Appalachia Immersion Experience 2007

An Immersion Experience in Appalachia

What are religious leaders and other people of conscience to do in the face of growing poverty, homelessness, and misery? This course will explore the reality of poverty in Appalachia and across the United States and offer tools for overcoming and eliminating poverty. The course centered around travel in Appalachia and included a visit to the Highlander Center, a residential popular education and research organization in Tennessee (established by Union alumnus Myles Horton) that has played an important role in Southern labor movements of the 1930s, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s-60s, and the Appalachian people's movements of the 1970s-80s. In preparation for the travel component, students spent time in NYC learning about theories of poverty and race, the history of organizing in Appalachia and the South, and the issues we would encounter (e.g. welfare reform, coal-mining, health care, and living wage jobs).

A hands-on and experience-based course, the Poverty Immersion Experience included poverty reality tours, Bible studies, video-showings and will feature dialogue with leaders of local and national poor people’s organizations and religious congregations engaged in mission work and community organizing (e.g. human rights trainings and documenting human rights abuses in poor communities). Significant time was spent discussing the theological implications of building a movement led by poor people to end poverty and exploring the unique role of religious communities this effort.

Students from this course we also able to help plan the Spring Semester Poverty Truth Commission held at Union Theological Seminary in conjunction with Teachers College, Columbia University School of Social Work, School for International and Public Affairs, the National Council of Churches, the Riverside Church and other local and national groups interested in the elimination of poverty.