Programs

Community Development

Overview • The Network Training & Savings Program • Micro-Enterprise Program • Christian Community Development • Staff

Overview
EGC's Community Development ministry helps facilitate church-based economic development in Boston and internationally through a network of churches overseas.

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The Network Training & Savings Program
The Network Savings and Training Program helps low- and moderate-income people learn financial literacy concepts, develop disciplined savings habits, manage debt, and accrue savings to help achieve their financial goals. The Network offers a series of training modules that build toward asset accumulation:

  • Financial Literacy 101: Understanding Basic Concepts of Financial Accountability
  • Financial Literacy 102: Creating and Maintaining a Monthly Budget
  • Financial Literacy 103: Specific Asset Development (Housing, Higher Education, Micro-Business Development, and Debt Management)

Note: Financial Literacy 102 contains the same principles and financial information as Financial Literacy 101 but is augmented by introducing Biblical materials (illustrations from Parables) as principles to help people integrate money management and wise stewardship practices in the Kingdom of God. The course is open to anyone that wants to take it, with the understanding that Biblical illustrations will be used to enhance the understanding of these basic financial principles.

The Network also offers programs for high school students, to help them learn how to budget and save for college.

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Micro-Enterprise Program
In 1999, EGC pioneered a micro-enterprise effort with the Kolhapur Church Council in India. EGC missionaries Ramesh and Sheba Telore worked with five churches and 25 participants in a pilot program.

Today, in partnership with PEER Servants, an all-volunteer group based in Woburn, MA that consults with a network of 13 indigenous micro-enterprise organizations around the world (Nigeria, South Africa, Moldova, Sudan/Uganda, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Haiti, the Bahamas [with the Haitian diaspora located there], Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India), we are working with 21 churches and 105 participants who have received micro-loans to begin businesses.

Brian Gearin serves as the Regional Director of South Asia, which includes the partnerships with the Sri Lankan program called YGRO and with MEDIA (Micro-Enterprise Development In IndiA), a program of Kohlapur Church Council. Ramesh and Sheba Telore serve as Relationship Managers for MEDIA, translating training information into the region's language and training the Indian loan officers that oversee the program.

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Christian Community Development
Christian Community Development helps churches become true developers of community in their local context. We help churches live out their full identities as Kingdom-infused forces in the neighborhood: as they actively participate in the transformation of not just their congregants but their communities. In the Greater Boston area, the increased complexity of urban and suburban settings call for a deeper understanding of churches’ local context and how their particular make-up and priorities interact with it. To help the churches move forward we offer workshops, in-depth community analysis and ongoing ministry development to the types of needs expressed by the church and the community. Specifically, we offer these workshops:

  • Relief, Rehabilitation and Community Development
  • The Basis for Church Ministry for Social Responsibility in the Community
  • Creating Transformational Change in Communities through Evangelism and Social Action Methodologies

As relationships are nurtured between the community and the church, some strategic initiatives are constructed for the benefit of the church and the community. These are:

  • Detailed community analysis for the church and the community tracking socio-economic and demographic migratory patterns in the community over the last decade.
  • The community is “mapped” and “charted” according to its’ unique assets and liabilities for possible leverage opportunities
  • “An Ideal Church” comparison is prepared assessing present abilities with hoped for future results.
  • Brain-storming sessions to understand the current status of the problems that have been identified in the community, grouping them into relevant categories of affinity and then drawing a causal loop diagram that describes the inter-relationship between these categories of problems and possible sites of intervention.

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Staff

  • , Director, Community Development
  • , Micro-Enterprise Trainer, Community Development
  • , Micro-Enterprise Trainer, Community Development

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