News

In dynamic emergency situations, often the best way to offer assistance is by making financial donations to organizations with skilled teams in the location. NGOs and charities near an emergency location can direct the funding via their local teams with the best knowledge and skills to provide relief where it is most needed and will have the most impact.

The following is a partial listing of the many organizations accepting contributions for relief and assistance relative to recent natural disasters, particularly Hurricane Dorian that devastated the Bahamas and impacted other areas of the Atlantic coastline. The University of Notre Dame is not formally endorsing any of the organizations listed.

Americares saves lives and improves health for people affected by poverty or disaster so they can reach their full potential. Americares teams are working with government authorities in the Bahamas to evaluate the extent of destruction, and provide healthcare assessments, emergency medical supplies and mental health services. 

American Red Cross has committed to providing a safe haven in Florida for those evacuating the Bahamas in response to Hurricane Dorian, including shelter, food, medical supplies and assessment, and emotional support. Red Cross responders are also supporting relief to impacted communities throughout the southeast United States. 

Catholic Charities USA supports disaster response and recovery efforts including direct assistance, home repair, home rebuilding, health care services and other programs. Catholic Charities uses case management that enables long-term disaster recovery and directs all funds raised to CCUSA agencies which serve affected agencies in North Carolina and the southeast coast of the United States.

Catholic Relief Services is working in the Bahamas to provide emergency shelter, water, food, and hygiene supplies to affected residents. They continue to assess where resources are needed most in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian in collaboration with local authorities.

Mercy Corps is distributing solar lanterns to the heavily impacted islands of Abacos and Grand Bahama, and will continue to assess damage and provide emergency kits in the coming weeks. 

Save the Children distributes aid to affected families in the Bahamas and North Carolina, with a particular emphasis on children, by providing immediate relief and supporting the return of local agencies that serve children. 

UNICEF delivered its first shipment of emergency aid days after Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas, and will continue to provide access to sanitary water and other supplies in the coming weeks. 

World Central Kitchen, founded by chef José Andrés, is providing thousands of fresh meals daily to those affected by Hurricane Dorian in Abacos, Grand Bahama, and Nassau. 

World Vision provides emergency services to Americans impacted by Hurricane Dorian in North Carolina and along the southeast coastline including water, temporary shelter, hygiene kits, diapers, and flood muck-out kits. 

Tomorrow, Thursday, July 18 is a Catholic Day of Action for Immigrant and Refugee Children. The Basilica bells will toll at 10 a.m. for fifteen minutes followed by a rosary at the Grotto. More information can be found on the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns website.

"A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization–all typical of a throwaway culture–towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter, the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world."

-Pope Francis in his message for the 2014 World Day of Migrants and Refugees 

More recently, Pope Francis has returned to the theme of encounter. In his homily of February 15, 2019, he noted that "the Lord speaks to us today and asks us to allow him to free us of our fear." Fear, he said, is the origin of slavery, referring to the experience of the ancient Israelites. He continued: "And it is also the origin of every dictatorship because through the fear of a people the violence of the dictator grows." But, the pope continued, Christians "are called to overcome fear and open ourselves to encounter. And to do so, rational justifications and statistical calculations are not enough." Instead, we are to see the encounter with the other as encounter with Christ also. “He himself told us this. It is he who knocks on our door hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned, asking to be met and assisted" (see Matthew 25).

The Center for Social Concerns recently selected its spring semester Community Impact Grant recipients. Grants are awarded to faculty and students doing community-engaged work that advances human dignity, solidarity, and the common good, values central to Catholic social tradition. The grants were awarded based upon a proposal submission and selection process and are part of the center’s continuing effort to support collaboration between campus and community partners for social justice impact.

Heidi Beidinger-Burnett, assistant professional specialist with the Eck Institute for Global Health, and Matthew Sisk, GIS librarian specializing in anthropology and archaeology based in the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, were selected for research seeking to understand environmental lead distribution in urban and rural St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties. They are part of the Notre Dame Lead Innovation Team, a collaboration among several Notre Dame faculty members working to expand the Lead Sample Collection Kit project to rural areas of St. Joseph County and both rural and urban environments in Elkhart County. They were awarded $10,000.

Pam Butler, associate director of the Gender Studies Program was awarded $2,800 for professional development to attend a seven-day instructor training institute with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Inside-Out is an educational program that brings together campus-based college students with incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a prison or jail.

Ann-Marie Conrado, assistant professor with the Department of Art, Art History and Design, and Ron Metoyer, associate professor and assistant dean in the College of Engineering were awarded $5,000 for their work with CARE network. The network is addressing the problem of outdated social services directories by working on a dynamic open-source social service network and referral engine built on social determinants to more effectively connect individuals to the web of available resources.

