Lives have been turned around, communities revitalized, and the gospel proclaimed. This has been the legacy of Human Relations Day, which will fall on January 16 this year.

In San Diego, California, approximately sixty volunteer mentors with the Partners Mentorship Program meet weekly one-on-one with their juvenile partners for a trip to the library, a sports event, or some other recreational activity. Sometimes they meet for help with homework, or just to talk.

The youth, ten to seventeen years of age, are mostly first-time offenders charged with status offenses such as shoplifting, vandalism, and truancy from school. Instead of being assigned to a probation officer or social worker, they are released by the San Diego Juvenile Justice System on the condition that they participate in an intervention program such as the Partners Mentorship Program. In some cases, the young people themselves ask to be in the program.

Housed at Point Loma United Methodist Church in San Diego, Partners Mentorship Program was started in 1993 with a grant from the Human Relations Day offering. Its mission is clear-cut: "to strengthen the character and develop the mind, body, and spirit of at-risk youth through one- to-one mentoring." The program reports that more than 70 percent of the adult mentor-youth matches have been successful.

A parent wrote: "Two years ago, I was pulling out my hair; I couldn't cope being the mother of my teenage boy, Ronald. Though he wasn't a trouble maker, he had pushed all my buttons until I was ready to explode. He was rude, obnoxious, and extremely argumentative with me."

One day, this mother called the police because her son was threatening to commit suicide. The police referred her to Partners, which sent her a mentor named Jim. As this mother wrote, Jim "encouraged Ron to be proud of what he had . . . and instead of being Poor Little Ron, he all of a sudden matured and started walking with confidence and saying, 'Come on, world, here I am.'"

Who can be a volunteer mentor? According to Mr. Al Herman, a member of Partners' Board of Directors, a volunteer mentor must be twenty-one years old or older and be willing to undergo twelve hours of training for a six-month commitment to the program. The training includes such areas as communication and listening skills, anger management, laws on child abuse reporting, problem-solving skills, gang involvement, and crisis intervention. Many volunteers come from the community, including people from various faith traditions.

Another ministry supported by the Human Relations Day offering is the Community Developers program administered by the General Board of Global Ministries through the office of its executive secretary for community and institutional ministries, Ms. Ruth Lawson.

Mr. Ron Williams is a community developer assigned to Shaw Hands Across the Community, an outreach ministry of the A. P. Shaw United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. According to Mr. Williams, support for the Community Developers program through the Human Relations Day offering "has made a large-scale impact on the entire southeast D.C. community."

In 1991, when residents of the Stanton Dwellings Housing Project decided they had to change the deplorable conditions in which they were living, Mr. Williams worked side by side with them to achieve their goal. He recalled how he and members of the neighborhood surrounding the housing project wrote petitions, gave testimonies at Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) hearings, and actively advocated at the agency for the residents' right to safe and healthy housing. Eventually, through their action and vigilance, the Stanton Dwelling Housing Project was redone.

As executive director of Shaw Hands Across the Community, Mr. Williams oversees various community projects addressing such issues as domestic violence, substance abuse, affordable housing, economic development, care of prison inmates, job training, and, more recently, the impact of HIV/AIDS on the community in which he ministers. In a neighborhood characterized by high crime rates, drug abuse, and households headed by one adult, his form of ministry offers an oasis of hope.

As Mr. Williams testifies, some of the neighborhood's leaders for action on behalf of the Stanton Dwellings Housing Project are now leaders of the A.P. Shaw United Methodist Church. It is a church that he describes as "Spirit-filled," where there is healing, dancing, and speaking in tongues. Others who used to stand on street corners to sell drugs now sing in the choir and are active evangelists and "born-again" Christians.

Human Relations Day was created by the General Conference of The United Methodist Church in 1972 to provide ongoing resources for programs developed under the previous quadrennium's Fund for Reconciliation. In 1988, the General Conference decided that Human Relations Day be on the Sunday before the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

January 13, 2000