About the Clean Water Project
Make a Donation
Donate Toward Clean Water in Swaziland
           

Service for Change

Servant Forge promotes individual, community and organizational change to enhance service in our community, our nation and throughout the community of nations. Individuals engaged in service embrace a process that has empowerment as an outcome. Service is always about transformation. Individuals and organizations that embrace a service orientation in their lives and in their work reflect an attitude and an approach that truly values the dignity, humanity, and potential of the individual(s) receiving or accepting the act of service. Servant Forge proposes a service model that is transforming and, by its very nature, facilitates change that drives the improvement of the human condition.

Service to Eradicate Disease

Global health should be an inalienable right for all individuals. The Millennium Development Goals emphasize the importance of combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and & other diseases. The goals seek to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health. In the poorest nations of the globe, health care professions are severely understaffed and volunteer involvement can no longer be sustained. Northern nations and first world countries need to prepare professionals to engage the health sector to respond with a commitment to service.

Centralized coordination with decentralized service delivery are essential for the effective reach into homes, neighborhoods and communities with treatment and health promotion. Task shifting and mobilizing health service delivery around community-based health workers in our schools, churches and neighborhoods is vital to the welfare of the poorest of our neighbors. We seek to forge new strategies to promote task shifting from the few with specialized training to the many with the capacity for generalized service delivery.

Service for Education

Servant Forge believes that it is a universal right of all individuals, regardless of gender, race, or religion, to have access to education and its transforming power in developing the intellectual capital necessary to enrich and sustain a nation. Servant Forge Fellows and its collaborators work with educational organizations and communities to enhance and promote the universal right to education. A major activity of Servant Forge is to infuse a service approach into the educational curriculum of teachers and administrators; to encourage educational policy makers to require service as a component for graduation requirements and in the completion of advanced degrees; and to promote the reciprocity of service in all educational exchanges between student and teacher. Servant Forge conducts retreats, facilitates training, seeks to guide or influence curriculum, and advances national policies that promote service in education.

Service for Faith

Servant Forge is anchored in faith — not a series of propositions or positions that define any one historical religious expression for faith – but a series of actions that are defined by one's commitment to a sovereignty that is greater than the individual. Call it God, Allah, or Yahweh, or any other myriad of expressions, Service for Faith is a call to act to promote change based on a commitment to reconciliation, trust, justice, and service. Servant Forge and its Fellows work with diverse religious organizations and communities to promote actions that restore and heal communities. It is about seeding hope, trust, and justice in a manner that enables the "other to become all that they can be."

To this end, Servant Forge facilitates planning, training, and speaking in communities seeking to instill a culture of service in their work and ministry. Servant Forge seeks to broker relationships between Servant Fellows and communities of faith in order to enhance and strengthen the skill set of faith communities seeking justice and reconciliation. Servant Forge works to ensure the right to religious freedom and expression, regardless of creed, nationality, or ethnic heritage.

Service for Civic Engagement and Involvement

Servant Forge affirms the right of all individuals to be engaged in the civic and social development of their communities and nations. With responsibility comes the right to freely participate in deciding the future of one's political structure and system. Servant Forge specifically addresses the issues of utilizing the tools of democracy – education, citizen access, the right to represent constituencies, the right to organize and explore how those tools can be enhanced through education and civic participation. Civic engagement is about voting, but it is also about assuming responsibility for one's community and society. Servant Forge fosters a values-based approach to democracy recognizing the dignity and worth of all individuals. Citizens in developing democracies need tools to develop and sustain democratic institutions and civic engagement. Servant Forge will help craft and shape those tools to reflect an emerging culture of involvement and service.

Service for Economic, Social, and Human Development

Poverty remains the most significant destabilizing force in families and communities. Poverty is the swamp that retards the economic, social and health development of families and communities. Poverty overtakes the environment and the systems that support communities. Servant Forge promotes civic and corporate engagement in the effort to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. We seek to forge new structures and strategies to confront the forces that contribute to poverty and we seek to do this through a commitment and call to service. Development anchored in service is empathic and transformational for all participants.

Jeffrey Sachs in his work The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time delineates a number of key variables to assure or sustain economic growth throughout the globe. These variables require a shift in attitude and approach from domination to relationship or more specifically, an attitude or approach that equates to service. Servant Forge will examine these variables and seek to infuse a culture of service into the organizations and communities that desire economic and social justice. The variables for economic, social, and human development are as follows:

These forces are creating economic change in that population most significantly affected by extreme poverty. Over one billion individuals are living on a subsistence income of less than a $1 a day. Servant Forge, working with NGOs and government agencies, seeks to provide training and technical assistance to enhance economic and social development among developing regions of the world. The Servant Fellows initiative will help generate awareness and leverage private sector resources to facilitate change and empowerment in the regions where Servant Forge principles are utilized.