Daily Lobo new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
friday October 17, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 43
Church provides sanctuary for homeless community By Matt Reisen This story is the first in a weekly series. One University-area church is attempting to stem the stigma of homelessness by breaking down barriers. The Central United Methodist Church holds a service every Sunday called Community of Hope that invites everyone to worship together. Associate pastor Greg Henneman said when the program began; its aim was to break through the stigma and generalization set upon a majority of the homeless population. “If you’re not familiar with a group of people, it’s easy to be uncomfortable or feel threatened. That’s part of why we’re trying to build relationships and build communities, for those barriers to come down,” Henneman said. “Our whole motivation for starting it was to bring people together.” The program, which began three years ago, serves about 60 to 80 people every Sunday, almost doubling in size since its infancy, Henneman said. All monetary support for Community of Hope comes from the congregation itself and surrounding businesses that lend a hand. Panera donates bread every week and Cheba Hut provides around 50 sandwiches to the congregation twice a month, he said. The lunch is served as a balanced meal with health in mind; for instance, last Sunday’s menu included pork chops, watermelon, asparagus, bread and a sugar cookie to top it all off. The church knows how hard life is for those who attend and that dealing with those conditions can be much more difficult with a bad or unbalanced diet, he said. It’s not just about the meal, volunteers from the congregation and the homeless community are given the
Kanan Mammadli / Daily Lobo
A homeless man is attended to by emergency response providers at a bus stop near the corner of Central Avenue and Yale Boulevard on Thursday. The Central United Methodist Church holds a service every Sunday called Community of Hope, which aims to break through the stigma and generalization set upon a majority of the homeless population.
opportunity to play music and sing. “It’s not only a safe place where you can get a meal, it’s a safe place where you can speak, you can be heard. People who are homeless are living in a survival mode, so they are constantly asking questions of; is this safe? Do I trust this?” he said.
“When you serve next to somebody you realize, this is a person just like me and the differences melt away pretty quickly.” To further elicit that sense of community and solidarity, those who serve and help out are not only congregation volunteers but also home-
less themselves, he said. One of those volunteers, Mary – who requested to be identified by her middle name – attends and serves at Community of Hope to help others like her, she said. “I come here because I like working with people on the street.
I care about what they need and mainly, that they’re being treated right,” she said. “The people that help out here and most of the volunteers, they treat the people with respect
see
Homeless page 2
Student program strives for positive social influence By Sayyed Shah
UNM’s International Business Students Global is empowering students to make meaningful contributions in emerging economies by sending them to developing countries where organizations are making positive social impacts. IBSG officials desire to build robust relationships with businesses throughout the world, each in emerging economies, so that UNM will have developed strong and lasting relationships to guide cutting edge scholarship on the economies of the future, Audriana Stark, program manager of IBSG’s Ivan Karp Emerging Economies Program said. “Our 10-year goal is to have the most robust archive of student-led international consulting projects in the Western United States, oriented specifically to understanding how to build business relationships with economies that will dominate in the 21st century,” she said. She said through this program, IBSG has developed relationships with numerous organizations in emerging economies. Last summer, two UNM students, Patrick Hibbard and Victoria Pryor, participated in the IKEEP program and visited Guatemala and Ecuador. The experience has been viewed as life changing by the students. Hibbard, an MBA student
graduating this December with dual concentrations in policy & planning and international management, was able to obtain an internship with the Social Entrepreneur Corps and assisted in consulting efforts in Guatemala last summer. “Our primary task was to consult with Solucìones Comunitarias. This organization provides high-impact items to communities through the entrepreneurial method: they set up individuals in communities to sell the products (water filters, reading glasses, fuel-efficient stoves, etc.) and support their activities,” Hibbard said. He worked in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, which is mainly indigenous; peopled by varied tribes collectively known as Mayan to non-Guatemalans, he said. “I stayed in home stays, living with Guatemalan families – was essentially Guatemalan while I lived there – and gained a depth of experience not seen from hotel balconies. What I learned about these people is that they have a strong sense of family and community,” Hibbard said. He said living in Guatemala was one of the great learning experiences of his life. “The families and individuals I got to live and work with in Guatemala were the survivors of a long, brutal civil war and had lived through events many times worse than anything I could even
imagine,” Hibbard said. These same people greeted our efforts with open arms, did their best to assist their countrymen, and maintained a substantially positive attitude, he said. Everything he does in the future will be better because of the lessons learned during his stay in Guatemala, Hibbard said. “Such hope and optimism, following such tragedy, taught me the value of perseverance and how to move forward, eyes up and forward, even in the face of overwhelming adversity,” he said. Stark said they have started recruiting for the 2014-2015 cohort of students “who want to make differences in their lives and the lives of others around the world.” “We are building relationships that make UNM and New Mexico globally relevant. Through these relationships, our students are able to share knowledge from UNM to emerging economies and from emerging economies back to UNM and the Albuquerque community,” she said. The project has been funded by Anderson School of Management, GPSA, ASUNM and student self-generated funding. Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistantnews@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
students’ travel history Kenya
Ecuador
2011 - three students
2014 - one student
Brazil
Guatemala
2012 - six students
2013 - one student 2014 - one student
Selection Criteria To apply for the Ivan Karp Emerging Economies Program: • Students must be a member of the International Business Students Global. • Students must be in good academic standing (3.2 GPA for undergraduates and 3.5 for graduate students). • Students should have an interest in economic development and/or international management and/or entrepreneurial studies • Students should have a desire to engage the world in a meaningful way. • Students must commit to contribute intellectually to research and
scholarship regarding global issues. To apply go to ibsg.unm.edu. Deadline is Nov. 2