Project Peace East Bay
Project Peace East Bay has been active in Berkeley and Oakland since 2006, and was officially incorporated as a 501(c)3 California nonprofit in December 2007. Project Peace was formed in response to two observed East Bay trends:
* Overwhelmed and under-resourced Social Service Providers who are not able to tap into the social and economic resources of local faith based organizations.
* Faith based organizations that want to serve their local communities but lack either the organization or the bandwidth to do so.
Project Peace hopes is organized around four key activities:
* We Partner with Social Service Providers and Agencies in an effort to help them enumerate and identify specific needs that can be met by mobilizing volunteers.
* We help build Awareness through our website and by sponsoring banquets, volunteer fairs, and service projects.
* We build relationships with like-hearted Faith based organizations in an effort to help them best broker their resources (human and financial) with the needs of Social Service Providers and agencies.
* We Train volunteers by preparing them to put compassion into action and by helping them to evaluate their experiences.
Partners:
In selecting social service providers and agencies with whom to partner, Project Peace focuses on the following four areas:
* Compassion: Restoring the under-served including the homeless, single parent families, and the elderly.
* Community: Relieving our community service agencies and schools from the burden of meeting great need with limited resource.
* Conservation: Reclaiming the beauty of our Earth through conservation and sustainable living.
* Culture: Redeeming our experiences with goodness, beauty, and truth by championing the work of indigenous artists as well as helping people discover their career path and calling.
Our Mission:
Project Peace connects the resources of local faith based organizations with the needs of social service providers and agencies in Berkeley, Oakland, and surrounding areas.
Our Vision:
Project Peace hopes to cultivate a merciful and just society by creating a network of faith based organizations and social service providers working together to better our local East Bay communities and cities.
"He has showed you…what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."– Micah 6:8
We live in a broken world. The Bible tells us that, with humankind’s first willful act of sin, the tapestry of Shalom (God's peace) was destroyed. We became separated from God in our quest for autonomy, we became alienated from each other, even the physical world became subject to a cycle of death and decay. And this is not just a quaint story passed down through the millennia; the effects of this brokenness cry out to us from all sides every day: War. Genocide. Human trafficking. Poverty. Environmental degradation.
While it’s easy for us to insulate ourselves from much of the world’s brokenness (living, as we do, in an extremely affluent country, surrounded by comforts and opportunities that are unavailable to most of the world’s population), there is great need right here in our East Bay communities of Berkeley and Oakland. Our neighbors are hungry, homeless, ill and isolated in nursing homes, unable to afford the basic necessities of life, pregnant and alone and afraid, lacking the tools to break out of poverty and despair.
Overwhelming, isn’t it? Even as followers of Christ, knowing as we do that Christ will return to restore God’s kingdom on earth and right all wrongs, it’s natural to question: Why does God allow such brokenness to exist here and now? Here’s where Project Peace comes in! God himself tell us:
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" – Isaiah 58:6&7
Project Peace was founded in order to enable people to follow God’s call to bring mercy and justice to their community.
