CONTENTS
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BUSINESS
Feed. The. Need. The Waste Not OC Coalition works to get garbage-bound food into the hands of those who need it most. | BY JARED McKIERNAN
POVERTY | Winter 2014/15 2
EDITOR’S NOTE
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NEWSBITES
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MY CORNER | BY BOB DOCTER
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INTERVIEW
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A book with the power to filter water and teach safe hygiene and sanitation habits. | BY KRISTINE BENDER
34 EDUCATION
FIRST PERSON
A slew of difficulty led this woman to The Salvation Army Female Emergency Shelter, and now she returns to offer support. | BY ANGEL
INITIATIVE Hack to End Homelessness married the tech industry with the community to make change. | BY LIZETH BELTRAN
Does marriage affect poverty?
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Transforming water
A new cookbook for tight budgets says you can eat well on $4 a day. | BY CHRISTIN DAVIS
20 FAMILY
Client-caseworker relationships can make all of the difference in The Salvation Army’s Pathway of Hope. | BY CAROL SEILER
INSPIRATION
Hack to give back
Serving to solving
32 TECHNOLOGY
A vision to love
30 RELIGION
| BY ERICA ANDREWS
Frugal flavor
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Vol. 20, No. 4
Research displays a complexity of connections between poverty, family status and underlying labor market realities. | BY ANN HUFF STEVENS
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Finding the end To eradicate the issue, The Poverty Initiative focuses on the who and why. | BY CHADWICK PHILLIPS
36 ARTS Artists and allies
Poverty and the Arts diminishes class lines, offering solace and community. | BY VIVIAN GATICA
40 GOVERNMENT Finding coverage
Social health care option for low-income citizens expands. | BY KIMIYA SHOKOOHI
42 GOOD MEDIA 44 GOOD STUFF
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EDITOR’S NOTE
SINCE 1943, we’ve accepted that people are motivated to achieve certain needs, moving on to the next only after one is fulfilled. Psychologist Abraham Maslow defined these needs in a hierarchy that is often depicted within a pyramid, ranging from our basic needs— both physiologically and emotionally—and our growth needs, or self-actualization. He asserted that the longer a need persists, the stronger it becomes and that often progress is disrupted by failure to meet lower level needs. Not surprisingly, the longer a person is without food, the more hungry he becomes. The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service found that an estimated 14.3 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time in 2013, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The Pew Research Global Attitudes Project found in 2013 that 24 percent of Americans said they had difficulty affording food during the past year. Research has shown the sudden or gradual loss of one’s home can be a stressor of sufficient severity to produce symptoms of psychological trauma. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), more than 1 million people are served in HUD-supported emergency, transitional and permanent housing programs each year. Yet, the total number of persons who experience homelessness may be twice as high. And that’s just two of our most primary needs. The nation’s poverty rate dropped in 2013 for the first time since 2006, to 14.5 percent of the population from 15 percent in 2012, believed to be a result of an increase in people with full-time jobs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means there were 45.3 million people living below the poverty threshold—say an annual income of less than $23,624 for a household with four people, including two related children. “It is quite true that man lives by bread alone—when there is no bread,” Maslow is credited as saying. “But what happens to man’s desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?” In finding self-actualization, Maslow believed that a person comes to find a meaning to life that is important to them. This continual process of “becoming” leads people in different directions based on their unique motivation. He said it occurs when a person experiences the world for what it is and has feelings of joy and wonder. Isn’t that what we want for all people? In this issue, Caring tackles the issue of poverty—what affects it, what it means to live in poverty and ideas to find the end of it. If we can do something about it, as Dr. Eric Handler, deputy health officer in Orange County, Calif., says in relation to ending hunger in the area (“Feed. The. Need.,” page 26), then why aren’t we doing it? Let’s come alongside people to meet needs so that we each may find joy and wonder and live to do good.
“Poverty is a very complicated issue, but feeding a child isn’t.” —J E F F B R I D G E S
E D I T O R I N C H I E F Robert Docter, Ph.D. M A N A G I N G E D I T O R Christin Davis A R T D I R E C T O R Kevin Dobruck A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R Erica Andrews A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R Jared McKiernan E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA N T Vivian Gatica W E B E D I T O R Shannon Forrey G R A P H I C D E S I G N E R Adriana Rivera B U S I N E S S M A N A G E R Karen Gleason C I R C U L AT I O N M A N A G E R Arlene DeJesus
Caring (ISSN 2164-5922) is published quarterly by The Salvation Army USA Western Territory, led by Territorial Commander Commissioner James Knaggs and Chief Secretary Colonel Dave Hudson. Send letters to the editor to caring@usw.salvationarmy.org. Subscription prices (one year) $15 U.S., $18 Canada and Mexico, $20 other international. Subscribe via caringmagazine.org. Subscriber services call 562-491-8343, email caring@usw.salvationarmy.org, or mail Caring, Subscriber Services, P.O. Box 22646, Long Beach, CA 90802. Advertising call 562-491-8332 or email caring@usw.salvationarmy.org. Article proposals or reprints email
CHRISTIN DAVIS is the managing editor of
caring@usw.salvationarmy.org.
New Frontier Publications. Connect with Christin website caringmagazine.org
FOLLOW CARING
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SOLAR POWER ANYWHERE Solar company Goal Zero is working to bring its technology to communities around the world that live without electricity with a rechargeable waterproof battery that can provide solar power. “Our mission is to put reliable power in the hands of every human being on the planet,” said Jonathan Munk, vice president of marketing for Goal Zero. “That means we design our product to live anywhere, and we would love to get this in the hands of people who have no access to reliable power.”
