The Dagsboro, Delaware Church of God is currently in a contest which could realize a $25,000 grant for a community program started by the church.
Unite Sussex (which refers to Sussex County, Delaware) is a community-based partnership motivated and founded out of Christian charity. According to Dagsboro pastor Kim Tephabock, the program was “born as a patriot response to the economic crisis after observing the different people groups who comprise Sussex County.”
The contest in which Unite Sussex is entered in is called the Pepsi Refresh Everything contest.
People can vote once per day till the end of March and the program must be in the Top Ten at the end of the month. Tephabock said interested participants must register their vote first and then must click vote again for it to count. The site, www.refresheverything.com [1] lists several hundred projects vying for awards between $5,000 and $250,000. A total of $1.3 million is to be awarded.
Since this is a social networking contest, it works best if people can promote it on their twitter or facebook pages therefore encouraging the votes of others, “Tephabock said. “We plan to use (the grant money if they win the contest) in transforming our neighborhoods. We hope to try to renovate an old house into a temporary homeless shelter, improve a park and start a summer kids program.”
The first phase plan of Unite Sussex began with town hall meeting for three groups for the purpose of discovering what the needs of the community is the full reach of economic crisis.
“This was our way of discovering necessary projects in the communities,” Tephabock related. “The plan was also to discover the resources in the community as a whole within the following areas of the community: business, care giving, faith based, governmental.”
After holding two of three planned town hall meetings, a number of important issues arose: homelessness, job loss, people moving into the area, closing of a detoxification center, lack of governmental monetary resources to help those in need, and fragmentation of communities ravished by drug abuse. Unite Sussex emerged as a movement within Sussex County, to be both an organization and a living entity connecting the dots, acquainting the community and its resources.
“Through the process, we find ourselves as a partner helping to reinvent how needs in the community are met by those who are in a position to be part of the solution, government, not for profits, faith community and business community,” Tephabock continued. “We have been able to bring together existing relationships for community revitalization, homelessness and volunteerism. The community’s response has been amazingly positive.”