What do all these groups have in common?
Arkansas Rice Depot, Arkansas Foodbank Network, Americorps, Catholic Charities,  Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,  Congregation of the Mission, Daughters of Charity, FEMA, Ladies of Charity, VOAD, UMCOR,  Presbyterian Church, Vincent dePaul Society, United Methodist Church, Arkansas Crisis Response Team, and the Adventist Disaster Response.

They are all responding to a disaster – the same disaster – the Holy Thursday tornadoes in Arkansas. The really unique thing about the response is that these secular, religious, civic and Vincentian Family groups are coordinating their response and working together with the help of a “Salt and Life” grant underwritten by the Congregation of the Mission to foster systemic change in how parish social ministries respond to disasters.

Parish Teams from across Arkansas rushed to respond to the victims of the Holy Thursday tornadoes in Mena and DeQueen. The local parish, St. Agnes, was at the epicenter of the destroyed section of Mena but suffered only minor damage when the basement windows imploded, scattering glass onto the makeshift altar and on the people who had taken refuge as the storm threatened.

That parish sheltered and fed people and then became the location for a muti-denomination and agency “one-stop” center which brought resources and information needed for early recovery activities to victims on Easter Monday. They now host the FEMA command center as well as continue distribution and help coordinate the ongoing response with the assistance of other parish’s response teams.

This kind of response is possible in major part because of the systemic change approach to parish social ministry coordinated by Catholic Charities of Arkansas, and funded by the Congregation of the Mission. Known as the “Salt and Light” program, this approach provides formation in theological reflection, social analysis, systems planning, and program design in a pastoral cycle context to parishes so that they can develop and sustain ministries in their local parish communities.

St. Vincent dePaul Society Members participate in several parish teams. Their experience in assisting the poor has ben valuable in this coordinated response. The Ladies of Charity, newly formed in Arkansas in 2008, tapped in to the desire of many young women to “do something real in a Gospel response. They have chosento participate in the Salt and Light program trainings in order to deepen and expand their parish and program activities.

The bumper crop of natural disasters in Arkansas in 2008 provided a dramatic step in parishes’ awareness that they could provide effective services and leadership through long-term disaster recovery activities. Catholic Charities had trained teams to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, a program that closed just as the Systemic Change grant was received. Providentially, Jamie Deere, the chief case manager from that program became the Director of Parish Social Ministry. Parish teams were rapidly added and the training revamped to care for people in their communities through service coordination and assistance funded by Catholic Charities of Arkansas’ Disaster fund. Success is empowering, and their success has made parish teams anxious to learn more about how to address the systems of poverty which they have identified and struggled with in their disaster recovery work.

The immediate result has been effective disaster response and the leadership in their community for long term disaster recovery. To that end, additional funding has been received to hire a bilingual case manager for Disaster Response.

The systemic change goal is to move from a project-based approach to ministries into sustainable Gospel based ministries that respond to the ongoing and emerging needs of people in their communities.  To that end, a curriculum of formation workshops begins in April and will be following by mentoring, support networks, and assistance in the development and expansion of ministries selected by parishes and clusters of parishes.

God works in mysterious ways. The chaos of disaster has assisted the emergence of grass-roots response and the awakening of missionaries for systemic change.

For further information on response to this particular disaster, go to the website of the Diocese of Little Rock, www.dolr.org.