Man on a Mission

James Giles, CEO of Back to Basics Outreach MinistriesJames Giles, CEO of Back to Basics Outreach Ministries is calling on service providers, churches, not-for-profits, ministries, and individuals to combat the depression in Buffalo with a collaborative effort this summer in Niagara Square. The free event is scheduled for July 17 from 12-9pm and features an impressive line up of speakers including Nicky Cruz and musicians including Buffalo's own 500 voice Rise Up Choir.

Your event is scheduled for July 17th in Niagara Square. Your expecting thousands to attend with Nicky Cruz as one of your main speakers, what are you trying to accomplish through Kingdom Vision?

Kingdom vision is a response to two events that have taken place in the city of Buffalo. First off, there is a spirit that exists in Buffalo that says, "We can't work together unless there is a tragedy involved." We want to combat that by establishing a community that is willing to work together all the time to prevent things from happening. So Kingdom Vision is a response to address that problem. The other problem is the decrease in the number of dollars available for human service programs. The community is feeling a little depressed about that and no one is providing any answers that they can wrap their minds around. Kingdom Vision is an effort or collaboration to bring the community together to say, listen we are going to do something to help

How many organizations are working with you?

We have about 10-12 organizations working with us. A number of big agencies that are saying, yes we can come together to help in an ongoing way. We want to set up a community collaboration to respond to the needs in our city.

You mentioned Kingdom Vision serving as a catalyst to get things moving. Can you talk about that?

The event itself, Kingdom Vision as a concert is just a catalyst to get us all together. On the day of the event it will be a concert atmosphere. We are going to have music, entertainment, public speakers who are going to come with a message of inspiration, hope and information to advise and let people know there are a lot of services still available and many of them will be at the event but it brings everybody to the table and then we can discuss what we can do ongoing to combat some of the conditions in the city of Buffalo.

Why is it important to work together for change in Buffalo?

It is a biblical principle that says, "One can send a thousand to flight, two can send ten thousand to flight." Which tells me what we can do by ourselves no where compares to what we can accomplish if we unite our forces together, if we unite our resources together and bring those resources to bear. We can turn this community around spiritually. We want to give a message of hope where there is depression and frustration. We want to send some inspiration and let people know, "hey we are a good city, we are the city of good neighbors, and we can come together and turn things around."

What do you see happening after the event?

There will be a lot of buzz around what happened and more so behind the scenes there will be a huge effort to connect with this experience. The experience is- here is a group of people representing the city of Buffalo and they have the well being of the city at heart and they are scrambling to put together an effort to solve some of the city's problems beyond government and beyond our own agency agenda. We are going to come together and do this on an ongoing way and we are going to be looking at some of the projects that need to be supported. We are starting a movement to all year round bring change in our community.