ARMY RESPONDS TO EBOLA The Salvation Army is working against Africa’s recent Ebola outbreak, the most severe in recorded history in terms of human cases and with over 4,000 fatalities. The Canada and Bermuda Territory is partnered with Liberia and Sierra Leone in The Salvation Army’s Partner in Mission program, and responded to the emergency by providing sanitizer, chlorine and other sterilizing chemicals; gloves, mouth guards and safety buckets; food items including beans, rice and cooking oil; and protective wear for 200 medical professionals working with Ebola patients. CARING
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In the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Mortality in the United States report for 2012, life expectancy climed to a record high of 78.8 years. Female life expectancy was 81 years, 4.8 years higher than males at 76 years.
PURSUING TECH Facebook, Pinterest and Box partnered to create Women Entering and Staying in Tech (WEST) to enable one-on-one mentorship for women in the early to middle stages of their technology careers. The need for technical roles is expected to reach 1.4 million in 2020, yet the U.S. Census Bureau found that women’s representation in computer occupation has declined since the 1990s. A pilot program will begin in early 2015 with women in the California Bay Area in technical roles like engineering, operations, product, design, and web development.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE
AIM TO END EXTREME POVERTY According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), approximately 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty. With the successful completion of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 1 of decreasing the poverty rate of developing countries by half in 2010, USAID has now set a goal to end extreme poverty by 2030. It will do so by maintaining and strengthening existing efforts, identifying and reinforcing work against fragility that links to poverty in order to achieve resilience, adopting more innovative, scientific and technology-based ideas, and creating more partnerships to unite more people for the cause.
FREE HAIRCUTS IN NEW YORK When media outlets got word that Mark Bustos walked the streets of New York City each Sunday looking for people in need of a haircut and fresh start, his story went viral. However, he started doing this in 2012 on a trip to the Philippines where he rented a salon chair and offered haircuts to children in the area. Bustos then did the same for people in need in Costa Rica, Jamaica and Los Angeles. His motto: Be awesome to somebody.
SOCIAL ACTION According to the Social Change Impact Report from Walden University, 92 percent of American’s took action for social change this past year.
Right from the beginning, William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army, was concerned with poverty and all it brought with it. It simply didn’t seem just that this sizeable population should be marginalized to such an extent. Today, we think of it as economic justice. I’ve always been intrigued by the word “justice.” It has within it aspects of “fairness,” being free from bias or injustice, not playing favorites. I’ve also equated justice with “getting what is deserved,” sometimes a punishment and sometimes a reward. So “economic justice,” to me, means a fair and just distribution of resources within an economic system where all persons get what they deserve. I think society struggles with this issue. The official overall poverty rate in 2014 indicates that 14.5 percent of our total population lives in poverty. Over 16.7 percent of America’s children live in it. There also appears a large difference when the poverty rate is measured by race. About 35 percent of the poor are African-American and 33 percent are Hispanic, while more than 38 percent of Native Americans live in poverty. These data don’t imply economic justice to me. What I see in these data are indicators of slow economic recovery grinding to a halt. The products of poverty are devastating and long lasting. They eat away at individuals physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. What kind of rest does a child receive when he or she shares a cot with two or three other family members? Because hungry children find it impossible to concentrate or learn, school districts are now the primary food and nutrition providers for children in poverty. They are the principal avenue of initial health care and immunization. They also must seek to find ways to facilitate the kinds of social development once assumed by the family. At the same time, school dropout rates show a gradual
improvement over 10 years. Young people who drop out of school are more likely to be unemployed, earn less money, receive more public assistance, and if female, are more likely to have a child at a younger age and remain single. Dropouts also comprise a disproportionate percentage of the prison population. The state governments find themselves in a fiscal quagmire. Weak politicians refuse to address the reality that most people are willing to share the burden of slightly increased taxes in order to provide essential services for all the people—including those in poverty. Instead, politicians simply raise fees and require payment for services once provided for all the people, by all the people through state government. The result, of course, is that the poor are unable to pay the required fee and are, therefore, denied access to whatever service is offered. Trend lines seem to indicate that the government seems to want to shift responsibility for social services to charitable organizations. Current programs funded by government agencies, however, are never sufficiently funded to run the helping program in the manner the government requires. The charity, it seems, must make up the difference by seeking donations from a population that believes the government provides for the program. It also means that the employees of the program must exist more on empathy than edibles. I don’t know how we ever get the job done so well. Thank God for compassion.
The official overall poverty rate in 2014 indicates that 14.5 percent of our total population lives in poverty. Over 16.7 percent of America’s children live in it.
