Legislature honors charitable ministry
ST. ANTHONY: Group leads effort to act on social problems.

By S. JANE SZABO
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: October 9, 2004)

The St. Anthony Parish Community Organizing Ministry was recently commended with a citation from the Alaska Legislature. The ministry extends the Christian principle of charity beyond the walls of the church.

The ministry's main purpose is to provide a method for positive change. It is a grass-roots effort dedicated to building relationships and encouraging people to address social problems as a community. Since the group's town hall meeting last February, other churches have begun work reflecting its philosophy and success.

"We don't dictate what needs to be done," said the Rev. Fred Bugarin, the church's priest. "Our role is empowering the people so they can look at their own issues and find ways of addressing them."

With a background in social justice, the priest honed this idea working with remote village churches in the Philippines from 1987 to 1996. There, the life of the church is integrated into society, said Bugarin, who was born in the Philippines but moved to Anchorage at age 14. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Anchorage in 1975, and assigned from Kodiak to St. Anthony in March 2003.

Already, Alaska clergy had been talking about community organizing. Archbishop Roger Schwietz reinforced the discussion by sponsoring presentations by a national organization called the Pacific Institute for Community Organization. A tie with the institute was established, forming the Anchorage Interdenominational Sponsoring Committee, whose name recently changed to Faith and Action -- Congregations Together; it's led by the Rev. Michael Keys of Central Lutheran Church.

The members are Alaska Native Lutheran Church, Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, Catholic Native Ministry, Central Lutheran Church, First CME Church (Christian Methodist Episcopal), Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Good Shepherd Baptist Church, Holy Cross Catholic Church, Holy Family Cathedral, Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, St. Mark Lutheran Church and St. Anthony Catholic Church.

St. Anthony led the way with a major neighborhood organizing project centered on relationship building and community empowerment. Church members visited their neighbors to have one-on-one discussions about their dreams and concerns. The idea was to open up the channels of communication.

"Several issues surfaced," said Donna Gum, pastoral associate and a member of the St. Anthony ministry committee. Crime was the biggest concern, and others included health care costs, school issues and a need for activities for youths.

After the neighborhood visits with about 250 families, St. Anthony hosted a town-hall-style meeting in February. A crowd of more than 450 gathered, coming from surrounding neighborhoods including Russian Jack, Mountain View, Wonder Park, Airport Heights, College Gate and College Village. Assembly members and public service officials also attended.

The talk turned to crime again. Brainstorming led to the idea for a type of community policing based on relationship building, problem solving, citizen involvement and shared ownership of issues and solutions. It is not the same as the community patrol concept of community policing that has been used in some areas of town, because it centers more on solving problems before they arise.

The St. Anthony Parish Community Organizing Ministry continues to work toward this model. Members attended public meetings, met with the Anchorage Police Department, the mayor and others. The group worked with Assemblymen Brian Whittle and Allan Tesche during the past six months, as well as Timothy Burgess, U.S. attorney.

In spring, the group hosted another meeting -- to addressneighborhood safety in the Russian Jack area. In July, the ministry teamed up with the Mountain View Community Council for a meeting regarding a federal Weed and Seed Grant, another program geared toward empowering community members to solve neighborhood problems.

Gum said the goal is to bring people together to stimulate action -- not to influence decisions one way or another but to make sure that communication hurdles don't destroy opportunities for positive change.

"Our thing isn't so much to go out and do projects as it is to get the awareness together so that people can go out and do it," she said, adding that issues come and go but human interaction is a constant. "The biggest thing we continue to do is to meet with people, find out what their hopes, concerns, fears and desires are, and to try to create the means for them to deal with it.

"That's the core of it. That's the real part."

Daily News reporter S. Jane Szabo can be reached at jszabo@adn.com.

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