St. Matthew Parish Develops a Model and Template for “The Church for the Poor”
Introducing a smart, sustainable sweet potato farming project and church twinning effort that includes a template and supporting technology for replicating this across the “Church for the Poor” globally,
This a collaborative initiative between St. Matthew Church, Tolland, CT, and the Global Institute For Transformation® (GIFT) ministry. The project builds upon and shares unique resources available to St. Matthew parish, Tolland, CT and to GIFT.
This project involves planting a church garden and affecting the replication of this effort in Haiti via St. Matthew Outreach-to-Haiti twinning efforts. St. Matthew has long been involved in Haiti twinning and has recognized the great need to increase access to food.
The project also entails providing instructional insights and approaches through a web portal to enable the replication of this twinning strategy across other church twinning efforts. In this way, "The Church for the Poor" can expand this kind of solidarity to meet tremendous unmet needs for food security and development globally. These insights include Sustainable farming practices that have been proven to optimize farm yields while protectng our environment.
Harnessing Advanced Technology to Enable Solidarity and Help Address Starvation
A key goal of this initiative is to enable as many local churches as possible to learn, document, continually share and replicate best practices for sweet potato farming globally – a life-saving food appreciated worldwide.
Working in collaboration with St. Matthew church and GIFT, the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Poznan, Poland, has developed this instructional Portal. The portal will connect U. S. churches and global communities in severe need. This portal will also document and share best practices and optimize farming via Internet of Things.
And while technically, this project is about increasing yields of a highly nutritious food globally, in order to address starvation, premature death, poverty and care for creation -- even more importantly, this project is a tangible way for Christ-centered people to love and care for our brothers and sisters worldwide who have had to suffer with starvation and a lack of economic opportunities for far too long.
Church Learning, Documenting and Twinning -- and Local Food Pantry Donations
This portal will enable ongoing interactions between the U. S. church and global communities and should build an increased level of solidarity between the two groups.
The scope of this project involves disseminating strategies that can increase the yield of the farming. This includes a web-based soil sensor and live cam; USDA soil mapping; and sustainable, no-till farming strategies that yield optimum harvests.
Best practices are documented in this portal so other churches can deploy this. And these best practices will be updated as the project expands.
In addition to providing instructions, the portal will also provide chat functionality to enable people previously unfamiliarwith sweet potato farming to become effective.
The project will also support the youth in the U. S. church and globally by demonstrating what's referrred to as "the Internet of Things" technology and data analytics used in jobs today.
Produce from the church garden will be donated to a food pantry.
The sustainable farming strategies, supercomputing portal, and solidarity tools will be packaged to support other churches for affecting solidarity and sustainability globally.
If you would like more information about this exciting project -- or to explore how your Church can easily engage in smart farming, starvation relief, global economic development and more -- please contact Tim Maurer, St. Matthew parishioner and president, Global Institute For Transformation® (GIFT), at 402-212-7973, or via timothy.maurer@institutefortransformation.org.