Richard G. Jones, Annenberg Director, and Victoria St. Martin, visiting  journalist, of  the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy were awarded $5,000 for a course called “Covering America | Puerto Rico: Journalistic Storytelling with Compassion, Empathy and Professionalism.” The course involves a six-day reporting trip during spring break to Puerto Rico and is designed to combine digital technology with foundational reporting skills to cover complex stories for national audiences with a sense of both professionalism and empathy.

Grant Mudge, Ryan Producing Artistic Director for Shakespeare at Notre Dame was awarded $500 for “Shakespeare in Fremont Park,” a seven-week program focused on the city of South Bend’s west side neighborhoods. In collaboration with the Fremont Youth Foundation, Shakespeare in Fremont park invites young people to work directly with adults to create, rehearse, and perform a theatre production inspired by Shakespeare.

John Odhiambo Onyango, associate professor of architecture was awarded $3,000 for his work with the South Bend Sustainable Housing Lab (SBSHL). SBSHL is an interdisciplinary course within an emerging larger initiative serves as a vehicle for study, analysis, and community partnership and contribution for students from majors in the School of Architecture, College of Engineering, the newly formed Real Estate Institute, and the College of Arts and Letters.

Community Impact Grant proposals are reviewed once in the fall and once in the spring. The fall application deadline is September, 2019. Applicants may request grants up to $15,000. For more information on grants, please visit the grants webpage.

Contact: JP Shortall, director of communications and advancement, (574) 631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu

The University of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns will hold its biennial Catholic social tradition conference on March 21–23 at McKenna Hall. This year’s conference, “Option for the Poor: Engaging the Social Tradition,” will bring together 68 international scholars and practitioners of Catholic social tradition to examine various social challenges related to poverty.

The option for the poor and vulnerable has long been central to Catholic social tradition, holding that societies ought to be measured by the standard of how their most vulnerable members are faring and that all members of society have a special obligation to the poor and vulnerable.

“Fr. Ted Hesburgh wrote in 1979 that ‘we teach human dignity best by serving it where it is most likely to be disregarded, in the poor and abandoned,’” said Rev. Kevin Sandberg, C.S.C., Leo and Arlene Hawk Director of the Center for Social Concerns. “The Center’s pedagogy depends on that kind of insight, and this year’s conference promises to extend and develop it in new and fruitful directions.”

Past Catholic social tradition conferences have focused on important writings within the documentary tradition: Populorum Progressio in 2017, Gaudium et Spes in 2015, Pacem in Terris in 2013, and Rerum Novarum in 2011. By focusing on the option for the poor, this year’s conference will explore a principle central to many of the major writings in the documentary tradition as well as the Gospel.

“This series of biennial conferences first began in 2011 as a way to assemble scholars and practitioners who wanted to address social issues through the social teachings of the Church,” said Bill Purcell, senior associate director of Catholic social tradition and practice at the Center for Social Concerns and conference organizer. “The first one drew 30 presenters and 125 participants; this year we have 68 presenters and more than 350 participants.”

The conference will feature keynote addresses by Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, S.D.B, Archdiocese of Sangon, Myanmar; Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology emeritus, University of Notre Dame; Lisa Sowle Cahill, Ph.D., J. Donald Monan Professor of Theology, Boston College; Charles Clarke, Ph.D., professor of economics, St. John’s University; and Daniel Graff, Ph.D., director of the Higgins Labor Program of the Center for Social Concerns, and professor of the practice, Department of History, University of Notre Dame.

The conference is cosponsored by the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion; Catholic Social Tradition Minor; Center for the Study of Religion and Society; Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing; Cushwa Center for American Catholicism; Department of Theology; Higgins Labor Program; Institute for Latino Studies; Keough School of Global Affairs; Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights; Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies; Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor; The Law School's Program on Church, State, & Society; Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College; Catholic Charities USA; Catholic Mobilizing Network; National Center for the Laity.

Contact: JP Shortall, director of communications and advancement, (574) 631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu

Connie Snyder Mick, director of academic affairs at the Center for Social Concerns and co-director of the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor co-housed in the College of Arts and Letters and the Center for Social Concerns, has been appointed editor-in-chief of Poverty and Public Policy (PPP), an academic journal focused on research related to poverty, welfare, and economic inequality worldwide.

