C4 is “Learning on the Street”
April 5, 2023
On March 24th, 2023, the C4 Institute hosted an event called “Learning on the Street” at the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem. The morning of the event was spent learning about the past and present of East Harlem, which was led by David Calvert, director of strategic partnerships at Youth Action Youth Build (YAYB). Afterward, a panel was held to explore perspectives on Christians in social work. Keynote speakers Rev. Kimberly Wright and Rev. José Humphreys, who are local East Harlem pastors with community ministry and social work experience, shared their experiences, insights, and knowledge pertaining to their perspectives on Christians and social work. Later in the afternoon, everyone participated in a walkabout in the neighborhood, where they were given prayer points to pray about throughout the walk as they felt led to and questions to reflect on as they observed the neighborhood. Lastly, upon returning from the walkabout, a Q&A session was held by John R. Chaney, a Christian, Associate Professor, and former director of Criminal Justice programs at LaGuardia, where he currently teaches Corrections & Sentencing and is involved in training social workers at the CUNY campus. To conclude the East Harlem, “Learning on the Street” event, Chris Lawrence, Program Coordinator for the C4 Institute, discussed the evaluation and suggestions for the future focus of the C4 Institute as follows:
“The C4 Institute is pushing ahead with two initiatives:
MENTORING: Uniting for Scholastic Success.
We would love to hear from potential mentors who are 2nd-year MSW (specialization) students with a minimum GPA average of 3.0. If that is you, please get in touch with me directly to discuss what might be needed to make this happen.
We also hope that those of you who graduate this year may become part of a new cohort of alumni mentors. Would you be able to offer this?
Are you wanting to have a mentor assigned to you? We would love to pair you with someone suitable. Please contact me for this to proceed.
BOOK CLUB LITE: putting a pause in your life, Christian discipleship for the long haul.
We are signing up members for this 5-session monthly online group. Please join us. To participate, you would be available to do 90 minutes once per month (May–Sept), within which 30 minutes are spent practicing listening, prayer, and reflection, and 60 minutes are spent reviewing our shared readings and having conversations. I will send you PDFs of sections of books, and you will also need to access one e-book (available through the library). The theme is a contemporary understanding of “sabbath—how this ancient discipline can be brought back and practiced in our hyper-mobile and often frantic lives.
Our next Learning on the Street event will be Friday, October 13th, 2023, so please save the date—venue and location to be announced closer to the time.”
To be kept informed and to sign up for the things mentioned above, please click here.
To view photos of the event, please click here.
For more information, please email our Program Coordinator for the C4 Institute, Chris Lawrence, at Chris.Lawrence@allianceu.edu, and the Dean, Dr. Yun, at Kwi.Yun@allianceu.edu.
