Description: What can one person do to change the world? Be inspired by real stories of ordinary people who changed their neighborhoods. Transforming Communities will give you the vision, the tools, and the encouragement to start your own transformations.
Brief description: Sandhya Rani Jha serves as Director of the Oakland Peace Center, a collective of innovative nonprofits working to create justice and peace in the city of Oakland, California, and the Bay Area. Ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Jha is the author of Pre-Post-Racial America: Spiritual Stories from the Front Lines and Room at the Table: Struggle for Unity and Equality in Disciples History. She is an antiracism trainer as well as a faith-rooted organizer, working in interfaith, denominational, and Oakland-specifi c contexts. Her podcast, Hope from the Hood, is available on iTunes and at sandhyajha.com.
Review Quotes:
"The stories in this book reminded me of songs by Woody Guthrie and art by Marc Chagall: rays of hope lighting up a dark landscape. This is a book to be cherished." --Eboo Patel, author of Interfaith Leadership: A Primer
"Sandhya's stated goal--which she ably achieves here--is simple yet arduous: to get us out of our stifling cynicism so that we may see deeply, listen intently, act justly, and love radically. To break down our world-weariness and its consequent inactivity, she beautifully fuses the enduring wisdom of faith and justice movements with the raw tactility and wounded victories of on-the-ground work, in ways that both disarm and charm. To be sure, her scholarship is needed more than ever, for it is nuanced yet accessible, technical yet gritty, erudite yet disruptive."-- José Francisco Morales Torres, Director of Pastoral Formation, Disciples Seminary Foundation, Claremont, California
"Describing the convicted, creative, courageous initiatives of people in our own communities, Sandhya Jha focuses a narrative beam of light on the moral arc of the universe as it bends toward justice. Thank you, Sandhya, for helping us lift our eyes to see possibility and hope--and a pathway to our own involvement." -- Sharon E. Watkins, author of Whole: A Call to Unity in Our Fragmented World