If you went on our Drive Tour, you heard Chris De Leon talking about the YoVille Community Garden in Southwest Fresno. Chris joins the pod to chat more in depth about the current state of food insecurity in the agricultural capital of America, what kind of dignity we instill in each other and ourselves when we grow our own food, and why the existence of community gardens mean we all thrive.
Andrew and Grace are joined on the podcast by Carlos Huerta. Carlos is the Executive Director of the Center for Community Transformation at Fresno Pacific University. The three talk about the economic realities of the Central Valley, the roadblocks that exist for people to get jobs that meet their needs, and the creative options that exist for our community, our churches, and our organizations. Carlos asks the question, what is the faith community’s responsibility to spark innovation in the business sector?
On this episode in our Drive Tour Series, Andrew and Grace sit down with Marcel Woodruff. On Marcel’s part of the Drive Tour, he gives us amazing stories of community members that are dreaming of a healthier thriving in Southwest Fresno. Marcel talks on this episode about the why behind that, what drives him as a community organizer and mentor, and how everyone can start thinking about the neighborhoods that your city has left behind.
In our second series on What’s Good In the Neighborhood, we are slowing down and interviewing some of the amazing people who are featured on our new and improved Drive Tour! If you don’t know what the Drive Tour is, how you can take it, or what you’ll be learning about, this episode with our very own Gabrielle Piceno will answer all your questions! To download the app and take the tour, visit VoiceMap HERE.
Andrew and Grace dive into conversation with Kim Contreras, a long-time presence in the urban missions world here in Fresno, CA. In this episode, they discuss working and living missionally in concentrated poverty, what it takes to do it long term, and how to do it without causing harm.
During Kim’s years in Fresno, it has been a deep honor to learn about the city and be changed by that experience through the Lord and her neighbors and friends in the Lowell and Hidalgo communities. As a Trauma Healing Specialist, Kim focuses on equipping the church and community to understand trauma and experience their own healing journey, along with an invitation to participate in outreach to survivors of human trafficking. Two of the accessible tools she utilizes are the Clear-Thinking Solutions method and Trauma Healing Institute healing groups. She can be found with her husband Manuel and their two children, Ian (18) and Sophia (13) sharing an Anaconda burrito from Yareli’s, enjoying good coffee on the steps with their dog Shadow, and playing with their cats, Fuego, Sombra, and Rosa.
provider: youtube
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What would it look like to view the people and places around us as gifts, not negatives? In this episode, Andrew and Grace sit down with Joe White, pastor of Neighborhood Church in the historic Jackson Neighborhood of Fresno, CA. Joe is a long time advocate of be a church with the neighborhood, not a church to or for it. Joe reminds us that Jesus is the absolute best news we can give, and the He himself cares about people and places and the thriving of them both.
provider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rntKGC0sOok&list=PLk-cpzaG47hkL9lCuomNG39lSMYAgG-Z8&index=2&t=3s
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God longs for shalom, and He’s asking us to work towards shalom in our spaces. Every Neighborhood Partnership has adopted the language and frameworks of Christian Community Development to pursue God’s shalom! CCD ideas act as the tide beneath the waves of our work here at Every Neighborhood Partnership. Andrew and Grace sit down with Dina Gonzalez-Pina, who has been a member of the board of the Christian Community Development Association and is currently the director of the Mennonite Central Committee on the West Coast. Dina helps us unpack the eight pillars of CCD philosophy and Andrew and Grace tie it back contextually to our work here at ENP.
“Most of us are more tired than we know at the soul level. We are teetering on the brink of dangerous exhaustion, and we cannot do anything else until we have gotten some rest…we can’t really engage [any spiritual disciplines] until solitude becomes a place of rest for us rather than another place for human striving and hard work.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation
If you email me from Thursday, June 15th till Monday, August 21st, you will get an away message.
I am on a sabbatical.
What the heck is a sabbatical?
Mary Avigliano knew when she grew up, she wanted to help others. As a child, Mary developed relationships with volunteers of local urban ministry organizations who left a life-long impact on her and her family.
“If it weren’t for a group of people who were passionate about urban ministry knocking on my family’s door when I was a kid, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
~Mary Avigliano
In 2008, when Mary was a recent college graduate with a little extra free time, she became one of Every Neighborhood Partnership’s first volunteers.