CHRISTIAN LEADER RECOGNIZED The U.S. Congress honored America’s Christian Credit Union (ACCU) with the Angel in Adoption™ award. ACCU President and CEO Mendell L. Thompson received the award from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI). Since ACCU began its adoption ministry in 2009, it has helped unite over 1,100 children with families through the award-winning Adoption Loan Program. 4
BOB DOCTER, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief
of New Frontier Publications. Connect with Bob website caringmagazine.org facebook caringmagazine twitter caringmagazine email bob.docter@usw.salvationarmy.org
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MY CORNER
NEWSBITES
AMERICANS LIVING LONGER
Teens Exploring Technology works to curb youth involvement in gangs. BY E R I CA AN D R E W S
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“You have a lot of kids who are very poor in the inner city and the biggest influence right now for boys are gangs and that’s something we need to change.” —OSCAR MENJIVAR
O
scar Menjivar’s parents knew they needed to leave El Salvador —an epicenter of Central America’s gang crisis—to make a better life for their son. They immigrated to the United States, yet where they ended up wasn’t much better than what they left behind. Not far from where the family touched down in Watts, Calif., the Los Angeles Riots broke out in 1992 after a group of mostly white officers was found innocent of beating Rodney King, an African-American man, following a high-speed police pursuit. According to the State Office of Emergency Services, the riots resulted in 53 deaths, 2,400 injuries and over $800 million in property damage. Menjivar, just 14 at the time, witnessed much of the violence that ensued. “You learn how to not be afraid or to not show fear and you learn where you can and can’t go; that’s something you really know when you grow up in the inner city,” Menjivar said, pointing to the projects next door to his old high school. There, a security guard in black and white stood watch as students crossed through the massive metal gates that border the campus and a police car slowly drove by. “I remember...not being able to stay after school past five because I’d have to make sure before it got dark to go home,” he said. Menjivar said he struggled to learn English as a kid in a new country, but his father, a labor worker, and his mother, a maid, always encouraged him to focus on education. “They wanted me to do something different,” he said, “something they couldn’t achieve at the time.” He was accepted into Cal Poly Pomona University to study computer programs at about the same time that a good friend of his became heavily involved with a gang. “He got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and now he’s doing life in prison,” Menjivar said. Another friend was killed due to gang violence. “So me knowing this story of my friends, I’m thinking CARING
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Left: Oscar Menjivar Right: Kids in Teens Exploring Technology work on tech projects.
things really haven’t changed,” Menjivar said. “You have a lot of kids who are very poor in the inner city and the biggest influence right now for boys are gangs and that’s something we need to change.” According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, both Latino and African Americans make up more than 88 percent of all documented gangs in Los Angeles County. In addition, African-Americans account for 39 percent of the total prison and jail proportion and Hispanics account for nearly 21 percent, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. So, Menjivar and a few friends decided to give inner city boys something to aspire toward. “We decided that we were going to tackle the social issue, which was ‘how do we best prepare those kids that most need it in the inner city?’ and ‘how do we engage them?’” Menjivar said. “So for us it was let’s use technology to engage them and give them opportunities—work opportunities, career opportunities and figure out ways that they can get into real jobs and real careers and into the educational system.” Menjivar founded Teens Exploring Technology in 2008. It teaches teens 14-17 years old how to become tech entrepreneurs by learning computer programming, business development and public speaking. The 15-week program lasts five hours each weekday. Participants decide on topics they’d 8
like to learn more about, including iPhone and android development or web development. At program completion, Menjivar and his staff of volunteers take the boys to Silicon Valley for a tour of the different tech companies—including Facebook, Twitter and Google. To date, all 200 of his students have gone on to four-year universities, including Syracuse, UCLA and Stanford. Menjivar said his biggest hope is that they will come back to the inner city to be pillars of change for the community. “It’s more than just ‘go and get a job,’” Menjivar said. “It’s about ‘go and learn how to learn and see how you explore something that you love to do’ and if they continue to explore things they love to do, then they’ll do well not just for themselves, but for their family members as well.” One teen in the program created an app that helps high school students prep for the SATs. Another created an app that helps to connect inner city teens for meetings with others in a safe place, away from gang activity. Menjivar said the program receives 300 applications each year, but can only accept 30 because of funding. “It doesn’t just touch the life of one individual, it touches the life of everybody in that family because now I can go back and help my parents, now I can go back and help my sisters— it’s a trickle effect,” Menjivar said. “It’s something we can continue in how we eliminate poverty or reduce poverty by giving access to great educational systems to kids.” 9
ERICA ANDREWS is the assistant editor of Caring.
Connect with Erica website caringmagazine.org facebook caringmagazine twitter caringmagazine email erica.andrews@usw.salvationarmy.org
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INITIATIVE INSPIRATION
F R U G A L F L AV O R New cookbook invites you to eat well on a budget B Y CHR IS TIN DAV IS • PHOT OS COURT ESY OF L EANNE BROW N
ith just $4 a day, you can eat well and enjoy it. That was Leanne Brown’s goal in writing “Good and Cheap”—a cookbook for tight budgets. Submitted as her capstone project for a master’s degree in food studies at New York University, Brown shared a free downloadable copy of the book online and started a Kickstarter campaign with a goal to raise $10,000 to print copies for those without Internet access. The campaign raised over $144,000 and in five months the online version was downloaded more than 500,000 times. “The better I get at cooking, the better my life is as I can make food exactly what I want it to be,” Brown said. “There is so much mental health good that can happen from eating well, and food is a way to show love. When you can cook and show love to yourself and people around you, sharing that skill is deeply meaningful.” Brown said she grew up spending time in the kitchen with “anyone who would let me in,” and took ownership of her own food preparation when she became a vegetarian at 14. After college, while working for a city councilor in Canada, Brown found new meaning in food.
