Bishop Dr. Reginald Saffo, a former resident of the Austin community, aims to reimagine anti-violence efforts on the West Side.
In June, the founder of UFCI Bible College began offering the ARK program to provide Austin residents with education and information, rather than physical resources, with the intent to address the systemic root of violence on the West Side.
The program, based out of Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church at 116 S. Central Ave., aims to engage and empower the Austin community through a moral and academic curriculum that teaches principles from the Bible.
“ARK is conceptually based upon the notion that churches are a place of restoration, safety, empowerment,” Saffo said.
The concept, he added, “came about from having conversations and getting information from the community through our outreach workers.”
The program’s name not only alludes to Noah’s Ark, “where God restored or replenished the earth,” Saffo said, but also stands for Academically Restoring the Kingdom.
Through ARK, Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church hosts monthly community information meetings, where experts speak about topics that address the evaluated needs of residents in the immediate area. Such topics include housing, employment and parenting development.
The ARK entrepreneurial development program’s motto is “stop the violence, start a business” and it offers a free, five-week curriculum targeted toward local youth. Leaders of this program show young people how to monetize a talent or skill, and how to fund a business around it. ARK provides participants with seed money and helps advertise their businesses, plus hosts pop-ups or sponsors them in the community.
Saffo said since ARK’s inception, about 60 students have enrolled in either its entrepreneurial development program or Urban First Responders program. The latter is designed for organizations that want to be more engaged in the community, but might not have the knowledge. These participants take a free, five-week course to learn how to have more of an impact among residents.
One of the biggest topics in the UFR program is understanding the psychology behind anger and those experiencing high-risk factors, Saffo said, “trying to get to the root causes of some of those emotional evils that lend to social evils,” like violence.
Although the UFR program recently started in Austin, a youth version has had a presence in Proviso schools for over 20 years. Saffo also helped organize the YUFR as chairman of the Proviso Township Ministerial Alliance Network to train students about “how to become sensitive to violent potentiality and be that kind of intervener in the school context,” Saffo said.
Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church is working to expand ARK programs through its Anti-Violence Ministries, partnering with three other churches in Austin to duplicate offerings at their facilities.
“We just try to be the additional spoke in the wheel that’s already established in the community,” Saffo said. “There’s a lot of good resources, a lot of good information, but the information is not properly, or at least aggressively, disseminated.”