NOAH: ‘Hope’ For A Better Future
March 29, 2007 

NOAH Celebrates Successes at its First-Ever Banquet

By Rick Forgione
Niagara Gazette

“Hope” may be the last word in the acronym NOAH, but it’s at the forefront of the countywide, faith-based organization’s goals.

Hope for a better community, for a better job market and for a better life.

“We want to be the vehicle to help people change the way things are and give them hope,” said the Rev. Rex Stewart, pastor of First Presbyterian Church and co-president of NOAH, which stands for Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope.

That message served as one of the themes behind NOAH’s first-ever banquet Thursday evening at the Conference Center of Niagara Falls. More than 200 people were in attendance — from church leaders to politicians to the general public — all with the intention of working together to build a better community.

“We can come together on this thing,” said NOAH Co-President Bishop Stephan Booze, senior pastor of Potters House Christian Community Church. “We all need to eat, we all need to have jobs.”

NOAH is an interracial, urban-suburban coalition of congregations and other faith-based organizations in the county. Its current membership includes 14 churches and organizations such as Niagara University and Community Missions.

The group draws together people of many denominations and income levels to act powerfully on local and regional issues of justice and equity through community-building, negotiation with decision-makers and direct action.

Its first mission, announced this past fall, was to solicit public leaders to institute a local hiring law on all contracts funded by public money. Specifically, the law would require at least 30 percent of the jobs created to be offered to Niagara County residents who are below the poverty level. Those jobs would be open for 30 days before they’re made available to others.

Several municipalities have signed on to the idea, including Niagara County, Niagara Falls, North Tonawanda and the town of Wheatfield. Additionally, state representatives such as Sen. George Maziarz, Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte and Sen. Antoine Thompson, have provided support.

“Tonight’s banquet is a clarification of what it is we’re doing and what we’re still trying to put forward,” Booze said Thursday night.

It was also about raising funds for the organization and establishing new relationships with other churches and non-profit groups not currently part of NOAH.

The evening’s guest speaker was the Rev. Kevin M. Turman, senior pastor of Detroit’s historic Second Baptist Church and president of the group Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES). He praised faith-based organizations like NOAH for their contributions to the community.

“It is more than people simply coming together for dinner,” he said.

Turman said people’s good intentions are sapped by things like nepotism, cronyism, racism and greed. For a diverse society to thrive, people have to start living as equals.

“Whoever ‘we’ are ... ‘we’ have come to believe that ‘we’ are distinctly different from ‘they,’ ” he said. “It’s destroying us as a nation.”

Turman then challenged the faith-based organizations of the community to lead the way toward a better future.

“All of us have something special and unique to contribute,” he said. “We must become people of faith working together to create change.”

Email: Rick Forgione forgioner@gnnewspaper.com