Mission

To end child poverty in Spartanburg, South Carolina

Vision

To build a community of connection and sharing, for mutual thriving

Data That Tells a Story

The Faith Initiative launched after the publication of Spartanburg County's Racial Equity Index quantified disparities across our county by neighborhood, racialized identity, and socio-economic status:

- Data from the Racial Equity Index (Metropolitan Studies Institute at USC Upstate) indicate that the life expectancy of a child born today, less than two miles northwest of Main Street, Spartanburg, is 68.2 years, while a child born two miles southeast of Main Street, Spartanburg, is 85.3 years – a difference of over 17 years.

- 45.7 % of children in this city live in poverty.

- Black people are three times as likely to live in poverty as white people.

- The wage gap for Black and Latina women shows that they are paid less than 57 cents for every dollar paid to their white male counterparts.

What Can We Do?

  • Theologically, spiritual traditions around the world and across our cultures insist that living by the Golden Rule creates equity, fairness, and provides for mutual thriving for all in a community: "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:12)

  • Economically, recent research published by Dr. Raj Chetty of Harvard Business School indicates the same premise -- that the more we are with people different that we are, the more social and economic connectedness we create, and the more we generate thriving across our communities. Shockingly, this research found that when congregations open their doors to people of different racialized identities and socio-economic status, and go out of their doors to be with neighbors across our differences, our religious organizations become one of the most powerful engines of economic mobility in our culture:

    • “Friending bias is lowest on average in religious groups…. Friending bias is negative in religious groups because religious-group friendships do not exhibit substantial homophily by socio-economic status (SES)…. if friending bias in all settings was reduced by an amount equal to the difference in friending bias between neighbourhoods and religious groups, most of the disconnection between low-SES and high-SES individuals in the US would be eliminated…. Since religious groups are highly segregated by income…their low friending bias does not currently translate to a high level of economic connectedness (EC)…. Efforts to integrate religious groups by SES may be particularly effective at increasing EC if friending bias remains low as they become more integrated…. Members of religious groups exhibit much more friending bias in all other settings than they do in religious groups, showing that the settings in which friendships form matter.” (“Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness,” Nature 2022, Chetty et al.)

  • Both in ancient theology and in modern economics, data tells us the same story: Be with people different than we are, and we make life better for us all.

Strategy

The Faith Initiative To End Child Poverty is a coalition of congregations and individuals working to end child poverty in Spartanburg, SC. Our goal is to end child poverty in Spartanburg County, SC by activating the gifts of the faith community in connection with larger community efforts. 

We pursue a five-tiered strategy to:

  1. be with children and their families who are living in poverty,

  2. create congregational ministries and connect them in an interfaith network of congregations serving the community,

  3. align with larger community efforts and institutional partners for best practices, research and data, and resource flow,

  4. address gaps together through advocacy,

  5. create a culture of connection and sharing where all of us can thrive.

Work With Us