North Park’s University Ministries (UMin) has received two separate grants to create student internships in local churches and expand its Sankofa program, which promotes racial reconciliation.
The $50,000 grant from the Educating Character Initiative of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University will create a credit-bearing course related to North Park’s Sankofa trip. During this annual sojourn, students, faculty, and staff travel to different parts of the U.S. to learn about various aspects of the country’s often contentious history of race relations.
Tony Zamble, director of UMin, said the grant will help create an interdisciplinary course combining philosophy and psychology to teach compassion.
“Our argument is that character is social, so you can’t have people of character who don’t care about the suffering of those around them,” Zamble said. “Sankofa helps develop compassion, empathy, and a keen sense of justice.”
A separate $40,000 grant from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) will help pay the salaries of 16 students who will intern at local churches over two years. Beginning this fall, UMin will deploy four music-oriented and four service-centered interns to local churches each year.
“Students are a little bit jaded by the church, especially those who didn’t necessarily grow up in it,” Zamble said. “We want them to see the real church in action and how they address justice and helping the poor.”