Established in 2009 by the Policy Studies Organization, PPP publishes peer-reviewed empirical studies, peer-reviewed theoretical essays on approaches to poverty and social welfare, book reviews, data sets, edited blogs, and incipient data from scholars, aid workers, and other practitioners in less developed nations and nations that are just beginning to focus on these problems in a scientific way. PPP is available in 29,000 libraries worldwide.

“Connie’s scholarly focus on questions of writing and poverty makes her a great choice for the next editor-in-chief of Poverty and Public Policy,” said Rev. Kevin Sandberg, C.S.C., Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Center for Social Concerns. “And given the centrality of the option for the poor in Catholic social teaching, a journal focused on poverty research that leads to policy solutions is a perfect fit at the center and the University.”

In her role at the center, Snyder Mick teaches the capstone and an elective for Poverty Studies, and she works with faculty to design and implement academic community engagement in courses across the University. Every summer, she leads the Community Engagement Faculty Institute, a three-day immersion into the theory and practice of community-engaged research, teaching, and learning that leads to positive social impact.

“I am grateful to the journal for the confidence they have placed in me and hope to advance the important work of its founding editor, Max Skidmore,” said Snyder Mick. “Poverty and Public Policy will continue to provide a critical space for identifying obstacles and proposing solutions to address poverty worldwide.”

Snyder Mick’s research interests include assessment of community engagement to measure impact on student learning and community development, the function of community engagement and service-learning in socio-cultural acquisition among English language learners, the role of writing in social change, the rhetoric of poverty, and the pedagogies of community engagement. She is also a governing board member of the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty , a collaboration among 26 colleges and universities that integrates classroom study of poverty with summer internships.

She has published Good Writing: An Argument Rhetoric, Oxford University Press (2018) and Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers, Oxford University Press (2015) as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters in her research areas.

Contact: JP Shortall, director of communications and advancement, (574) 631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu

The Center for Social Concerns has just awarded six Community Impact Grants to faculty and students doing community-engaged work that advances human dignity, solidarity, and the common good, values central to Catholic social tradition. The grants were awarded based upon a proposal submission and selection process and are part of the center’s continuing effort to support collaboration between campus and community partners for social justice impact.

“The Center for Social Concerns has long supported community-engaged work through grants and consultation on community-engaged research and teaching, and our new Community Impact Grants program continues that tradition,” explains Connie Mick, director of academic affairs at the center and co-director of the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor. “These grants advance the center’s mission to enact the common good by applying academic knowledge to community challenges.”

Grants were awarded to faculty and students from six different departments in three colleges across the University. Viva Bartkus, associate professor of management in the Mendoza College of Business was awarded $7,400 to lead a cohort of MBA students in a Business on the Frontlines course designed to stimulate economic development in Santurce, Puerto Rico, a vibrant arts area on the island.

Jay Brockman, director of the Center for Civic Innovation in the College of Engineering was awarded a $500 grant to convene campus and community members to build a partnership for a Net-Zero Housing Initiative in the Southeast Neighborhood of South Bend. The group aims to test innovative solutions to housing that could be applicable across the region and beyond.  

Two grant awardees will address the question of education for underserved students in the South Bend Community School Corporation. Patrick Kirkland, a doctoral student in Psychology, and his advisor, Professor of Psychology and ACE Collegiate Chair Nicole M. McNeil, were awarded $5,667 for a project that will allow teachers at Jefferson Middle School to attend Number Talks Professional Development sessions. Number Talks is an innovative math education program that researchers will test to see if it advances the restorative justice goals of the school.

The second award for work on education went to Dr. Luca Grillo, associate professor of Classics, and Tadeusz Mazurek associate teaching professor of Classics. They were awarded $2,500 for a project in which Notre Dame undergraduates will teach Latin and English language skills to elementary students at Clay International Academy. Principal Angela Ruiz welcomed the proposal, which aligns well with the school’s new International Baccalaureate curriculum.

Emily Rupchock, director of Ready to Grow St. Joe and current Master of Nonprofit Administration student in the Mendoza College of Business, and Dr. Rachel Fulcher Dawson, associate director, research, communications, and policy at Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities were awarded $9,850 to conduct a comprehensive early childhood Community needs assessment for St. Joseph County, Indiana. Gathering current data will guide community health prevention and intervention efforts for the 30% of young children living in poverty in this county.

Senior Neuroscience Behavior major, with minors in Theology and Poverty Studies, Delaney Weiland was awarded a grant to attend the Indiana Campus Compact 9th Annual Service Engagement and Awards Gala in Indianapolis. There she will be recognized as Notre Dame’s nominee for the Richard J. Wood Student Community Commitment Award.

Community Impact Grant proposals are reviewed once in the fall and once in the spring. The spring deadline is February 4, 2019. Applicants may request grants up to $15,000. For more information on grants, please visit the grants webpage.

