Analyzing
Issues
by Yvette Moore
Education for action –- that’s the focus of National Seminar. Each participant comes home prepared to lead United Methodist Women in her conference in addressing an issue she had chosen to study during her week at the seminar.
"Women explore issues in-depth to strengthen their understanding about root causes of the problems from local and global perspectives," said Pamela Sparr, Women’s Division executive secretary for environmental justice and National Seminar planning team member. "We work with participants to develop a strong biblical and United Methodist basis for the justice work to which they are committed."
Months before the 1999 National Seminar, each participant selected an issue to study and act on when returning to her conference, local church and community. Fourteen issue groups were offered based on participants’ interest:
The issue groups followed National Seminar’s spiral design of learning based on John Wesley’s "quadrilateral," a way of doing theology that incorporates Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Participants first shared their personal experiences with and convictions about their issue, then together as issue groups analyzed the issues, reflected on them from faith perspectives, and finally, created action plans to use when they returned home.
Sharing personal experiences helped participants see how an issue can have different manifestations in different communities while sharing a common root and outcome, Ms. Sparr said. Such discussion helped participants make connections necessary to effectively work for justice.
Women in the issue group on welfare and children kicked off the session with brief introductions and sharing their reasons for selecting the workshop. For example, Barbara Gillespie, a mother of four, grandmother and former child-care worker, wanted to see how rural churches in Holston Conference can best help poor families and children in their communities. Naomi Powers of Virginia Conference was concerned that adequate supports for women coming off welfare be in place. Whitney Lange, a college student from Yellowstone Conference, wanted to learn what she and others could do to assist those needing welfare.
Lolita Parks of Eastern Pennsylvania Conference shared her personal conflicts on welfare, explaining she was taught never to seek public assistance.
"No matter what," she said. "If you eat beans, you eat beans."
Yet she said she needed to know that children weren’t bearing the brunt of changes in welfare laws.
The group began its analysis of the impact of welfare changes on children by pondering what it takes to rear healthy children.
Group leader Anna Rhee, former Women’s Division staff and now director of religious affairs at the Washington, D.C.-based Children’s Defense Fund, challenged the women:
"Caring communities, enough income, food, clothing, shelter, adequate health care, loving parents are all needed to rear a successful child, but in what order of importance?"
She asked group members to arrange the elements in a pyramid with the most important items on the bottom and the goal, a successful child, on top. In the end, group members negotiated a pyramid that placed enough income, caring communities and loving parents at its base; health care, food, clothing and shelter in the middle; and the successful child on top.
The 20-minute exercise not only allowed the women to express their perspectives, but began to reveal what it will take to help poor children.
"Sometimes people start working on an issue in the middle," Ms. Rhee said. "They want to give the child health care, food. But when parents have enough income, they’re empowered to provide food, shelter and health care for their children."
Ms. Rhee said the exercise offers insights on how poverty affects children:
"We often talk about poverty as something that just happens to people -- an isolated thing. But poverty affects every aspect of a person’s life."
Wednesday afternoon, the issue group met with women who participate in Tennessee’s welfare-reduction program. Group members surveyed the Tennessee women about what has happened in their families since they were placed in the welfare program. The survey was developed by a coalition of child-advocacy agencies, which included the Children’s Defense Fund.
While the women in the welfare group had little first-hand knowledge about their subject, nearly everyone in the immigration and refugees group brought personal experience to their discussion. Issue-group leader the Rev. Alfonso Roman pointed to "the wave of wars" across Latin America during the 1980s to demonstrate how U.S. foreign intervention -- sometimes militarily, sometimes politically, always economically –- precedes the arrival of new waves of immigrants to the United States. Mr. Roman, an ordained United Church of Christ minister, is former executive secretary for immigration and social-justice ministries for that denomination.
The women listened. Hailing from Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cuba, Guam, Liberia, Texas-Mexico border towns and U.S. heartland towns where refugees are resettling, the story was familiar. They came ready to act. They shared the immigration issues that need to be addressed in their local communities:
"Being an immigrant from the war-torn countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa, it was obvious for me to be interested in the issues of refugees and immigration," said group member Admire Russell of the Baltimore-Washington Conference. "After four days of discussion about the iron hands of the laws governing the INS, we were ready when advised we were going to visit the Catholic Relief and Refugee and Immigration Center in Nashville to volunteer."
That center’s coordinator explained the organization’s work and showed a video based on the suffering of the people of Eritrea to explain why people flee their home nations. At the end of the video, the coordinator gave the group an assignment: clean and otherwise prepare apartments for families scheduled to arrive soon.
"We were then bused to the apartments and were put to work making beds, stacking cupboards with donated foods, cleaning kitchens, hanging shower curtains, and of course, cleaning bathrooms," Ms. Russell said. "I will cherish this experience. With God's mercy, these families will prosper."
Issue groups not only allowed National Seminar participants to explore a subject, learn from one another and get a hands-on experience, they included time for the women to develop action plans to use in their home communities. For Diane Braun, participant in the group on promoting anti-violence, peace and mediation among youth meant applying what she learned to her work as a counselor in a middle school in rural St. Marys, W.Va.
"We’ve never had a major problem with violence -- maybe a fight every three months and one gun brought to school, but it was broken," Ms. Braun said, describing the 400-student Pleasant County Middle School. "Our concern was to try to do a better job in everyday things, to cut down on minor aggravating disrespectful behaviors. Students were being disrespectful to teachers and to one another."
The students needed a new attitude, and Ms. Braun’s action plan was to help them get one. She kicked off the plan the first week of school with a three-week "Respect and Protect" campaign, complete with posters, daily and weekly prizes for students who went a week without using profanity, roughhousing or the like. Students could also give one another awards for respectful deeds.
Students participated in discussions about sexual harassment and in anti-violence activities Ms. Braun learned in her issue group at National Seminar. The school’s campaign even had a theme song -- "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" by Aretha Franklin.
At the end of three weeks, violations were down 50 percent.
"We had a celebration!" Ms. Braun said. "Since our theme was R-E-S-P-E-C-T, we had a 1960s day. Staff and kids dressed up in ‘60s clothing for a sock hop. We set up a soda fountain and served floats. And three United Methodist Women members from Logan United Methodist Church in Parkersburg, W.Va., came dressed in sequined dresses to perform R-E-S-P-E-C-T. We had a parent call to ask if we’d really had Aretha Franklin at the school!"
The campaign continues with monthly themes and schoolwide discussions. January’s theme is tolerance.
"National Seminar was a wonderful experience," Ms. Braun said. "The first part of my action plan was to come back and immediately do something in the school. The second part of my plan is to try to do something in the West Virginia Conference."
Dana E. Jones, editor of Response, led the issue group on youth and violence.
Yvette Moore is managing editor of Response.