I just returned from a trip to Uganda with a church from California that's trying to establish a sister church type of relationship. They had many great ideas; I'll highlight some of them here. It's interesting to note that many of them came from the two high school students that were with the group!
- provide a photo of the church in N.A. to put in the church in Uganda
- make rubber bracelets with the name of both churches and a Bible verse, so each can remember to pray for each other
- distribute letters with photos from one church to the other. This was a big hit, and the community returned the favor and they'll be brought back to the NA church.
- we spent a week meeting with the church leaders. In the evenings the pastors took turns hosting the group. Was a great time for fellowship.
Have you been part of a service team that has discovered some unique and effective ways to connect with your host community?
The group I have been involved (www.carpenteros.ca) with has done a lot of the usual stuff - including visiting and praying with the disabled and elderly in their homes, various activities focused around the children, and meeting with the church community.
Last fall we tried a few new things, and they were quite successful. In conjunction with the local CRC (in a village in Honduras) we hosted a meeting of community leaders (political, education and community boards); we arranged for the women in our group to meet and discuss privately with the women in the community (don't know anything about the topics they covered, but feedback from both sides was that the meeting was very beneficial and should become a regular part of team visits); and we facilitated a community meeting to discuss community issues -- turned out to be particularly effective opportunity for the youth of the community to express their views and concerns. One concern from youth was the lack of trash collection and how the older generations too easily litter while the younger generation wants to find a more 'environmental' solution -- so we spontaneously organized a 'Trash Walk' for early the next morning -- dozens of people from the community plus members of our team walked the streets for many blocks picking up trash - and soon there was a small mountain of filled garbage bags in front of the church.
Each of these initiatives helped us to get a better understanding of the people and the issues, and it also helped to connect us with the community - word got around quickly that we wanted to know more about them and their views and opinions, and it helped to send the signal that we were not just strangers who came to do a few work projects, but that we wanted to hear and listen to what the locals had to say.
These three instances helped our group to learn more about connecting with the host community. I would love to hear from other groups that may have tried similar or totally different things, so that we can use these 'best practices' to improve the effectiveness of our short-term trips.