UrbanMinistry.org Evokes a Sense of Community to Promote Social Justice

The vision of TechMission's UrbanMinistry.org is to help promote social justice and end that segregation by using Web 2.0 technology to connect the urban and suburban church worlds.

Thursday, May 10, 2007; Posted: 3:09 AM - by Social Computing News Desk

Helen Keller once said, “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.”

The key goal of TechMission is to assist churches and Christian organizations to become a major driving force behind computer literacy just as they were with basic literacy.  

UrbanMinistry.org also provides the tools to enable a mass movement of user-contributed content from diverse cultural perspectives to help address injustice. Examples on UrbanMinistry.org include: Combating Aids in Africa Channel, Anti-Human Trafficking Channel, Fighting Global Hunger/Poverty Channels, Anti-Sweatshop Channel, Anti-Police Brutality Channel.

Another major vision for UrbanMinistry.org is to help resource to urban communities. Faith-based volunteers donated time valued at $51.8 billion each year in the United States, according to CNCS and US Department of Labor. According to the Institute for Policy Studies of Johns Hopkins University, only 7-15% of volunteering through churches helps the larger community. This means that only $3.6 to $7.8 billion of this value goes to serve those outside of the church. Increasing the number of Christian volunteers serving in low income communities by 10% would represent over $5.2 billion in increased resources available to those communities through donated time.

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20070518021759/http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=192