Programs

  • Community Empowerment Initiatives

    Faith in Indiana is working for an Indiana where everyone belongs and every family thrives. In 2021, community leaders focused their efforts on civic leadership, pandemic response, public safety, criminal justice reform, and mental health crisis response. Civic Leadership Development Faith in Indiana educated our community about the critical need for healthcare for all and promoted opportunities to expand access to healthcare. We trained 1,735 people who in turn activated 12,851 people at 57 public events and 322 meetings and training. Our supporter list grew to 26,166, and 9,526 people took action on line with us. Prophetic Voices Faith in Indiana trained hundreds of multi-racial multi-faith clergy who engaged tens of thousands of returning citizens, immigrants, and people in poverty to shape the public narrative of abundance, inclusion, and belonging thru preaching, teaching, earned media, and digital storytelling.Pandemic Response - In 2021, Faith in Indiana pivoted as the country faced a national health and race pandemic. While we shifted our methods, our goal of keeping families together did Not. We rapidly purchased Zoom accounts for organizers and top leaders, conducted wellness check-ins with 10,000 grassroots constituents, and organized emergency calls with clergy. We launched Caring Circles, in which individuals connected with ten friends online every two weeks to meet needs, build community, and plan collective action. We distributed 62,000 PPE items in the most vulnerable Black and Latinx neighborhoods.One of our goals after the pandemic hit was to reduce spread in jails and prisons by releasing people who posed no danger to their communities. Our quick action freed 1,920 people from confinement and brought overcrowded county jails below capacity, in some cases by as much as 50%. Our work in Indianapolis led to a $100 million COVID relief package which included all of our recommendations: funding to expand no-cost testing, contact tracing in communities of color, and a $25 million rental assistance program, available to every city resident, including our undocumented, uninsured, and incarcerated neighbors.Public Safety/Criminal Justice Reform - Our leaders persuaded the city to fully implement Indianapoliss Group Violence Intervention (GVI) program, which identifies the individuals most likely to be involved in gun violence, surrounds them with support, and offers them an exit from the life of crime. In August 2021, the mayor announced he would invest $115 million of American Rescue Plan Funds in GVI and other reforms Faith in Indiana has advocated for years. The city signed a three-year contract with the national experts we recommended, hired a program manager, and put fifty trained outreach workers on the streets. These outreach workers are formerly incarcerated individuals who are now in career track jobs. In 2021, we won three new seats- civilian seats- to our citys General Orders Board, which oversees our police department. We are now one of the only cities in the nation to have civilian oversight of the police, and already weve passed policies that have made material change in our families lives. Working with community members on the General Orders Board, we updated the police use-of-force policy, mandated de-escalation training, and ended foot and car chases by the police.Crisis Response - In the fall of 2021, we helped get $5.8 million allocated by the City of South Bend from American Rescue Plan funds for homelessness and mental health programs. The St. Joseph County Council also approved $2.7 million in ARP funding to support a new crisis response center that will ensure residents of the county who are experiencing mental health crises receive help, not handcuffs. In total, we helped secure over $8M for crisis response.
    Geographies
    Not indicated
    Dates
    Jan 1, 2021 – Dec 31, 2021
    Source
    990
    No causes provided
    No populations provided
    –
    $838.3K