Contact: JP Shortall, director of communications and advancement, (574) 631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu
 

The University of Notre Dame's Center for Social Concerns will convene “Listening to the Earth: Thinking About Ecology in the Holy Land,” a conference at the Notre Dame Jerusalem Global Gateway, November 18–20. It will be the third gathering of the Applied Catholic Social Tradition Network, an international group of scholars focused on the application of Catholic social tradition (CST) to various social challenges around the world. The network first met at the Notre Dame Global Gateway in Rome in January 2017; its second meeting was at the Notre Dame Global Gateway in London in March 2018.

The idea for the network originated with Clemens Sedmak, professor of social ethics at the Keough School of Global Affairs and adviser in Catholic social tradition at the Center for Social Concerns, and Bill Purcell, senior associate director of Catholic social tradition at the Center for Social Concerns. As Sedmak said, “We want to ask what it means to translate the principles of CST into practices and judgments in real-world situations, and how realities on the ground challenge the fundamental principles of CST.”

The Jerusalem conference is being organized in association with the Jerusalem Global Gateway at Tantur and will take place there and at Bethlehem University. Participants will hear and share multiple local perspectives on environmental problems in the Holy Land while exploring approaches found in Catholic social tradition.

"With Laudato Si', Pope Francis called attention to the environment, which he described as a common good,” said Rev. Kevin Sandberg, C.S.C., Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Center for Social Concerns. “So the more we see the environment as a shared inheritance, the more we do justice to the pursuit of peace that stirs restlessly in the hearts of Muslims, Jews, and Christians.”

During the first day of the conference, Jewish and Christian leaders and thinkers will look at ecological issues from different perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds. The second day will take place at the University of Bethlehem and sites around Palestine, with a focus on the perspectives of Muslim leaders and scientists. On the final day of the conference, participants will return to Tantur and discuss pedagogical approaches to environmental issues in the Holy Land, with an emphasis on the pedagogical role of experience, story, and spirituality.

Before coming to Notre Dame, Sedmak was the FD Maurice Professor for Moral Theology and Social Theology at King’s College London. He has held multiple positions at the University of Salzburg, serving as director of the Center for Ethics and Poverty Research and chair for epistemology and philosophy of religion. Sedmak also was president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Ethics in Salzburg. He has recently written A Church of the Poor: Pope Francis and the Transformation of Orthodoxy (Orbis Books, 2016) and The Capacity to be Displaced: Resilience, Mission, and Inner Strength (Brill, 2017).

Purcell oversees the integration of Catholic social thought into the center's courses and programming. He also co-directs the interdisciplinary Minor in Catholic Social Tradition for the University and acts as a liaison for the center with national Catholic institutions that focus on justice education.

Contact: JP Shortall, director of communications and advancement, (575) 631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu

Oxford University Press has just published a new book, Good Writing: An Argument Rhetoric, by Connie Snyder Mick, academic director of the Center for Social Concerns and co-director of the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor at the University of Notre Dame. The book is designed for first-year writing courses in colleges and universities, and emphasizes argument that persuades audiences to take informed action based upon facts, claims, evidence, and reasons.

Snyder Mick’s approach is distinguished by how it situates the familiar elements of a college or university-level writing course within a broader ethical context. As she explains in the preface to the book, “‘good writing’ is in fact writing for the common good, ethical writing that persuades others to think and act in ways that advance humanity.”

The book is divided into five parts and 28 chapters that guide writers through the elements of constructing a rhetorically strong and ethically sound argument. Each chapter contains resources that explore elements of the writing process to guide developing writers —readings, approaches to process, even anticipated questions for professors during office hours. The book is designed to work with traditional and community-engaged classrooms.

In her position as the academic director of the Center for Social Concerns and co-director of the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor, Professor Snyder Mick works with faculty to design and implement academic community engagement in courses across the University. She also created and leads the Community Engagement Faculty Institute, a three-day immersion into the theory and practice of community-engaged research, teaching, and learning. 

Snyder Mick’s previous publications include Poverty/Privilege: A Reader for Writers, Oxford University Press (2015). Her other recent work appears in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning; Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture; Service-Learning: Enhancing Inclusive Education; TESOL Journal; and Foundational Practices in Online Writing Instruction.

Contact: JP Shortall, Center for Social Concerns, 574-631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu

Compiled by Rosie McDowell, Director, International Community-Based Learning Outreach, Center for Social Concerns
September 18, 2018; updated October 15, 2018.