“I was involved in city policy, and most interested in food policy,” she said. “It was a whole area I’d never thought of. At a city level it’s about land use—encouraging farmers markets, local foods. I was really interested, and wished I could work on this all the time.” She enrolled at NYU and studied the evolution and cultural elements of cuisine, the economics of food and the food system in America. Each month, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, provides over 46 million people with a monthly debit card stipend for food based on need. “The recipe book has beautiful photos, and is ethnically and culturally sensitive,” said Gail Frank, who holds a doctorate of public health in epidemiology and a professorship at California State University, Long Beach. “There is great variety—everything from grits to tofu. From the standpoint of meeting anyone whose pocketbook is restricted, this would certainly have appeal. You can dream big, feel positive and empowered and have marvelous tasting food.” Frank teaches and wrote a textbook on community nutrition,
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served for 19 years as a volunteer with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association), and co-directs a community program focused toward parents of overweight children. She acknowledged that it’s not easy to make ends meet and eat healthy, and said eating well on $4 per day would be difficult. “No matter what your income level, taste is a factor that motivates what you eat,” Frank said. “But cost is the next big item there. When you don’t have the money to eat and you’re feeding your family, you’re going to buy things that fill people up.” This, she said, leads to purchasing foods that are higher in fat, salt and sugar. “Hunger drives us to just eat what’s available,” she said. “A family high on stress and low on time would first need to determine what resources and support are available to them, and then I would direct people toward staples.” From potatoes to milk or eggs, Frank said the key to using staples to eat well and on budget is menu planning. Plus, one must have a kitchen, time and some inventory in order to make use of “Good and Cheap,” which is also addressed in its opening pages with a guide to building
a pantry. To determine costs, Brown collected pantry prices from four grocery stores in Inwood, a relatively low-income neighborhood on the north tip of Manhattan, and looked at online grocery stores or nationwide averages collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for fruits and vegetables in season. Brown said the book isn’t challenging you to live on so little, but it is a resource in case that’s your reality. “We don’t have control over a lot of things in our lives, and food is somewhat constrained by where we live, but it’s a basic thing every single day that can bring tremendous pleasure and give energy,” Brown said. “We should enjoy every meal we have. It’s not either pleasurable or healthy eating; those two things ideally are together. The most enjoyable meals are the ones that are also good for you, that leave you feeling good afterward.” For example, Brown said, everyone enjoys a hamburger but “a beef burger makes you feel really sleepy. The protein is very heavy and a particular fat makes you tired.” So she wrote a recipe for a half beef and half lentil burger patty. 11
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Leanne Brown
“The better I get at cooking, the better my life is as I can make food exactly what I want it to be.” —LEANNE BROWN
DOWNLOAD GOOD AND CHEAP at leannebrown.com/ cookbooks
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“The flavors meld together and taste nice together,” she said. “Merged, you have a great way to construct your meat and something that leaves you a little lighter but you still get the pleasure of eating a burger.” Chef Paul Penney of Aussie in the Kitchen joined the Kickstarter campaign as a certified personal chef and member of the U.S. Personal Chefs Association. “It really intrigued me because I’m here in Detroit and we do have a lot of people using the SNAP program and I do a lot of work at the farmer’s market, where you can get double bucks on SNAP,” he said. “I have tried to challenge the notion of eating on $4 per day quite ferociously and have met it.” Penney appears twice a month on Fox 2 Detroit’s Cooking School, making some of Brown’s recipes— from eggplant tomato pasta to corn chowder. He is featuring one of her recipes in his segment each month. “I’m a strong believer in sitting around the table with good food to bring people together to talk,” Penney said. “You can have different political or religious views, but food tends to be an equalizer.” Brown said eating well can also help you gain some control of your finances. “Cooking from scratch or close to it allows you to have significantly more control over how much you’re spending and knowing what’s going in to everything,” she said. “If you’re on a restricted budget, you can look through ‘Good and Cheap’ and see recipes you hadn’t thought of using and ingredients you hadn’t thought to try before. Hopefully something seems appealing and can bring new life to eating, and can help stretch money to get better value out of your food and have healthier food more often.” Over 500 organizations applied to receive the 8,000 12
free copies of “Good and Cheap” supported by the Kickstarter campaign, from food pantries, to farmers markets, housing authority offices and various clinics. A hospital in Boston purchased a large quantity of the cookbook to give to small nonprofits in surrounding communities for distribution with a goal of bettering public health outcomes in the region. “There is power in food and cooking as food is key to so many things in our lives,” Brown said. “The diversity of organizations interested in this is testament to it. Food is an important part of our lives.” CHRISTIN DAVIS is the managing editor of
New Frontier Publications. Connect with Christin website caringmagazine.org facebook caringmagazine twitter caringmagazine email christin.davis@usw.salvationarmy.org
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My path has led to self-realization, knowing the thing I have wanted
B Y AN G E L • I L L U S T R ATION B Y AUTUMN FR E DE R ICKSON
have experienced abuse. One time, when I lived with a lady with a gambling addiction, I was locked in a basement, unallowed to use the bathroom or eat. When she lost money, she’d take it out on me. The physical abuse continued until police removed me and I was off to my next temporary place. By the time I was nine, I had moved nine times and lived with six different couples. I have been close to death, and sometimes I wished I had died but something kept me alive, fighting to be loved. I was once kept in a room by a sex offender for six months. When I tried to get out, he threw me on the bed, choked me unconscious and punched me in my head. Afterward, I could hardly move. The damage to my throat lasted about three weeks. I married an abuser. I tried to leave many times but he kept finding me and my kids. I got a restraining order, but that didn’t stop him. One night he came to my house, drinking whiskey and angry. He got a knife and came up to me, saying he was going to fight me to the death for my children. With all my strength I pulled the knife away from him. When I went to the phone to call the police, he said, “Call; I’ll be waiting for them.” Afraid he would attack the police and get shot, I retreated. I went to bed, hoping he would leave, or pass out and sleep it off. He left but he returned, this time with his mother and brother. They took my children and put them in the car as they screamed and cried for me. His mother said, “All you have to do is call Child Protective Services [CPS] over and over
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saying you are really worried about the child’s safety and CPS will take them, or let you take them.” That’s what she did. With fabricated stories and lies, she said whatever she needed to to get away with it. I signed over my children to the State of Oregon because I was scared if I didn’t I would lose my life from this family. The system wasn’t working. In 2006, I was sitting with my ex-husband— whom I had to be around in order to see my children—when I had a vision. I saw two angels and they were carrying me to heaven. I heard God say, “If you get back with him, you will go to heaven.” I didn’t know whether to be scared of dying or happy to go. My path has led to self-realization, knowing the thing I have wanted the most is just to be loved. I realized that in my journey, God was making me strong to be able to reach others who suffer, especially these ladies I see on the streets. Here at The Salvation Army Female Emergency Shelter (SAFES) in downtown Portland I never would have made it if God did not love me through my advocate. God knew that, and sent her to help. She gave me the support and help I desperately needed. I thank God for SAFES, especially for her. I entered SAFES in July and left in September after securing permanent housing. Occasionally, I return to talk to women on the streets outside of SAFES. I listen to their stories and note what they need. I say, “I’m one of you.” It’s love that will change the world.
