Chapel Community: Providing Charity And Spiritual Support To The Needy

Challenges faced by the community

The Chapel community is an interesting religious organization that provides spiritual and social support to the community. Individuals find pastoral services coupled with charity support in different levels. It services offer benefits to the members and nonmembers. Members can access the services for support in:

• Marriage processes
• Birth and death events
• Psychological needs
• Health care needs

Its reach out missions target non-members with different charity services. Charged with the responsibility of providing social justice, Chapel offers relief to hundreds affected by natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. This church also provides assistance for the vulnerable communities facing hunger, poverty, medical needs and education needs. On its top priorities are orphans, youth and widows. This plan identifies Chapel’s needs, challenges and operations. Located in Australia, the church needs a community engagement plan that upholds the community’s interests through an honest and inclusive process (Department of Infrastructure, Local Governement and Planning, 2017).

In order to facilitate its charity operations, the church receives funds from members for the humanitarian aid. Through this, it is able to meet some needs though the external community has more needs than it can manage. The group members are only available on weekends to assist with the volunteer work.

Although the community has a structure for local government support, it needs empowerment for other stakeholders including the church. Chapel’s health care charity includes immunization of the disadvantaged children from poor backgrounds. This has helped to provide basic human services to individuals who are unable to access medical care. These are children from poor backgrounds and their parents are unable to follow up on this crucial medical service. Poverty alleviation is another basic need in the community. The region is also prone to natural disasters like floods hence the church plans to set up an emergency relief center. 

Chapel has been offering weekend charity services but it now wishes to make these permanent projects for the needy. However, it faces financial limitations because it depends on the member’s support, which is not regular. If the church plans to provide regular immunization and child health care needs, it needs partners. From the church’s analysis, there is an increase in the community needs, which has created massive gaps. A collaboration between other stakeholders and the church will facilitate for successful implementation of the project (Cecil & Placido, 2012). 

Besides the financial challenges, the church also plans to fill the capacity building gaps. By empowering the local individuals basic training in counseling, it gives them the ability to manage social services in a professional manner (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2012). Faith based initiatives have a record of providing development programs, which operate on the action theory. This gives unbiased solutions to the people. Allowing the community to own this project calls for collaborating with them. Chapel group needs training for all its workers including volunteers for quality services.

The purpose of this plan is to highlight the community as a key stakeholder in the existence of the church. The church depends on people for support and its services target people. Community support adds value to it as an organization and it is a way to connect with humanity (Naples, 2014). The gap in social development is not a reserve of the government alone but it also affects non-government organizations. The plan also recommends the church as a non-partisan entity that seeks the common good. Giving it support helps to solve problems in society.

Purpose and Scope

The community as the beneficiary of the services determines the success of the projects. Engaging the community is important because it creates a good relationship between the stakeholders. This is also a chance for the church to gain greater support from the extended community. This

Community plan shows interests in the involvement of the community by stating why it is important (Wates, 2014). Local partners in the social services include other community groups, NGOs, and government systems. The church needs to align with these groups for successful implementation. 

This plan also identifies the community goals which the church seeks to meet. Having realized the existing gaps in medical care, financial and emergency relief the church seeks to fill the gap. The plan makes suggestions of the best way to provide social services as an additional service offered by the church to nonmembers. This includes services to youth groups, childcare and maternal health.

The mission of the church is to reach the wider community with the love of God. In order to make this mission felt, the organization needs to chip in with quality services to the community.

The church has members from different professional backgrounds.  Doctors, legal advisors, trainers, and businesspersons. These members are willing to use their skills in community service projects. The church has a platform through its mission outreach program for such individuals to offer services (Forbes & Zampelli, 2012). In order to ensure a regular supply of the service, it needs to form a faith based NGO as part of it work. These are the community peers focus and conversations,

Social justice needs for society and individuals. The church is an organized institution with a structural framework that can facilitate for a social service organization. In order to provide reliable services, it needs to form a faith based community service section as part of its work.

Chapel depends on stakeholders support through project funding and individual volunteers. It also makes use of volunteers. New plans will hire professionals on salary for the community services in projects and emergency relief.

Communicating the service plan needs an identification of the community needs. In this society, lack of adequate medical care is one of the cause of high mortality rates. Situated in a poor community, the church has identified lack of proper immunization among children below 2 years. Parents are not able to provide adequate medical care to the infants and government support is not sufficient. The church has been instrumental in offering medical camps on weekends at its premises. Based on the increasing needs, the church seeks to make this a long-term project through its social support center to meet the community medical needs. The expected change is a healthy community with reduced poverty levels (Ostrom, 2014).

Capacity building in the social work is crucial because the organization needs social workers within the community. This is important in identifying the needy families and providing follow-ups. The Chapel church initiative seeks to provide training for community workers in this community. This is a way of making its project successful and it facilitates for plans like youth training and counselling services. 

The community has young people in their teenage groups who need support in various ways. As the community undertakes to provide services to the community, the services target youth as part of the plan for future goals. Currently its focus is on children and orphans, plans are underway for helping youth groups for the teenage groups between 13- 18 years. Chapel’s involvement with the youth is secondary since the priority focus is on children, widows and emergency relief.

Conclusion 

Faith based organizations are among stakeholders in social development. Chapel is a small church located within a poor community. It has members from all backgrounds who have been serving in the church on occasional outreach programs. The church has now realized that the community has massive social gaps amongst the needy people. Its agenda is to meet these needs and to connect with the larger community. Its volunteer work on weekends has been effective in offering medical and emergency relief support to nonmembers of the church. However, the church now has plans to make this a permanent project under a registered NGO. In order to do this, it needs to identify the challenges it has in community service. Based on the needs within this community, it needs a plan that allows it to work with other stakeholders. Partnership is important because it facilitates for the implementation of the project in the midst of resource challenges. Chapel already has a focus but this engagement overview plan identifies the scope of participation for the church and community support. The plan differentiates Chapels’ social agenda with other stakeholder using a realistic plan within its limits. As a social organization linked to the church, it depends on volunteers and well-wisher donors.

References

Cecil, D. & Placido, N., 2012. Social Work and Church Collaboration: Assisting A Development Needs Assessment Strategies, St. Louis: North American Association of Christians in Social Work.

Department of Infrastructure, Local Governement and Planning, 2017. Draft Community Engagement Toolkit for Planning. [Online]
Available at: https://www.betterplanning.qld.gov.au/resources/planning/better-planning/draft-community-engagement-toolkit.pdf
[Accessed 9 September 2017].

Forbes, K. & Zampelli, E., 2012. Volunteerism: The Influences of Social, Religious, and Human Cap. Volunteerism, 43(2), pp. 227-253.

Minkler, M. & Wallerstein, N., 2012. Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare. Third ed. London: Rutgers University Press.

Naples, N. A., 2014. Grassroots warriors: Activist mothering, community work and the war on poverty. s.l.:Routlede.

Ostrom, E., 2014. Collective action and the evolution of social norms. Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, 6(4), pp. 235-252.

Wates, N., 2014. The community planning handbook: How people can shape their cities, towns & villages in any part of the world. s.l.:Routledge.