Publication Date: April 2009
Building Partnerships
Faith-Based Organizations
All the assets of a community must focus on the secular problem of crime. In many towns and cities, the faith-based community is a rich resource of active and dedicated volunteers whose faith encourages them to serve others.
For the Good Samaritans program in Alabama and Mississippi, the faith community plays a major role in providing enough qualified volunteers to help crime victims 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Good Samaritans program partners with denominational and nondenominational faith organizations that put their faith to work by volunteering in their respective communities.
To build those relationships, Good Samaritans partners and volunteers frequently make presentations to faith groups, soliciting their support of the program. In making those presentations, they find that people of all faiths can relate to the unbiased goodwill endorsed in the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan—one willing person who overcame evil simply by helping a stranger victimized by crime.
Volunteers receive diversity training and abide by a code of ethical standards to ensure that they provide equal and appropriate services to all crime victims regardless of differing spiritual belief systems, values, or lifestyles.
