[1]http://youtu.be/4_HyRP3cPewhttp://youtu.be/4_HyRP3cPew "Whoa
   man, it's a very long good read." - PSJ comment from G+ With
   years of skepticism under my belt about projects that were a lot
   of talk but were really just marketing efforts, I made a little
   project to poke at the cause and see if it was legit. [I've seen
   them before through the years; but the format of documentaries;
   "things are bad. Things are really bad. Things actually far
   worse than you could ever possibly imagine. But there's hope.
   And we're bringing the hope. And hope does these various things.
   And people work together and..." and my Arms of an Angel
   defenses come up; the more dire things appear and the more
   marvelous and wonderful a solution looks, and the more I find
   myself nodding in agreement, the more I have to hear the record
   needle scratch in my brain and say, "Wait... stop... hypberbole?
   or true?" The white guy helping the poor non-white skin was
   another "uh oh... hyperbole-ville" Well, look them up I did. And
   they're legit Took a bit of digging around, because anything
   that smells "mission" I have to find the driving source behind.
   And I'm ok with it. It's a small homespun Christian church. It's
   actually pretty cool; 20 comfortable white families uprooted
   themselves and moved into an area with ultra-cheap real estate,
   buying up vacant lots and abandoned homes, fixing them up,
   Thumbs up to these 20 young families. Plus, they were modest
   about the religious background of the mission; to me, that's how
   someone's religion should be; shown through the good stuff you
   do, not put on bumperstickers. Source was here:
   [2]https://jasonandryan.wordpress.com/ [---- begin quote---]
   Urban homesteaders More than 20 suburban families have moved
   into Lykins, [...] These urban homesteaders are mostly white 20-
   to 40-somethings. Most also are members of the Rock, a
   nondenominational Christian church founded in 1999 with loosely
   affiliated networks of house churches in Kansas, Missouri,
   Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina. The
   Rock*s mission is to *plant* house churches throughout the inner
   city so members can live in and work with the communities they
   are trying to serve. On the face of it, their tactics for
   revitalizing a racially mixed, economically depressed
   neighborhood are simple: walk the neighborhood streets, make eye
   contact and open your heart. *The biggest problem in this
   neighborhood is fear,* Jason Fields says. *There*s a spirit of
   hope and community when you decide not to hide from this and own
   it. * Something happens when you*re in something together. You
   meet people you wouldn*t have met otherwise, and it turns into
   really deep friendships.* So far, those friendships mostly have
   been with other church members, but a new community garden is
   turning out to be fertile ground for getting to know neighbors.
   Most Rock members have bought homes in a five-block area. The
   church has bought buildings once owned by the Catholic diocese,
   including a handsome red brick church built in the 1920s and a
   convent that has been remodeled into a home for the Rock*s
   32-year-old lead pastor, Ryan Kubicina, and his family. Since
   the congregation members prefer to gather in homes to worship,
   the church structure at 934 Norton Ave. is a convenient
   neighborhood gathering place for everything from art classes to
   association meetings. Rock Solid Urban Impact, a charitable
   nonprofit headed by the Rock founder Tim Johns that focuses on
   the needs of urban youth, owns the dilapidated school built next
   door to the church in the 1950s. The school*s restored gym is a
   venue for youth wrestling matches, and there are plans to
   renovate the other rooms to serve as a community center and
   possibly a coffeehouse or farmers market. Next to the school,
   the nonprofit bought 13 vacant lots. The heavily wooded property
   had become a hang-out for drug dealers and prostitutes. But
   earlier this spring, community members worked together to remove
   trash, trees and other debris to open up space for 12-by-4-foot
   raised garden plots. Jason Fields went door-to-door asking timid
   residents * some who spoke Spanish and others who hadn*t had the
   courage to answer the door to a stranger in years * if they were
   interested in taking care of a free plot. A few families agreed
   to join in. *Our hope is that this model becomes way bigger than
   the church,* he says. [---- end quote---] And to be honest, I
   expected to see members of my class in Hampshire College, where
   a lot of kids take film/media classes and they learn how to put
   together documentaries to be extraordinarily convincing. Most
   have used this Power for Good, [Ken Burns came from that stock
   of film school at my college] although some for questionable
   motivations as well. They didn't just pretend to live in the
   poor area, they really moved there and live and and work there,
   to fix it up. What started off as an "Oh no!, not again! 90% of
   proceeds go to administrative costs non-profit again!" - is the
   real deal. I leave my investigation, satisfied and happy.

References

   Visible links
   1. http://youtu.be/4_HyRP3cPew
   2. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fjasonandryan.wordpress.com%2F&h=SAQFVtMhx&enc=AZOvj8RIXBSeKAHbppXqq0rwbHeeaWwkm8svRiZohaEDgwIbCWv7dZDh8wkY0e3qcDhzG2y2dIElpUxVUfAmAXLXz2ZXdEtp6G8EnzVeLTN1K26vpTYuyjQCG7V7nUwHtnd2Swj-XQnwKi7z1WlENU9L&s=1