SEAL: Social Justice, Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership
In 2019, ABC launched the Social Justice, Equity, Advocacy and Leadership (SEAL) initiative, a unique program designed to attract, educate, and develop the next generation of community leaders. The SEAL curriculum links undergraduate coursework with secondary school enrichments and civic education for youth from low-income neighborhoods. Ultimately, SEAL will assist in producing students who are advocates of social change so that when they graduate they have a firm sense of social justice.
The SEAL initiative uses an interdisciplinary and justice lens approach to weave applied scholarship, biblical liberation ethics, and theology to achieve justice outcomes for the well-being of oppressed communities. In support of the mission of ABC, it is a theologically grounded moral vision for civic engagement. Simply put, the purpose of the SEAL initiative is to cultivate theological, ethical, and civic knowledge to advance justice. Its goal is to teach individuals how to become advocates for justice in society through collaborative leadership and civic learning and social justice projects.
Inaugural funding for SEAL came from the Dan and Margaret Maddox Charitable Fund, and served as the first step toward building an equity-based, justice-centered, integrated learning curriculum that fosters cradle-to-community leadership success for children in our community. By leveraging historic assets of ABC, social assets of the community, and civic assets of the city, the SEAL model gives youth access to systems of power, and levers of agency that they can see, touch, and relate to for continued development and growth.