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LOCATE D IN DOW NTOW N Portland, Ore., The Salvation Army Female Emergency Shelter (SAFES) provides both a day shelter (7 a.m.-11 p.m.) and a dorm (6 p.m.-8 a.m.) along with services and support for women experiencing homelessness. It’s the only low-barrier shelter for women in the area, meaning women can be intoxicated or high, but they cannot bring any paraphernalia on site. Its mission is clear. “Our number one priority is to get the women housed,” said Bernadette Basilio, shelter director. “Each participant works with an advocate to get housed. When they are successful they then leave the shelter to move to their new home.”
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FIRST PERSON
A vision to love
the most is just to be loved.
INITIATIVE
B Y LI ZE T H B E LT R A N P H O T O S C O U RT E S Y O F HACK TO E ND HOME LE S S NE S S
ommuting to work is uneventful for most people, but for Seattle resident Candace Faber it’s a constant reminder of the people with no place to call home. “I work in Pioneer Square, a neighborhood that is at the heart of Seattle’s homeless population,” Faber said. “For us, the problem of homelessness is very visible; we see it every day on our way to work.” This year alone, over 9,200 individuals in Seattle’s King County identified as homeless in some way, whether on the street, in a shelter or in transitional housing, according to the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness. Faber, a communications strategist, had an idea that had long been ticking in her mindto create an event that would allow the technology industry to give back while facilitating the needs of the homeless community. So, in a business space in the middle of Pioneer Square, she formed Hack To End Homelessness (H2EH) in January. She assembled a team, from software developers to designers to nonprofit organizers, many of them volunteering over 100 hours. “Our challenge is doing this on a volunteer basis,” Faber said. “A couple of us did nothing else for three months.” Faber dedicated so much time to the project that she even sold her car to meet her more immediate needs while working on the H2EH initiative. One of Faber’s focal points was targeting the needs of service providers. H2EH collaborated with two local shelters—Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and YouthCare. Faber said it took time for her team to secure the support of service providers. “We had to gain the trust of the nonprofits and shelters,” Faber said. “You have to build something that is meaningful in working with the nonprofits and make sure the tech community is hearing them.” Over 100 volunteers assembled for the four-day event in early May. It kicked off with a screening of “Home,” a film by Mark Horvath, founder of Invisible People, a nonprofit dedicated to reshaping public perception on homelessness. Attendees viewed three art exhibits featuring photography by youth and families experiencing homelessness. The event concluded with participants splitting up into projects and presenting their end results. Duane Edwards is the senior vice president of product development at Globys, a company that specializes in contextual marketing, reporting and analytics. He felt that giving back in a creative way could inspire others to do the same so he helped sponsor the event.
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How the Hack To End Homelessness Initiative introduced Seattle techies to the greater community.
HACK TO GIVE BACK 17
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SAVE
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“One of the best parts about the event is it
w line! order on
connected nonprofits to technology people who
Your complete resource for social change.
might never associate with each other. It
a mobile social app is actually feasible.” —MARK HORVATH
The team that created the project “Maptastics” gathered data and development professionals to create a series of maps that show where people have the hardest time find affordable housing. Previous page: A volunteer works in front of a portrait of individuals facing homelessness.
The Rise of GendeR CapiTalism by SARAh KAPlAN & JACKIe VANdeRbRuG
The nexT sTaGe of finanCial inClusion by deAN KARlAN
Expert analysis
Total access
of trends and new models for social impact
to every informative SSIR issue ever published
a new Vision foR fundinG sCienCe
by SARAh KeARNey, FIoNA MuRRAy, & MATTheW NoRdAN
Fall2014 Volume 12, Number 4
Global Problem Solving Without the Globaloney By Pankaj Ghemawat
It’s time to put an end to the “flat world” thinking that guides the work of all too many social change organizations.
