In the Summer of 2017, Bishop Anderson House partnered with the ALIVE! Project to offer the Spiritual Care Visitors curriculum specifically tailored to meet the needs of pastors and congregations on the Near West Side of Chicago. 

Students from 10 West Side congregations met on a weekly basis to learn how to deal with the stress, sadness and grief of dealing with daily violence and poverty–and then how to transfer that learning into caring for others.

Our Executive Director recently shared:  “When our West side group graduated last summer, I was struck by the comments of a woman who shared how helpful it was to share her grief about the death of her nephew and to realize that she wasn’t alone, but in community with others who had experienced the same type of loss. She took the concepts we taught to help her family members express the emotions they were feeling, but hadn’t had the space to express. Another member of the group shared her theory that many people turn to violence as a way to publicly express rage because they do not have a safe, acceptable space to talk about their grief. Her dream is to work within her family to talk about grief and sadness and then to expand this to her congregation.”

Bishop Anderson House hopes to partner with Rush University Medical Center in 2018 to provide more valuable training to affect change in our neighborhood.

The Mission of ALIVE!
The mission of the ALIVE! Research Partnership is to partner with the African American church community to design and develop a program to build healthy lifestyles within the congregations of the five African American churches and reduce the burden of chronic disease in our communities.

The Vision of ALIVE!
The vision of the ALIVE! Research Partnership is to expand concepts of wholeness in the African American church to incorporate physical wellness and healthy lifestyle in order to reduce the disproportionately high rate of chronic illness and disability among African Americans.