From the Spring 2002 Newsletter:

FAVAN Members Challenged to Raise the Child, Build the Village

It takes a village to raise a child, said Khatib Waheed.  But what does it take to build a village?

Waheed, Senior Associate from the Aspen Institute, spoke to members, supporters and staff at the FAVAN annual meeting.  Waheed's point was clear.  Paying attention to a child -- the individual -- is not enough.  We also need to pay attention to the village -- that is to say, the structures of the community.

Crime and violence are not just law enforcement or police concerns, Waheed said.  They are community concerns.  And on the other side of that equation, police brutality is not just the concern of law enforcement. It is a community concern.  He said he believed that the great majority of police officers are good and decent people.  He also believed that the great majority of people of color and the poor are good and decent people.  And he suggested that the small number of bad police officers may have had formative experiences very similar to those of the small number of wrong-doers in the community.

Waheed posed a rhetorical question and answered it with his dual concern for individual and community.  How do I approach the work of dealing with violence? he asked.  From a family strengthening and community building perspective.  In other words he would pay attention both to the individual and to the structures of the community.  The response to violence requires important levels of interaction among residents, parents, law enforcement officers, health and human service workers and youth.  Waheed  said the contest for community work was improving the conditions of well-being for children, families and neighborhoods within a social justice framework.  But again, the results are much more limited when we fail to adequately address both the individual and structural causes for bad outcomes for children families and neighborhoods.

Waheed took the both/and approach into other areas as well.  For example, he said we should not be seeking a redistribution of wealth -- where some people had to lose wealth so others could gain wealth - but we should rather work for increasing wealth -- a win-win solution for all involved.

Waheed said he believed the success of the civil rights movement in the United States was due to the fact that it was rooted in God.  He feared that modern-day social reformers had lost that rootedness, but he stated a firm belief that interfaith efforts such as FAVAN were important if progress is to be made.