"(Sunday Friends) offers family support. It also helps the
children develop their full potential."— Sunday
Friends Parent
The Premise
The traditional “charity model” is based upon the belief that fulfilling immediate needs will eliminate poverty. That society can solve homelessness by providing housing. That we can end generations of hunger by serving food. That we can end unemployment by distributing interview clothes and resume help. That we can make up for lack of education by offering classes.
While all of these forms of help are necessary, they do not comprise, in themselves, a complete or long-lasting solution. What is needed is a new approach, a working alternative to charity. In Sunday Friends, we have learned that breaking the generational cycle of poverty requires not just support but also a family-based re-education.
The Perpetuation of Poverty
The perpetuation of poverty is based upon experiences, beliefs, culture, attitudes and habits as well as lack of societal support and opportunities. A mother who has not been exposed to reading, writing and studying as a child cannot be expected to model learning for her child or know how to support her child’s schoolwork. Parents who have lived from crisis to crisis will teach survival skills based on desperation to their children. An individual who sees the system as stacked against him and who has little positive experience of his best efforts paying off will not be motivated to develop new skills or to try something difficult. Anyone who sees himself as a “charity case” will do whatever works to meet his basic needs - with little time or energy left to think about giving back to society.
A New Approach
Helping children, parents and families to reframe their views of themselves and of their relationships with their communities requires more than a class. It requires a new experience over an extended period of time. It requires opportunities within a supportive community to practice, to develop new skills and attitudes, to discover inner gifts, to know the satisfaction that comes from contributing to their community.
The Sunday Friends Way
Sunday Friends provides the supportive community that can help families break the cycle of low-education and poverty. It is a micro-community filled with opportunities not just to receive but also to give. It is a program that allows families to work together to earn basic necessities (as opposed to receiving handouts). While the children build the developmental assets required for success, whole families transition together towards self-sufficiency.
Sunday Friends Succeeds Because:
*
We begin by respecting the children and parents who choose to join us, honoring their good intentions and their obvious as well as hidden talents.
*
Our programs involve children and parents together, giving whole families the chance to practice and grow together and to carry on the new attitudes and work styles within their homes.
*
Children and parents experience the satisfaction that comes from meeting their needs in healthy ways through their own contributions while they give to their community. Finding this often-new source of satisfaction can redirect lives in very positive ways.
*
Children discover that learning can be fun. They redefine themselves as “learners” and “successes”. Now the whole world of education is open to them.
Sunday Friends: The Working Alternative to Charity since 1997
|
