A city does not feel a mission statement. It feels a person from the neighborhood saying what the work is. This video is just over three minutes. Reverend Don Ackerman, who introduces himself as lead pastor of Crossroads United Methodist Church and executive director of Canton for All People, welcomes you to Canton and says the point is whole, healthy communities. He puts more than 200 years of the church next to a newer effort, started, as he tells it, by the church and family foundations, because ideas could not stay on a shelf.
What the video actually does is walk from food to houses. He says a weekly meal became feeding over 6,000 people a month, five days a week, in two places. He says they listened to the Shorb neighborhood, including the kids, and started acquiring vacant homes to renovate into safer, more affordable places to live. The close is not a donation form. It is a list of what they believe people should have: health care, housing, education, and a neighborhood where they feel safe.
Another community group hiring Beacon for a video like this is buying the director on camera, in the time a visitor will give a homepage. The annual report can hold the spreadsheet. The video is the person who will say Canton's best days are still ahead.
Canton for All People did not need a narrator to summarize the pastor. They needed him to say it. That is what this video is for.
Read transcript Video dialogue and narration
[00:00.000] Welcome to Canton, Ohio. I'm Reverend Don Ackerman, lead pastor of Crossroads United Methodist Church
[00:24.480] and executive director of Canton for All People. And together we are people seeking to improve
[00:29.840] the quality of life for the residents of Canton by creating whole and healthy
[00:34.380] communities where all people can pursue their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. And
[00:39.740] while Crossroads has been serving this community as First Methodist and Church
[00:43.780] of the Savior and now Crossroads for over 200 years, Canton for All People was
[00:48.700] started by the generosity of our church, the Lemon and Deha family foundations,
[00:52.880] with this idea that Canton has its best days in front of it and that our
[00:59.060] neighborhoods deserve crazy ideas and big dreams. And what we knew was that
[01:05.420] these crazy ideas couldn't just stay crazy ideas. They couldn't be just some
[01:09.900] plan on a shelf. So as a church we began providing healthy food to people once a
[01:14.660] week. And now we feed over 6,000 people a month in the Canton community five days
[01:20.020] a week in two separate locations. We also started listening deeply to the
[01:25.100] residents to the shore of neighborhood, listening to their hopes, their dreams,
[01:28.760] their joys and their hurts. We even listened to the kids. We hosted kids
[01:33.240] program every day throughout the summer and once you know it the kids had the
[01:36.880] same crazy dreams that we had. Dreams of a better future, dreams of better homes.
[01:41.760] And so we said there had to be a way to take the complaints of the people that
[01:47.400] say hey we have too many abandoned and vacant homes in our neighborhood and
[01:50.680] take those God-given assets and provide for the needs of the community that said
[01:55.400] I needed a better and more affordable place to live.
[01:58.860] So Canton for All People has begun to acquire homes in the Shorb neighborhood to renovate
[02:03.100] them and provide better life-giving spaces for people to live in this neighborhood because
[02:08.620] all people have divine worth and are worthy of safe and affordable housing and places
[02:14.940] to live.
[02:16.340] Friends, this just can't be the end.
[02:19.540] You also can be this movement for all people who can say that Canton's best days are in
[02:25.800] front of them.
[02:27.200] So friends, here's to those better days, and here's to working for a Canton for all people.
[02:32.600] We believe all people should have access to quality health care.
[02:37.260] We believe all people deserve affordable and healthy housing and a quality education.
[02:42.300] We believe that all people should have neighborhoods where they feel safe, loved and included.
