Emmaus House Fellowship
Emmaus House is an Episcopal inner center neighborhood center which has been in existence 42 years. Before the current recession, the child poverty rate was 53% and unemployment was 37%.
Description:
Beatitudes Society Summer Fellows would participate fully in weekly staff meetings and in Sunday worship, taking leadership as desired. Initially, the Fellow would spend 4 weeks learning in greater depth about Emmaus House including:
• the variety of programs we offer during the summer (e.g. Summer Day Camp for 150, Middle School Arts Camp for 20, Walk in Help and Advocacy Center with 85 contacts/day, Senior Day Care for 25);
• meeting with those involved in community redevelopment and justice issues (e.g. People for Peoplestown Parks, The Center for Working Families, The Dirty Truth Campaign, Peoplestown Revitalization Corporation);
• having conversations with various stakeholders to assess their awareness of EH and their views of how effectively we are communicating about our work.
The next four weeks the Fellow would review and assess the effectiveness of our various forms of communication. While some of this would include reviewing current materials (newsletter, brochures, website, donor solicitation mailings, Facebook page, campus signage) a crucial component will be continuing to seek feedback from our constituents (ranging from distant suburban wealthy to the largely impoverished next door) to help us know what specifically works best for folks to learn the good news about Emmaus House. Finally, the Fellow would propose revisions, enhancements and additions to the “face” we present, propose a schedule for regular updating of our materials and draft an annual calendar for timely communications with our many publics through newsletters, solicitations, etc.
Skills Required:
1. Easy ability to relate to all sorts of people from a range of backgrounds
2. An open curiosity about situations which may be very new to the person
3. Interest in the tension between devoting resources to social change vs. individual betterment.
4. Excellent listening note-taking skills, and the ability to consolidate information from various sources.
5. Some aptitude and ability with communications, both visual, virtual, oral and written.
6. The capacity to initiate and self-schedule, to be held accountable, and to ask others for what is needed to do the work.
7. Flexibility.
8. A sense of humor.
9. Faithful tolerance.
Unique opportunities:
The Fellow would meet leaders of a variety of community change agencies, ranging from the Annie E Casey Foundation Atlanta civic site, to a neighborhood economic development board, to a new partnership working with the city of redevelop abandoned railroad lines into parks and multi-use neighborhoods. Additionally, the Fellow would spend time with people who, some for generations, have crossed lines of race and class in order to find the servant Christ in one another. The Fellow learn many of the ins and outs of running a variety of different kinds of programs. The Fellow would be invited to the neighborhood meetings and any other events held in Atlanta which would help enrich their understandings. Finally, the Fellow would be working in a faith-based center with hard-working professionals and partners, including those with some expertise in leading worship, communications, and varieties of service.
Click here to learn more about Emmaus House