Creating Change Starts With One Step
Each year, LSA takes a look at a few things that have direct and near-term impact on social ministry organizations and that seem to be gaining the greatest momentum as viewed from a national perch. Here are this year's issues, in summary, with some links for ways you can create change in your own organization, neighborhood, or family.
Economic Issues Color Both the Past and the Future
The economic downturn in the United States is having immediate consequences for many Lutheran social ministry organizations.
- There are more people with greater needs: people who have lost jobs; people whose homes are in foreclosure; people for whom increasing transportation costs tip the balance of a tenuous family budget; and people for whom rising costs and shrinking incomes drive them to despair, or to violence, or to hunger, or to forego medical care, or to the street, or to the illegal economy.
- At the same time, sources of revenue for many Lutheran social ministry organizations are shrinking. State and local governments are faced with budget shortfalls as their economies contract. The federal government struggles to pay for an expensive war, a national debt over $9 trillion, and rising demands on domestic programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The net effect is that there is less money available to meet the growing problems. At the same time many SMOs find that economic anxiety causes the donors and foundations, on which they depend, to be more cautious. Social enterprise, venture philanthropy and creative solutions are experiencing a thinner atmosphere in which to flourish.
What can you do?
Participation and Professionalism Contend With One Another
Everyone's opinion can be heard, and everyone's opinion counts. Social networking technology and social media offer opportunities for participative innovation, collective knowledge and broad access to audiences. 120,000 new blogs are created every day. Myspace has over 200 million registered users and accounts for five percent of all internet visits, while Facebook is the sixth most trafficked site in the U.S. Wikipedia-style solutions are emerging in new arenas – Ohmynews is a South Korean online newspaper written by 60,000 citizen reporters. People can invent themselves in new ways on the electronic stage.
The "wisdom of crowds" and of individuals is finding increasing voice, especially as new tools offer expanded opportunities for expression. This trend can contend directly with professional disciplines, formal institutions and organizations, quality and accuracy, economies of scale, outcomes measurement and evidence-based decision making. It may well be that each has something to learn from the other. Anyone can make the world a better place.
What can you do?
Demographics Deliver Challenge and Opportunity
What do we know about the people of the United States?
- More than one in 100 Americans is currently in jail or prison
- The number of people in poverty is rising
- Real wages, housing wages and living wages are increasingly divergent
- Generation Y is predicted to migrate heavily out of the U.S. to other countries
- One in three people in Generation Y belongs to a minority
- Immigration is a contentious issue in an increasing number of communities
- Employers report that the existing workforce does not have needed skills
- Retirement is being redefined, exacerbated by economic recession
- The number of disabled Americans is likely to double to 24 million over the next 20 years
- About 40% of new homes in California are behind walls in gated buildings or communities
Lutheran social ministry is about people. It is about people at points in their lives when they need support, encouragement, treatment, choices, opportunities, care, skills or respect. It is about people who provide those things at points in their lives when they are able to help.
What can you do?
- Tell us what would make your life better.
- Tell us what you've done to make your community better.
