What Is ARISE?

ARISE is “A Regional Initiative Supporting Empowerment”

ARISE is a coalition of local congregations and community groups who are taking a proactive instead of a reactive approach toward helping the needy and revitalizing our region. Instead of running soup kitchens and homeless shelters, we are empowering the poor and people of faith and conscience to connect with their government to gain training, jobs, housing, quality education, and equal justice.

ARISE currently has 35 organizations in Albany, Rensselaer, and Schenectady counties, whose memberships total more than 12,000 people. We are interracial and interfaith, inviting participation from community organizations as well as religious congregations.

Our MISSION is to build a power organization made up of congregations and other community groups, enabling them both to revitalize their own membership and to improve communities in the Capital District, especially its distressed neighborhoods.

Our METHOD is

To strengthen community and build leaders in member organizations;
To mobilize people of faith and conscience to be leaders in reshaping public policy;
To empower people in distressed neighborhoods to have a say in developing positive solutions; and
To unite suburbs and cities in an agenda for shared prosperity and social justice.

As an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, ARISE is part of a nationwide network of community organizations that use the power of organized people to bring about positive change in their communities. Gamaliel gives us access to powerful training programs and proven processes for building our capacity, but it is our members who do the work and make the decisions for ARISE.

As an organized body of member organizations, ARISE works on a trimester calendar to raise money, to build our base, and to take public action. In the first trimester, we conduct a major fundraising banquet. The second trimester is devoted to core teams who choose projects to strengthen their own group and the neighborhood where it is located.

Our annual Public Meeting is the culmination of our third trimester, in which task forces work on state, regional and local issues selected by our members. To prepare for this meeting, ARISE’s task forces send teams of ordinary citizens to interview people of power and influence in our region, listening for potential positive steps. We are systematically building relationships and holding conversations with the powers that be so that our members’ views and initiatives are informed, heard, and effective. Some of these key decision-makers are willing to appear on stage at our public meeting and to commit to positive action steps that our task forces have proposed.