Fall 2014 / Vol. 12, No. 4
LIZETH BELTRAN is a freelance journalist
Global Problem Solving Without the Globaloney / The Rise of Gender Capitalism / The Next Stage of Financial Inclusion / A New Vision for Funding Science
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Coming away from the first H2EH event, Horvath said he was so inspired that he helped organize another in Syracuse, N.Y., in November. “One of the best parts about the event is it connected nonprofits to technology people who might never associate with each other,” Horvath said. “It showed me that making a mobile social app is actually feasible.” Faber said that one of the most successful projects was a data analysis project. United Way, one of the service providers, has an annual Community Resource Exchange where it provides those experiencing homelessness with everyday goods and collects data through surveys. “They brought the data to our event and what they discovered was it was very difficult to get insightful data or analysis because of the way the survey was conducted; in many cases the questions that were asked weren’t appropriate to specific answers United Way was looking for,” Farber said. Through the event, United Way made changes to its data intake and thought differently about the questions it asked the community. Faber hopes she will be able to bring the event to life again next year and continue to grow the relationship between techies and organizers. “Our capacity to continue to provide the service as an intermediary between the tech industry and service providers is something we really want,” Faber said. “We are hoping to make it sustainable—we want to make sure we do things right.”
to solving today’s pressing social problems
that illuminate what’s working today in nonprofits, foundations, and social enterprises Stanford Social Innovation Review
“[H2EH] gave employees a chance to use their skills in a different way,” Edwards said, “an impactful way to help those in our community who are in need.” Globys encourages its employees to give back each year by giving their time to a cause in the community. “Financial contributions were all I knew I could do,” Edwards said. “Marrying the tech industry with the community that directly benefits from volunteerism is something I had not seen.” One of the primary needs service providers emphasized was collecting data that would allow them to better serve the homeless community. H2EH spawned several apps that empowered service providers to do just that. We Count, created in collaboration with Union Gospel Mission, allows volunteers to track the specific needs of individuals living on the street. Through the app, service providers can securely access demographic and descriptive information of each individual struggling with homelessness and tag reports with GPS and time stamps. The We Are Visible app utilizes a peer network that allows the homeless community to help each other through social media. “I saw peer-to-peer support, homeless-to-homeless people helping each other on Twitter and it was amazing,” Horvath said. “Everyone’s connected to everyone (on social media) and they want to talk about being homelessness. I knew I needed to build a separate network.” Horvath is now looking to partner with homeless youth organizations that can use the app for peer-to-peer support. He said he hopes to expose more people to the stories of those in the homeless community. “Homelessness doesn’t discriminate,” Horvath said. “Homelessness is changing more and more every day.” CARING
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THE COMPLEXITY OF CONNECTIONS BETWEEN POVERTY, FAMILY STATUS AND UNDERLYING LABOR MARKET REALITIES
DOES MARRIAGE AFFECT POVERTY? B Y A N N HU FF STEV EN S
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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the War on Poverty, an initiative launched by President Lyndon Johnson aimed at lifting millions out of poverty, and addressing the dilemma of “one fifth of our people… (for) whom the gates of opportunity have been closed.” To the frustration of many, after through public policy. This is not 50 years, officially measured poverty from lack of trying. Federal and state Efforts continue today to support rates have barely budged, leading governments, often in partnership some to question whether these gates with local agencies, churches and civic and study programs that can of opportunity can ever be effectively groups, have participated (and studied) opened to all. Many explanations have programs to encourage marriage over promote stronger marriages and been offered for the stubborn nature the past two decades. Efforts continue of U.S. poverty over these decades, today to support and study programs better support poor children. including the long-term rise of singlethat can promote stronger marriages The Healthy Marriage Initiative is one and better support poor children. The parent families. Indeed, in 1967 twothirds of U.S. families were married Healthy Marriage Initiative is one part part of a series of programs funded couples with children; today fewer of a series of programs funded by the than half of families in the U.S. fit that U.S. Department of Health and Human by the U.S. Department of Health description. And family structure clearly Services’ Administration for Children matters for poverty rates—30 percent and Families aimed at improving family and Human Services’ Administration of households composed of single environments to enhance child wellwomen were poor in 2013, compared to being. for Children and Families aimed at just under 6 percent of married couple While some of these programs households. produce local successes, we have improving family environments to Given this stark contrast between certainly not found a magic bullet poverty rates among single parent that dramatically improves the quality enhance child well-being. families and two-parent families, many of marital relationships or rates of point to marriage as a critical policy marriage. Many attempts to increase path for reducing poverty. To really rates of marriage have had few or tackle high poverty rates, why not no effects, some produce negative encourage, insist and support marriage? Isn’t this the real path toward effects and a few produce small gains. Recent work by conservative reducing poverty? scholar Ron Haskins recognizes this difficulty. “Reversing decades of Unfortunately, serious solutions to poverty are not as simple as declining marriage rates,” he writes, “is turning out to be exceptionally answering yes to this question. While there may be many good reasons difficult.” There may be progress yet to come in developing policies to encourage stable, lasting marriages, especially among couples with that encourage and help sustain marriages, but this is not currently an children, this fact does not give us much leeway in fighting poverty. effective, practical policy lever. Why not? Second, even if we could encourage marriage among those most at First, as tempting as it is to look at statistics comparing poverty risk for poverty, some difficult truths about earnings possibilities at rates among one- and two-parent families and see marriage promotion the bottom of the income spectrum mean that today—in contrast to as a powerful solution, the fact is that we simply cannot paste couples decades past—having two earners does not necessarily lift families out back together, and it is difficult to effectively promote marriage of poverty, or at least not very far out. To see this, consider a measure CARING
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SOURCE: DeNavas-Walt, Carmen and Bernadette D. Proctor, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013 U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Reports P60-249, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2014.
