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Professional Community Engagement Report

Tampa Community Church

Introduction

Tampa Community Church is a Christian organization in the outskirts of Sydney. The church is a community-based organization that brings together members drawn mostly from a low-income community around Sydney. This church has existed for slightly over ten years, and within those years, there have been considerable efforts by the church to reach out and help the local community around the church, besides actively promoting self-help groups that assist members to slowly uplift themselves economically. In addition to this economic purpose, this community has promoted social interaction and organization, making members have a sense of belonging. This report analyses the Tampa Church community, explaining its importance to the members and those around it who happen to belong to low-income families, besides identifying the goals of this community. Further, the paper provides a detailed needs assessment of the community and the skills needed to maximise success within it.

Professional Interest in the Community

Tampa Community Church is an organization that demonstrates a number of uniqueness. While most churches focus on the religious role and nourishment within their communities, this community church uses its good deeds among its members and those within the local community to evangelize. It is a classic case of the nexus between religious organizations and the economic well-being of community members. As a professional, I would want to study the viability of the model developed by this church in terms of how it helps the members within the context of their low-income status.

Additionally, I would want to find out the specific needs of this community and the way that they have often overcome the challenges that face them. As a one-time community worker who has experience with people from low-income families and communities, I also intend to discover the role of religious organizations in helping people within the communities to receive both religious and economic satisfaction of their needs (Aimers and Walker 2011).

Tampa Community Church has used some of its outreach, donations and community service to the community members as a strategy of growth. It is essential that as a professional, I attempt to establish whether the members of this Christian Community belong here out of the need for religious belonging or the expectation of economic relief. It is important to note that this is not done in any negative sense, but as a response to the excellent spirit of collectivism that I observed and for a while, was a part of.

Why Tampa Church Community is Important

One of the benefits that Tampa Community Church has been credited with doing is the transformation of bad behaviour and immoral conduct among the youth of this community. It is worth noting that before this community church was established, the rate of crime in the local Tampa community was quite high. It was common to meet gangs of young men who were taken into drug use and abuse roaming the community and waiting for darkness to fall before they could strike. One of the strategic aims that the local church had was to bring in these youth to constructively channel their energy. They have been consistently hired by the church to perform the outreach activities like building houses, distributing food and in disaster response. Consequently, many youth have joined the ranks of the church and crime in and around Tampa has fallen significantly.

The Church has also actively promoted the protection of vulnerable groups within the community itself. It has often been noted that there are orphans, the homeless, the senile and those without family who have often been on the receiving end of the problems that afflict the community. The church has often offered them the basic needs that they require—food, clothing and shelter. The children protection centre within the church has helped rescue many children from the harsh realities of the streets, providing them with an opportunity to get an education and stand on their feet.

Moreover, the community church has promoted the economic stability of members (Soriano 1995). Knowing that they exist in a locality where the majority are low-income, the church has programmes that help members to start businesses in groups or as individuals in order to improve their economic status. This strategy has worked to keep the numbers high and increase the capability of the church to have more initiatives that improve the economic potential of the members. Besides, the church employs and pays some members from the local community to complete some of its outreach activities.

Finally, the Tampa Community Church also gives the members of this community an identity and a sense of belonging. There are more members within this community than in any other group in the Tampa area. This makes it an essential part of the community’s identity and nourishment. Through its counselling and charity programmes, the church tries to make sure that community members share experiences and help others in learning about the same.

Challenges faced by Tampa Church Community

The first and most obvious challenge that faces this community is the low income status of most of its members. Among the members of this church, over 70% can be said to be of low-income families. Within its first three years of existence, membership fell by over half as the already registered members faced the realities of a hard-economic period and had to choose between remaining as loyal members or going to work, sometimes overtime. This limitation, in terms of the economic power, has made it very difficult to fund all the programmes that the church has either planned to or continue to do. While the church can offer modest start-ups for a few members every once in a while, it cannot revolutionise the economic realities that the members face each day. Some of these would have to be mitigated at individual levels.

The other challenge that this community undergoes is the challenge of insecurity. It is true that some of the activities that the church has tried to implement has in some instances, halved he crime rates within and outside Tampa. Still, the harsh economic realities in this community force many people, especially the youth to resort to crime as their only recourse. Because of this insecurity, many potential investors in the local community are repulsed, preventing the youth from getting stable again.

