What is Listening Way?

Listening Way will hire two people to work part-time in each community (four in Utqiagvik) to be IAM's local faces and hands at work in their communities. Their first area of concern will be to serve as allies for hurting people by encouraging and praying with them, and helping them find good help whenever they ask for it. Their second area of concern will be to connect with others in their communities to plan faith-based efforts to address their local social concerns. Specifically, they will invite local leaders to form an IAM Steering Committee for their community to identify local needs, and to strategize ways to address those needs.

Note that IAM had eight people already on board for this when the pandemic struck. We believe these people would like to be hired again to do this work. However, we will need to rebuild momentum behind their efforts, and will need to recruit others to bring our numbers up to the twenty-two we need.

Rev. David Matthews is the supervisor for this program. If we receive funding quickly, David can restart the old guard immediately, and should be able to recruit and train new staff within a couple of months. Should the Emergency Shelter Information Technology become available in each community (see our other grant request), David will be able to use this technology to use Stephen's Ministry curriculum to train Local Leaders, and to provide ongoing coaching to care for these Local Leaders.