The UNIVERSAL FAITH MINISTRIES {U.F.M.}

The GRASS-ROOTS INDEPENDENCE PROJECT (G.R.I.P.) -

Executive Summary:

The Grass-Roots Independence Project (G.R.I.P.), of The Universal Faith Ministries (U.F.M.), is an organized, (non-denominational) faith-based, grass-roots Movement for Social Change.

Our Community Action Teams (C.A.T.'s) missions are to seed & develop community advocacy organizations & grass-roots organizing efforts to effectuate long-term resolution of the pervasive social, political, economic, spiritual, and psychological ills which manifest throughout and encapsulate (i.e.: "suffocate") primarily urban (yet, also, rural) American communities...

- with a view toward re-creating, maintaining, and proliferating healthy, viable, and sustainable communities through home-based, faith-based, and independent income opportunities.

In this arena, U.F.M. / G.R.I.P. embodies the Vanguard of said Movement.

Our Real Estate Investment entity is entitled: UJAMAA ("Cooperative Economics")...

UJAMAA seeks to establish itself as this hemisphere's most complete real estate investment entity - by acquiring, rehabilitating, and reselling pre-foreclosure, foreclosure, real estate-owned (REO)/bank-owned, probate, abandoned, and tax-delinquent...residential, commercial, and luxury properties, within North/Central/South America, and, the Caribbean (then, worldwide).

GOALS:

To transform poor urban (and, rural) neighborhoods into working communities:

- by establishing safe, healthy, and effective neighborhoods;

- by increasing both the amount & the quality of employment therein;

- by improving the quality of all urban (and, rural & suburban) schools & school-systems; and,

- by revitalizing poor neighborhoods through mixed-income community development.

ROOT CAUSES:

- the steady & continuing decline of wages, benefits, and mobility for those with "high-school or LESS" education;

- the abject fact that low-income & national racial 'minority' children are forced to attend 'inferior' schools, which possess 'inadequate' resources which would ensure 'equal' educational opportunity; and, also,

- public policies & private practices prevent low-income & national racial 'minority' households from having REAL access to housing in mixed-income communities which provide REAL opportunities to build assets.

AREAS of WORK:

- improving wages & benefits at the 'low-end' of the labor market;

- focusing training & job-placement programs on 'growth' industries, which produce 'higher-wage' jobs, with REAL opportunities for mobility;

- 'unbiased' research & advocacy which sincerely address the need for 'adequate' financing for TRUE educational 'equity'; and, also,

- REAL support for institutions & policies which TRULY promote 'affordable' housing for mixed-income communities.

Bishop GEOFFREY KAMAU ("GEFF") OLUFEMI, D.D., Ph.D.
Founding Bishop, Senior Pastor & Executive Director

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