Yvonne M. Vissing is a sociology professor at Salem State College in Salem, Mass. She is the author of Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Homeless Children and Families in Small-Town America and can speak about the spiritual lives of homeless children.

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that aims to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children and elderly adults. Contact Mary Mahon or Bethanne Fox.

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) is a non-profit child advocacy organization that champions policies and programs that lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education and a moral and spiritual foundation. The CDF often works closely with faith-based organizations to reach their goals.

The Association of Jewish Family & Children’s Agencies is an association of over 100 Jewish family and child welfare organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Megan Manelli is the director of communications and marketing.

The Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago surveyed 1,590 African-Americans, whites and Latinos aged 15 to 25 in several Midwest cities on subjects including rap music, premarital sex, politics and the “color-blind” society. The results included: 58 percent of black youth listen to rap music daily, compared with 45 percent of Latinos and 23 percent of […]

Benjamin Chavis Muhammad lead the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, a nonprofit founded in 2001 to use hiphop as a catalyst for improving society and addressing poverty and injustice. Contact through Jody L. Miller.

Jamsheed K. Choksy, Indiana University professor of Central Eurasian studies, history and religious studies, has written about the dissemination of ideas about evil through Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Mithraism and Islam, and the development of moral codes based on good and evil. He sees more scholarship focusing on collective responses to evil and on societal inequities, the […]

Alan J. Hawkins is a professor of family life at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He earned a doctorate in human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University in 1990.

CATCH is a partnership among the city of Boise, Idaho; 12 local congregations; and the business community to provide long-term housing and supportive services to the area’s homeless population. Each participating congregation sponsors a homeless family’s housing for six months or a year; CATCH also is developing a 10-year plan to address homelessness.