MISSION VISION & VALUES
FIGHT POVERTY. UNLEASH POSSIBILITY.
MISSION
Neighborhood exists to abolish economic, relational, and spiritual poverty through an integrated community of training and support.
VISION
We want all those living in areas of concentrated poverty throughout Hampton Roads to have the opportunity to build a living in a meaningful career and a life in a flourishing community.
IMPACT
To ensure the income of every family in Hampton Roads surpasses the cost of living in our lifetime.
3 MISSION, VISION & VALUES
VALUES
PATHWAYS from POVERTY to POSSIBILITY
Our frame of understanding for the vision we describe is a journey: from the scarcity, isolation, and consumerism of the world we know into a new world of abundance, belonging, and lasting value. We see this journey taking place along three pathways, each one marked by an interconnection of TRANSFORMATION, VALUES, and PRACTICES
PATHWAY 1
SCARCITY
SURVIVING
CELEBRATION & LAMENT
ABUNDANCE
THRIVING
MISSION, VISION & VALUES
CORE VALUE
The narrative of the world is “There is never enough, we can’t change it, so let’s just survive as best we can.” A belief in ABUNDANCE allows us to say, “We give to one another in love, which begins to change the world, and now there is more than enough.” This takes shape through the redistribution of:
Resources
Rather than hoard our economic, relational, and spiritual wealth, we share intentionally with those who lack.
Risk Responsibility
Individuals are not asked to begin a transformation at the cost of their own safety and wellbeing, but embark on a shared journey to a new life.
The flourishing of the most marginalized and powerless is the primary concern of the whole community; they are not told to “make it” alone.
PRACTICES
Part of the difficulty we face in attempting to build solidarity among disconnected individuals in our community is that we often live disintegrated lives. One of the ways to reclaim wholeness is to recognize and rejoice when we see our desired transformations taking place, and to grieve when they are absent. By engaging in collective CELEBRATION and LAMENT we are making a statement about the world we want to create and offering a response that includes both body and soul.
PATHWAY 2
CORE VALUE
We believe that individual well-being and flourishing is reconstructed through the well-being and flourishing of the whole COMMUNITY. We shift the focus from autonomous individuals reaching their own personal apex towards a vision for a connected and interdependent community that moves in covenant with a belief in abundance. To maintain a collective life we commit to the practices of:
Place
We lay deep roots in the places we work and live and play, contributing to its health and vitality, not extracting resources for ourselves.
We intentionally live next to and alongside the marginalized, and build relationships across lines of race and class.
ISOLATED
INDIVIDUALISM
COMMUNITY
HEALING & JUSTICE
PRACTICES
Re-imagination of our neighborhoods ends in full JUSTICE, mercy, and HEALING for each neighbor, with a unique and intentional focus on those experiencing economic, relational, and spiritual poverty. Establishment of a truly common good requires those with all forms of privilege to locate and trace the systems of power that serve as the source of that privilege, and intentionally confront those structures on behalf of others.
PATHWAY 3
PRACTICES
A professional corporate culture requires leaders to manage operations from the top down with an eye towards peak efficiency and supreme confidence in their own abilities. However, our commitment is to a posture of continual listening, learning, and growth that chooses the hope of our collective POSSIBILITY over certain productivity. Further, we acknowledge our brokenness and practice forgiveness as an expression of covenant love through IMPERFECTION in a broken world.
POSSIBILITY & IMPERFECTION
COVENANT
CONTRACTS
CORE VALUE
A contract defines what we intend to do for each other, while a COVENANT is a promise of who we intend to be with one another. All of our engagement with our neighbors is grounded in the promise, the vow, of spending our whole selves in love, without considering our actions as closed transactions. It is a posture of reciprocity, a mutual giving and receiving between all those involved, so that our sacrifices for one another uphold and enact our promise to relate first in love. While a contract may speak of community health, a covenant seeks community healing - a collective promise to be neighbors in a new way that establishes our dependence upon one another.
BYSTANDER
NEIGHBORHOOD 2020. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.