Education, Training & Resources
Education & Training
At the Urban Mission, we believe that in order to break cycles of poverty, hunger and homelessness, we must first understand these cycles. We also believe that it is possible to engage these issues in meaningful, sustainable, and justice-oriented ways.
We facilitate speaking engagements, trainings, and group volunteer opportunities with the goal of promoting personal transformation and systemic change. To keep this program sustainable and to allow a range of groups, all of our education sessions can be facilitated on a donation basis. To learn more, we invite you to email: [email protected].
Speaking Engagements
We are happy to work with groups of all kinds to facilitate educational sessions that meet the needs and learning objectives of your group. To inquire about our availability, please email us at [email protected] or call: 740.282.8010.
Training Sessions
We offer trainings associated with “Bridges Out of Poverty” concepts, asset-based community development, trauma informed care practices, client choice pantry operations, housing & homeless services, mission, and transactional vs transformational ministry. We are also available to hold “poverty simulations” for groups of all sizes.
Group Volunteer Opportunities
We love to work with groups whenever we can to provide volunteer opportunities. To inquire about our availability, please contact us at [email protected] or call 740.282.8010.
Resources
Videos & Films
- Criminalization of Homelessness, Paul Boden of WRAP offers a brief history of laws that criminalize people who are homeless
- How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime, TED Talk by Nadine Burke Harris
- Wealth Inequality in America, 6 minute infographic video on perceived vs. actual wealth disparity in America
Books
- Toxic Charity: How the Church Hurts Those They Help and How to Reverse It, Robert Lupton
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond
- Out of Place: Homeless Mobilizations, Subcities, and Contested Landscapes, Talmadge Wright
- Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness, Randall Amster
- Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing, Neil Websdale
- The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice, Jeffrey Reiman & Paul Leighton
- Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement, Steven Bouma-Prediger & Brain J. Walsh
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
- No Trespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes, and Land Struggles Worldwide, Ander Corr
- The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, Don Mitchell
- Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to Urban Revolution, David Harvey
- Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories for the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets, Craig Rennebohm
- Reckoning with Homelessness, Kim Hopper
- Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance & Discipleship, Edited by Laurel Dykstra
- The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted, Obery M. Henricks, Jr.
- No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future, Joerg Rieger
- A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
- Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson
Articles
- Outreach to People Experiencing Homelessness, the best guide available to the practice of street outreach, written by the deeply experienced, thoughtful, and caring Ken Kraybill.
- No Safe Place, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty’s guide to fighting the criminalization of the marginalized along with their advocacy manual.
- Equitable Development: Promising Practices to Maximize Affordability and Minimize Displacement in Nashville’s Urban Core, a 2015 study on development, gentrification, and affordable housing by Jim Fraser and other Peabody researchers.
- The 100,000 Homes Campaign: Cost Savings Assessment Summary: Analysis by Liana Downey & Associates suggests Community Solutions’ 100,000 Homes Campaign will save the US Federal Government approximately $1.3 billion dollars a year. This equates to an average savings of $13,000 per person housed. For every year these people stay housed, the government saves another $1.3 billion.
- Where We Sleep: Cost When Homeless and Housed in Los Angeles: Underwritten through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority by the County of Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles, Corporation for Supportive Housing, The California Endowment, and the Economic Roundtable.
Online Resources
- Trauma-Informed Care Webinar Series, National Healthcare for the Homeless Council
- Outreach to People Experiencing Homelessness, a curriculum that provides a strong foundation for practicing relational street outreach, written by Ken Kraybill and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council
- Mid-Ohio Foodbank
- Feeding America