Description
Hearts of Stars (HOS), a faith-based non for profit organization whose main purpose is to begin addressing our community social issues by working with the individual who faces the barriers daily and not just listening to their story but understanding their stories, so that they have access to effective resources. HOS mission is to address the whole person taking each issue and working with the greatest priority first by understanding why the individual is not able to meet his or her needs by working with mind, body, and spirit.
- Mind- Preparing the individual for changing of the current poverty mindset, through a faith training core in regimental treatment awareness course to allow the individual to see how a negative impact of self may control one’s current situation
- Body- Trainings and educating individuals and identifying what generational poverty is and how it may have crushed one’s dreams or success. Teach the individual or family how familiar environments may have a negative impact on the current situation and techniques of how to overcome generational poverty. Introduce the body on how to refocus and learn more about healthy lifestyle
- Spirit- A well trained mind has a positive and successful outcome, "If I have don’t have a strong mind I will not have a strong spirit." Through retraining and re-teaching people that they can be successful despite any hardship will help restore a strong spirit. Therefore saying, people should certainly be recognized by their spirit.
What will make HOS different from other agencies already in existence is that we are not here to fix their problem or direct the individual on what they need to do to become self-sufficient. This will be an agenda free workshop of 16 paid sessions to the investigator . The investigators are the people in the community that face poverty how they see it on a daily basis. They are the source of vital information about poverty in their communities. They have the ability to inform the community about the difficulties that people in poverty experience as they make transition out of poverty. GA is based on the principle that people in poverty are problem solvers, that they will contribute to solutions at the institutional and community levels construct. The Getting Ahead (GA) Initiative which offers unique features:
(Devol, P. E. 2013 p9)
- Getting Ahead is agenda-free Investigators make their own arguments for change
- Getting Ahead facilitates learning. GA is based upon concepts of co-investigation, where investigators and the facilitator learn together
- About half of the learning in Getting Ahead comes from the content and half from the discussion
- Getting Ahead has two story lines; the personal story and the community story.
The GA training will take place 6 times per year. Each session will consist of 6 to 12 investigators and run for eight weeks two sessions per week. The investigators will be paid $25 via gift card for every session they attend. Any missed sessions will have to be made up before next group meeting; this is to ensure everyone is at the same level and working on their mental model in unison. The group will have three facilitators who will be responsible providing transportation, food, childcare, funders, and sponsors, materials and supplies needed. The facilitator will be guiding the investigators using modules from the Getting Ahead in a just getting by world work book. The facilitators will be working from the Getting Ahead in a just getting by world facilitators notes.
At the end of the eight weeks the investigators will graduate from the program and if the participants would like to continue working on their goals they will have opportunities to do so with those partnerships that have sponsored and partner with HOS. We encourage the individual to be volunteers for the next incoming class. If someone is interested they are asked to co-facilitate the next class. If they chose to co-facilitate they will continue to get paid for each session they attend.
How the GA process works:
- participants will be addressing relevant economic class issues and will use life itself as the main context for education
- Mental models will be applied so investigators can have a say to the body of knowledge and learn quickly, without overreliance on the formal register of language
- Key concepts of GA are sequenced and reinforced throughout the 10 modules
- The personal "My Life Now Mental Model" intellectualizes the discrepancy between what life is like now and what life could be.
The facilitator the person who oversees the program will have:
- The ability to make connections to others, particularly people from poverty
- Can translate from the formal register to casual register
- Can facilitate another person’s self-discovery
- Can be empathetic without being "taken in"
- Ability to work with co-facilitator who was a previous workshop participant
- Ability to work effectively even though from a the dominant culture
Hearts of Stars in addition to providing the GA- training will offer skill trainings for those who are interested. Skill training will be offered in areas of sewing, learning how to do basic repairs to your residence, sewing, health concerns and assessments, education (k-12) learning about growing gardens and having the opportunity to grow your own garden, healthy lifestyles training, healthy cooking training and more. HOS agency do understand that skill training is very important; however to move out of current situation to improvement one must understand and learn about their culture and understand what poverty is and how barriers prohibit them from moving forward. The middle class and wealthy cannot fix poverty as they understand and know it. The person who deals with it daily has the solution. The middle class and wealthy cannot direct and tell a person "do these skills and poverty will end". The person who faces obstacles better understand their struggle and when struggling individuals come together to resolve issues that has a negative impact on their lives and have the resources needed to move forward; they move and move with confidence and power; not only improving self but having a positive impact on the entire community.
In order to join HOS and become involved in GA model to move towards a successful, self-sufficient outcome in the city of Rochester Monroe County New York the requirements are
- Believe in a higher power
- Voluntarily want to be in the program
- Any individual or family at least 16 years of age
- Any individual 16 years of age or older wanting change/life improvement
- Low-income or recently facing hardship
- Drug free for at least one year
- Wanting to further education
- Seeking assistance for pregnancy
- Live in Rochester Monroe County New York
- Want to give back to the community
*If an individual is in current drug rehabilitation or seeking assistance for a drug rehabilitation center he/she is always welcome to HOS. To become involved in the GA group the individual must be one year drug free.
