In the first full week of June 2023, Faith and Money Network hosted a trip with Hope Credit Union. The purpose of this trip was to show Hope investors firsthand the impact that their deposits are making in the Deep South, particularly for low-income and rural Black families. This is a reflection from participant Sara Loving, who runs a project centered around ethical banking practices called [Read More …]
Learning from repairers of the breach
A week ago, as I write this, we visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s also known as the "Lynching Memorial," which gives a clearer idea of the emotional impact of time spent there. The main part of the memorial is a covered square area surrounding an open courtyard. Walking through the space, you are surrounded by hundreds of six-foot-long steel [Read More …]
Photo Album: 2023 Deep South Investors Tour
In June 2023, Faith and Money Network took a handful of current and prospective investors with Hope Credit Union on a Trip of Perspective through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. Participants saw firsthand how Hope Credit Union is working to build wealth for Black Americans in a historically and currently underserved and underbanked region of the United States. The trip also took the group [Read More …]
Rich in culture: Jess Mullins Fullen on intersectional community organizing in Southern Appalachia
Faith and Money Network Trips of Perspective have taken members to countries and communities with vibrant cultures, including Haiti, India, and Bosnia. In recent years, the network has focused on domestic trips, visiting Wise County, Virginia originally in 2011 and since taking groups to experience Southern Appalachia nearly a dozen times. Ahead of our fall 2023 trip to visit our friends [Read More …]
2023 Trip of Perspective to Central Appalachia
Join Mike Little and others from the Faith and Money Network on a Trip of Perspective to Central Appalachia this fall (Oct. 19-22) to Wise County, Va. to learn about the devastating effects of mountaintop removal and how local leaders are organizing for environmental and economic justice. We'll spend two days listening and building relationships with friends from Southern Appalachian Mountain [Read More …]
Trip of Perspective: Deep South Investors Tour
Join Mike Little and others from the Faith and Money Network on the Deep South Investors Tour this summer (June 5-10), traveling through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama to build relationships and make connections between our country's legacy of racial inequity and the ways that anti-Blackness persists today in major systems from home ownership to education to banking. This Trip of Perspective [Read More …]
A community organizing hub advocates for health, healing and humanity in southern Appalachia
I had factored in human greed and destruction, but I had not factored in the human goodness and systemic creativity that we met throughout the trip. I had not anticipated hope. “Mountaintop removal coal mining? My heart can’t take it.” That thought kept me from going to Wise County, VA, with Faith and Money Network’s Trip of Perspective for several years. In part, I was right. [Read More …]
Rooted in community, place and faith: An interview with the editors of Geez magazine
Founded in 2005, Geez magazine is a publication about social justice, art, and activism. It proudly claims that it’s "for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable." Started by Aiden Enns in Winnipeg, the magazine has been run since 2018 by a staff based in Detroit, who embrace the fierce independence of the magazine’s mission and are deeply devoted to living [Read More …]
Local culture comes alive on a Trip of Perspective to the Mountain Empire
The members of SAMS we met were welcoming and dynamic — and also very patient in disabusing us of some ideas we may have had about the challenges of living and working in coal country. Our merry band of explorers arrived in Big Stone Gap, Virginia on October 20, 2022. Some of us had been to this far southwestern region of Virginia before and had looked forward to meeting friends from prior [Read More …]
New Household Practices Covenant Groups begin in January 2023
Why should economics be a matter of faith and practice for Christians? How can we privilege community over capital in our daily lives? What would it look like to build Sabbath economics into our personal giving, earning, banking, and investing? Dig into these questions and more when you join Faith and Money Network leaders in 2023 for an eight-month commitment to exploring the seven principles [Read More …]