On-Demand Community Impact

Journey’s Community Impact days are great outreaches to the needs of people but when crises and emergencies affect someone, waiting for the next CID just won’t work. On-Demand Community Impact would be an always-available pool of people and money to meet the unexpected needs of people.

When Tanya and I lived in Michigan, we had a cell church with another family. We were on the lookout for people who had needs that we could meet directly. One of Tanya’s classmates in a creative writing class lived in an apartment bldg that burned down. We had extra bedding, some clothing, etc. that we gave to them. We donated money to needs, or we bought things for people directly. For example, I saw a guy on the expressway with a shredded tire. We went to a tire store and got him a set of 2 tires. The idea is for us to meet the needs of people directly and on-the-fly as we see them happen.

These are the kinds of needs I envision we help with. And I also would like to see the ministry fund itself: that the people who are involved would meet needs with its own labor and with the money of people. So, let’s say someone has a fire and they need some money for a few days’ worth of hotels. We would be ready to get $300 or $400 for hotels and pre-pay the cost for them so they don’t have to worry about a place to stay.

Doug, Carl, Dennis and I met at Space #7 to discuss how Journey could enhance the CID services to San Jose. The discussion points, very loosely organized, are below:

Kinds of Services/Needs
* Help with victims of domestic abuse
* Fires and other small-scale disasters
* Trustworthy automotive repair
* Physical labor services (moving, elderly assistance, cleaning, yard work etc.)
* Abused/Abandoned animals
* Computer services
* Skilled home repair

Resource Pool Issues
* Build a loosely coupled network across area churches to allow smaller churches to contribute and to expand the resource pool
* Manage demands on the pool and cycle people through the pool so there is little burnout
* Build credibility within the zip code and larger community so that other social organizations will consider us as a partner
* Make sure we aren’t reinventing the wheel by duplicating what’s already active at Journey (e.g. Love, Inc.)

Making It Happen
* Publicize it at Journey with a more concise mission
* Recruit people willing to help as resources or coordinators (coordinators would be on the look out for community needs, would rapidly (and easily) gather/schedule resources)
* Monitor the Mercury News for events on the police blotter
* Create a method for Journey ppl to make a need known to the On-Demand team

Any other thoughts?