North America—Urban
Regional Coordinator—Stan Rowland
Stan Rowland, founder of the CHE movement, leads a training session in Phoenix, Arizona
CHE (Community Health Evangelism) in an USA urban setting, is a multi-faceted neighborhood strategy that deals with the whole person, physically, spiritually emotionally and socially which focuses on individual neighborhoods.
A centerpiece of CHE in USA urban transformation, seeks to uncover and highlight the strengths within neighborhoods as a means for sustainable development. The basic tenet of this approach is that, although there are both capacities and deficiencies in every community, a capacities-focused approach is more likely to empower the community and therefore mobilize citizens to create positive and meaningful change from within.
Because there is such diversity in an urban slum it is more difficult to start a CHE program then in a rural overseas setting, because people hold so few things in common and have little or no sense of unity. Therefore it is critical to find mini sub-neighborhoods within the geographic target area. The most obvious sub groups could by identifying ethnic groups living together in the same area but in many slums these grouping may not be present.
An extensive amount of time is spent in identifying the assets of individuals, associations and then institutions before they are mobilized to work together to build on the identified assets of all involved. The power of identifying assets is found in the local associations who should drive the community development process and to leverage additional support and entitlements. These associations are the vehicles through which all the community's assets can be identified and then connected to one another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness.
For true community transformation to take place, first individuals in the community begin to see that they can have greater control over their own lives and begin to take more responsibility which includes training in topics they are interested in. Then these small training groups are coalesced into larger neighborhoods of interest and they begin to impact their neighborhood as a whole.
CHE is a proactive ministry which goes to the people, not waiting for them to come to us.
CHE is committed to promoting self help within the neighborhood, not providing services to the neighborhood. Providing of services is done by networking people to existing services.
CHE is committed finding local leadership, training and releasing them to solve their own problems by using what is already available to them.
To obtain a better understanding of urban CHE in the USA please download the powerpoint listed in the right-hand column of this page.