of wages that is not the average, but rather the wage level at which, if we lined up all workers from the lowest to the highest paid, would divide the group into the lowest 20 percent and the remaining 80 percent, referred to as the 20th percentile of earnings. The 20th percentile of male hourly earnings in 2012 (measured in 2012 dollars) was $10.25, compared to more than $12 (also in 2012 dollars) in the early 1970s. At the current level, a year-round, full-time worker in this position would have total earned income per year of approximately $21,300, a figure very close to the poverty threshold for that year for a family of four. This means that while having a continuously employed male earner in the household in past decades would have moved a family of four above the poverty line, that is no longer true today. Changes in women’s labor force participation and in social norms about women and work mean, of course, that many more married families now have two earners, and so perhaps the single-earner calculation above is not the best way to characterize the economic landscape facing married couple households today. This may be true, but the rise of two-earner families also makes it critical to consider the additional expenses, including paid child care, incurred by such families. The Census Bureau’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure 23
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If pro-marriage policies are not as promising as a cursory glance at poverty statistics would suggest, what then, are our policy options for effectively addressing U.S. poverty? There are, of course, no easy answers, but directly addressing the challenges of low-wage work, especially for workers with family responsibilities, is a critical part of the answer.
DO GOOD Find information and resources on healthy marriage and relationship education from the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center at healthymarriageinfo.org. Read the latest research on effective policies and programs for children from Future of Children, a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution, at futureofchildren.org. Explore the work of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, at poverty.ucdavis.edu.
DR. ANN HUFF STEVENS is a professor of eco-
nomics and the director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. Connect with the Center for Poverty Research website poverty.ucdavis.edu facebook UC Davis Center for Poverty Research
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makes explicit the need to adjust income thresholds to account for the need for child care and other work-related expenses. Full-time child care in 2013 cost an average of $148 per week, which works out to more than a third of the annual earnings noted above for the lowest fifth of earners. The bottom line is that for the many married couples with a single earner, current earnings levels will be insufficient to escape poverty. With both parents working, the income potential rises, but so do necessary costs—quite steeply. Third, there are complex interactions between these economic realities on one hand and long-term changes in marriage and family structures on the other that further complicate any solution that focuses on only one of these. Recent work by sociologists Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson explore the ways in which poor men work to reconcile their desire to bond and interact with their children in light of limited labor market options for themselves, and changing social norms about women’s work and marriage. They write about the decline in earnings opportunities for less-educated men, and how this has shaped and changed how these men view and plan for fatherhood. As noted above, it has become increasingly difficult for many men to earn enough to truly support a family. Further, as Edin and Nelson write, “Virtually every legal and institutional arrangement governing these father’s lives tells them they are a paycheck, and nothing more.” This continuing focus on men as breadwinners collides with the realities of our current labor markets, and further complicates the idea that marriage can provide a simple or direct path out of poverty. The complexity of connections between poverty, family status and underlying labor market realities is reflected in another way in recent academic work by myself and my colleagues. In one study, we aimed to summarize the relationship between the state of the economy and labor market, demographic change and poverty over the past several decades. Starting from the dramatic rise in single-female headed families since the 1960s, we show that this change alone should have caused far more dramatic increases over time in U.S. poverty rates than it actually did. This fate was avoided due to offsetting trends toward greater labor force participation by women, especially married women, along with higher rates of women’s educational attainment and earnings. If pro-marriage policies are not as promising as a cursory glance at poverty statistics would suggest, what then, are our policy options for effectively addressing U.S. poverty? There are, of course, no easy answers, but directly addressing the challenges of low-wage work, especially for workers with family responsibilities, is a critical part of the answer. A labor market reality in which married working parents juggling two jobs across two adults does not always move a family far above the poverty line makes clear that we must do more than point to marriage as a path out of poverty. The difficulty of constructing and implementing public policies that significantly increase rates of marriage is another reason to think more broadly. Understanding and embracing the complexity of the relationship between family structure, labor markets and poverty, and encouraging our leaders and policy makers to do so is a critical step in this challenge. 24
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FEED. THE. NEED. The Waste Not OC Coalition works to get garbage-bound food into the hands of those who need it most. B Y J A R E D M c K I E R N AN
When
you think Newport Beach, Calif., Range Rover caravans and sun-kissed sands come to mind, and justifiably so. With nearly a third of the city’s households netting over $200,000 and a median home price of over $1 million, Upstart Business Journal ranks Newport Beach as the nation’s richest city. Meanwhile, a quick trek up state Route 55 is Santa Ana, one of its poorest. Welcome to Orange County—a microcosm of wealth discrepancy in the United States, and an unassuming face of food insecurity. Orange County ranked second out of 58 counties in California for food insecurity among low-income adults, according to a California Health Interview Survey. Further, roughly one in five children in Orange County and 400,000 people overall do not know where their next meal is coming from. Dr. Eric Handler is the deputy public health officer for the county. In his Santa Ana office, he mentions Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” (Little Brown, 2000), which offers insight on three types of people: salesmen, mavens and connectors. That’s where Handler comes in. The solution for ending hunger in Orange County was out there. He just had to connect the dots. “I asked Mark Lowry, director of the [Orange County] Food Bank, two
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According to a report
from the Natural Resources Defense Council,
40 percent of food in the U.S. goes to waste.
