Join a House Meeting to Serve our Neighbors!

From Our Community Organizing Representative Chuck Witschorik:

Responding to our call at CGS to Proclaim, Welcome, and Serve, we've recently committed to serving our neighbors through membership in Silicon Valley Allied for the Common Good (SVACG). As an organization dedicated to bringing together diverse communities from throughout Silicon Valley, SVACG is made up of a variety of religious and civic service groups. Striving to learn directly from members of these groups about their concrete social and economic needs, the work of SVACG involves face to face meetings, called house meetings, where people get together to share frankly about the challenges they are facing. Once these meetings are completed, a discernment process begins, where the information learned in the meetings is brought together and consensus is arrived at among the partner members of SVACG about what area(s) to focus on in response to the communities' articulated needs. For example, if a concern was heard at the house meetings about improvements needed in city park facilities for children, SVACG would then organize and work together to attend city council meetings and help advocate for favorable outcomes that would address that particular community need.

In these months of March and April, SVACG currently is involved in the house meetings phase of this process. This means that there are a number of meetings happening, not in private homes in this case, but at some of our partner institutions. During these meetings, local members of the community come together, listen to one another, and learn about social or economic challenges they each are facing. This valuable input will then become part of the process that the larger group will engage in as a way to decide together on next steps. 

In essence, our participation as a congregation in SVACG is a way we can serve our neighbors. By learning directly from those around us about their concrete needs, we will be positioned to contribute to tangible solutions through the work of advocacy that we will participate in. Please feel free to speak with any of us on the CGS SVACG team, including Rebecca, Jean Hope, Chuck, and Adolfo, with any questions you may have. We hope you will consider attending an upcoming house meeting and joining us in this work of service for and with our neighbors!

To register for a SVACG house meeting, please click here and fill out the form.

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