson talks about hymns from the heart of the Black church, he feels a responsibility to carry on the tradition of his ancestors. For their hymns are, as W.E.B. Du Bois observed, “the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing born on American soil.”

Minute for Mission: Celebrate the Gifts of Women Sunday

As a young adult, I moved to New York City. I wanted to know what it was like to ride in a crowded subway right underneath another person’s armpit. I wanted to know what it was like to walk down a crowded Manhattan street and have to engage with some people who were well and some who were not so well, all coexisting together.