The Tampa Church Community does not get any notable help from the government or other community outreach organizations. Nearly 100% of its budget is funded by the proceeds from the members and from the poultry business that the church runs. It also has a church farm. Often, the leadership of the church feels it is a priority to help starving members with what is produced from the farm and the poultry before they can be sold for profits that would eventually go to funding the outreach and economic plans. The lack of help from the organizations that target vulnerable populations has made it difficult to run and fully operate.

Goals of the Community

One of the goals of the Tampa Community Church is to provide a meaningful platform for the transformation of Tampa Youth. The majority of members in this church are the young people, most of who have been reclaimed from the harsh conditions in Tampa. A conversation with one of the leaders of the church led me to the conclusion that the church considers the young people a valuable asset in their mission. She cited the strength to evangelize, to consistently send help and voluntarily work outside the church community to bring more people to the church. This is why their transformation is critical.

The church community also aims at providing their members with a safe place where they can feel a sense of belonging, equality and respect. Most of the members of this church are all too familiar with the inequality in and around their society. As such, they need a place where they can periodically feel relief from the pressures of work and endless feud. Tampa Community Church ensures that these people receive the counselling and relief they need (Mendes and Binns 2013). Through their teachings, they foster feelings of respect

Balancing religion and economics is also a goal of Tampa Church. In a conversation with one of the leaders, I was informed that the Tampa Community Church cannot afford to operate like most mainstream churches. It had to think of starting economic projects and finding members what they could do to earn something from within or outside the church. It is for this reason that they started businesses for some members. “The delicate balance between economics and prayer is what has kept the gates of Tampa church open,” he said.

Community Needs

One of the needs of this community is the need for provision of economic opportunities for members. I have ranked this as the top-most need even while Tampa remains a church that needs religious priorities. I have based this needs assessment on the premise that before the church thought of ways to economically lift its members, it almost went empty. Dawes and Beckers (1999) aver that finding what these members can do to earn money and support both themselves and the church is a top priority (p. 45).

Secondly, the Community Church needs outside support especially from organizations that target vulnerable groups. One of the things the church does is to support orphans, the old and the homeless. In this regard, their aims and activities are no different from other organizations that work with the government or private enterprises to improve the conditions of such groups. These groups need both financial and basic need support. The church cannot afford most of these on its own. They have to be helped to finish the work that they have already begun

The community also needs the services of professional counsellors. In its goal to offer a safe refuge for many Tampa locals, there always arises the need for professional counselling. Many members often face the realities and pressures accompanied by low-income status. Without the help of professional counselling groups and individuals, it is impossible to offer some of these members the message they need to hear and the interventions they ought to employ (Royse 2009).

Prioritizing the Needs

• Providing members with a source of income would help in increasing participation and contribution to church activities
• Improving Counselling activities will help members adjust to realities of low-income status
• Community Outreach will help the church to grow and create a sense of belonging

Skills Needed to Maximise Success in Chosen Community

One of the skills I would need to maximise success within this community is collaboration and teamwork (Lynn 2008). The achievements that Tampa community has made are as a result of the collaboration that it has continued to have among its members. As a member of this team, I would work more on achieving even greater collaboration and teamwork.

I would also need leadership and motivation. Most of the members of Tampa community church are people who have survived scares, hardships and realities that have left many of them dejected and hopeless. To get these people back on track, it would need motivation and great leadership skills. For this reason, making them believe in themselves again would be a top priority.

In addition, I would need good decision-making skills to make Tampa community church thrive. These decisions associated with the kind of projects and initiatives that Tampa does would be important in keeping the members active and the church activities going. Ultimately, it is the good decision-making skills that would help keep Tampa united, and with a singular purpose.

Conclusion

As discussed above, Tampa Community Church is a community that exists to nourish its members spiritually and also uplift them economically. It is a community that aims to transform the community behaviour, especially of the youth, through constructive activities and behaviour change. Despite these noble goals, the community is faced with various challenges that boarder on income and other support from outside institutions. The Christian community will continue providing economic support besides giving the members an opportunity to belong and unwind.