Dream Team Project
The LUM Dream Team Project is a fund as well as an outreach & networking initiative.
OUTREACH & NETWORKING – The Dream Team Project includes creating a network of “urban ministries” in the East North Central states for the purpose of sharing ideas and potentially resources. LUM will publish a Dream Team eNewsletter four times a year. If you wish to be included in the Dream Team network or wish to contribute to the newsletter, please email dreamteam@lumserve.org.
THE FUND – The fund will support research and evaluation that will foster the goals of LUM and address its needs. Research funded by this permanent fund will document societal-level, state-level and local-level trends in poverty, explain fluctuations in various types of poverty, give the LUM board the data needed to modify its policies and programs and show how participation in these programs impacts low-income people over time. The Dream Team Fund will allow LUM to subsidize original studies, secondary analyses and meta-analyses of societal trends related to the causes and consequences of poverty, the circumstances that foster poverty among individuals in our community (and other comparable communities), the effects poverty has on Hoosiers and their families, churches efforts to serve the poor and build a more just and equitable society, and the implications that theses analyses have on the policies and programs of LUM and its member churches.
DONATE – If you wish to invest in this research, please consider a donation to the LUM Dream Team Fund for Research & Evaluation. To donate, click here:
Dream Team Fund
Additional information on the LUM Dream Team Fund, please call or email Josh Prokopy, Dream Team Project director (dreamteam@lumserve.org |765-423-2691).
LUM Dream Team History
On September 17, 2014, Lafayette Urban Ministry announced the creation of a new fund to support program-related research and evaluation at LUM — the LUM Dream Team Fund for Research and Evaluation.
The LUM Dream Team members — pictured above L to R — the Rev. Don Nead, Thomas Hull Ph.D, the Rev. Ron Elly , and Professor James Davidson Ph.D — were among the early planners and developers of what became the Lafayette Urban Ministry.
In 1976, only four years after LUM was incorporated, these four individuals conducted a research study that led to the formation of the LUM board model of participating member churches, which is still in place today. (This study was funded by the Lilly Endowment.) In 2014, the Dream Team members gave a combined gift of $40,000 to LUM to start this new research program, whose purpose is to further research and evaluation to benefit the children and families served by the Lafayette Urban Ministry.