In dynamic emergency situations often the best way to offer assistance is by making financial donations to organizations with skilled teams in the location. NGOs and charities near an emergency location can direct the funding via their local teams with the best knowledge and skills to provide relief where it it most needed and will have the most impact.

The following is a partial listing of the many organizations accepting contributions for relief and assistance relative to recent natural disasters, especially hurricane Michael that hit land on the Florida panhandle (October), the earthquake and tsunami in Sulawesi, Indonesia (September), hurricane Florence that came ashore in North Carolina (September), and typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines (September). The University of Notre Dame is not formally endorsing any of the organizations listed.

Americares saves lives and improves health for people affected by poverty or disaster so they can reach their full potential. As the flooding from Florence continues to overwhelm the Carolinas, Americares emergency response team in North Carolina is delivering essential medicines and relief supplies for families evacuated for Hurricane Florence.

American Red Cross is working both North and South Carolina to provide safe shelter and comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people impacted by Hurricane Florence as the threat from the devastating storm continues.CARE has emergency teams assessing the damage and needs of the affected population in the most severely hit town of Cagayan in the Philippines, in an agriculture-dependent province in the aftermath of Typhoon Mangkhut.

Caritas is an international "helping hand of the Church" that reaches out to the poor, vulnerable, and excluded, regardless of race or religion. The organization is sending food, water, medicine, and shelters to help survivors of the Indonesia tsunami and earthquake.

Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee has extensive information on relief and assistance with Hurricane Michael.

Catholic Charities USA supports disaster response and recovery efforts including direct assistance, home repair, home rebuilding, health care services and other programs. Catholic Charities uses case management that enables long-term disaster recovery and directs all funds raised to CCUSA agencies which serve affected agencies in North and South Carolina.

Catholic Relief Services is working in the Philippines to provide emergency shelter, water food and hygiene supplies to affected residents and provide resources in the aftermath of Typhoon Mangkhut.

Oxfam International is first prioritizing distribution of water and emergency shelter materials like tarps and ropes. The medium-and longer-term concerns in these areas will be related to food, and rebuilding the agricultural activity in the areas near Cagayan impacted by total crop loss after Typhoon Mangkhut.

Save the Children will begin distributing aid to the worst-affected families in the Philippines, including hygiene items like shampoo, soap and cleaning products, as well as jerry cans, water purification tablets, pots and pans for cooking and plastic sheeting for temporary shelter.  Save the Children teams have also begun to work with families and children impacted by Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas.

World Vision has partnered with the Fayetteville Dream Center to set up a shelter at Manna Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Staff from Dream Center, the church, and World Vision are serving evacuees and has begun providing relief supplies.

Jay Brandenberger, director of research and graduate student initiatives at the Center for Social Concerns, has been appointed to the additional role of director of academic community engagement at the University of Notre Dame for a two-year term. He succeeds Mary Beckman, who served as the second director from the fall of 2015 until the spring of 2018.

In his new role, Brandenberger will help facilitate and promote engagement between Notre Dame faculty and community partners involved in community, social, cultural, human and economic development. He was appointed by the Community Engagement Coordinating Council (CECC), a body established in 2011 to deepen the culture of engagement between Notre Dame and its many community partners. He has been a member of the CECC since it was established.

“After 27 years of community-based research and teaching at the Center for Social Concerns, Jay is well positioned to lead the University’s efforts to assess and enhance the degree to which community engagement at Notre Dame helps fulfill the University’s academic vision,” said Rev. Kevin Sandberg, C.S.C., Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Center for Social Concerns. “His concurrent leadership of Notre Dame’s effort to renew its Carnegie Community Engagement Classification provides a perfect platform toward this end.”

The CECC works with each College and School, the Center for Social Concerns, the Office of Public Affairs, and other University units to coordinate, support, and communicate community engagement efforts, including engaged scholarship, relevant economic development efforts, and outreach activities.

“I appreciate the opportunity to build on the good work of the CECC and many thoughtful colleagues,” said Brandenberger. “This year, we'll have the opportunity to enhance our work through comprehensive efforts to complete the University's application to the Carnegie Foundation for classification as a community engaged institution.”

In his current role at the center, Brandenberger directs research initiatives and graduate student programs while working with colleagues to examine the developmental outcomes and best practices associated with center courses and programs. He is the editor of the center's Research Report Series and facilitates ongoing longitudinal research focusing on the moral and ethical outcomes of community engagement. He is a concurrent associate professor in the Department of Psychology, a fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, and a past recipient of the Notre Dame Frank O'Malley Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Contact: JP Shortall, Center for Social Concerns, 574-631-3209, james.p.shortall.1@nd.edu