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“I said, ‘Do you have enough food in your food bank?’ And he said no. I said, ‘Do you think if we captured all of the food that was thrown away, do you think we could end hunger in Orange County?’ And he said yes. And I said, ‘Then why aren’t we doing it?’” —DR. ERIC HANDLER
DO GOOD Volunteer with Food Finders in your community at food-finders.org/volunteer. Donate to the Waste Not OC Coalition at wastenotoc.org. Read “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown, 2000). Take the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) Challenge to get a sense of life facing hunger by committing to eat on roughly $1.50 per meal. Download HealthyOut in the App Store to find healthy restaurant meals near you for takeout or delivery. Try a recipe from “Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day” by Leanne Brown at leannebrown.com. The cookbook is free to download, but for every printed copy sold, a second copy will be given to a person or family in need. Watch the 2013 documentary “A Place at the Table” to learn about the effects of food insecurity through the lens of those it impacts.
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questions,” Handler said. “I said, ‘Do you have enough food in your food bank?’ And he said no. I said, ‘Do you think if we captured all of the food that was thrown away, do you think we could end hunger in Orange County?’ And he said yes. And I said, ‘Then why aren’t we doing it?’” So, Handler helped unite over 20 organizations in November 2012 to form the Waste Not OC Coalition, a public-private partnership. The group aims to end hunger in Orange County by redirecting nutritious, perishable and prepared food from restaurants, grocery stores and other vendors that would otherwise be discarded and delivering it to food banks and pantries. Handler said the short-term goal is to “blanket” the city of Anaheim, then once they’ve demonstrated success, expand to other cities. This July alone, the coalition diverted over 12,000 pounds of food, equivalent to over 10,000 meals, that would’ve been sent to a landfill. According to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of the food in the U.S. goes to waste. Many local vendors initially held concerns about the legal ramifications of handing off excess food to charity. However, through the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, signed into law in 1996, all individuals, businesses and other groups acting in “good faith” are fully protected from civil and criminal liability in case their donated product is later found to harm a recipient. It was just a matter of getting the word out, and sure enough, vendors gradually climbed aboard and began donating surplus food to the project. Lowry noted that the initiative was unique in that it wasn’t spearheaded by a charitable organization. 28
“Usually the charity guy has to drag the health department into a conversation about food recovery,” Lowry said. “We had never heard of another place in the nation where the health department was actually the champion, the leader of the initiative, and in some respects, dragging me into the conversation.” Another major step in the effort was to urge local hospitals and social service clinics to ask clients if they are facing food insecurity. Hunger is, after all, a public health issue. Anemia, diabetes, heart disease, stunted intellectual growth and obesity can all take effect with a lack of nutritious food, especially during childhood, according to the National Institutes of Health. Moreover, many inexpensive, high-calorie options lack the nutrients vital for good health and productivity. Food insecurity can also increase stress hormones, which can lead to weight gain. Once health professionals in the county identify individuals in need of assistance, they direct them to local resources. For this, the group developed an interactive map on its website that lists all of the local food pantries. Currently there are two food banks and over 240 food pantries in the county. Handler is also working on developing a mobile app with the American Academy of Pediatrics Chapter in Orange County to share the same information. Though much of the excess food comes from local restaurants and grocery stores, schools,
hospitals and even one jail have joined in the effort. The Theo Lacy Correctional Facility is now donating up to 500 meals a day that previously would have been discarded. “People say, ‘We don’t have dollars to do this...’ We didn’t have dollars to do this either,” Handler said. The project started with no budget but that changed earlier this year when United Way of Orange County donated $50,000 to the effort. Lowry added that food reclamation also benefits the environment and gives donors a tax benefit through the nonprofit Food Finders, which picks the up the excess food and delivers it to food banks and pantries. While the movement has garnered notable support, it does encounter the occasional cynic, according to Bernadette Garcia-Silva, Waste Not OC project manager. At a recent event to promote the coalition, a woman approached Garcia-Silva. “She said, ‘People don’t actually go hungry here,’” Garcia-Silva said. “‘Do you know anyone who doesn’t have enough to eat? Do you know anyone?’ She was basically interrogating us because she just did not want to believe this.” Handler said he is encouraged by the early success of the initiative, but eyeing bigger change. He is currently working with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has a task force on poverty and hunger, to scale up the Waste Not OC model on a national level. “This can be replicated in any county in the United States” he said. “Just imagine a national movement to do this.” 29
PareUp is an app that allows retailers to post unsold, unexpired food for a discount. You browse listings nearby. If you like something, visit the location to get your discount and enjoy your purchase. Save money and prevent good food from being discarded. Everybody wins.
JARED McKIERNAN is an associate editor for
New Frontier Publications. Connect with Jared website caringmagazine.org facebook caringmagazine twitter caringmagazine email jared.mckiernan@usw.salvationarmy.org
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A Pathway of Hope caseworker meets with a client to set personalized goals and gain housing, employment and self-sufficiency.
Serving to solving THE HERTH HOPE INDEX is a 12-item, multi-dimensional index designed to measure a global, nontime oriented sense of hope. It is composed of three dimensions: temporality and future, positive readiness and expectancy, and interconnectedness. THE SELF-SUFFICIENCY OUTCOME MATRIX, created by a task force in Snohomish County, Wash., in 2004, is a counseling tool designed to help monitor and assess the progress of clients in social service programs. It uses a numeric system to track progress in 18 areas of a person’s life that could be barriers to selfsufficiency. It quantifies the “better off measures” of people’s behavior, at t it udes, c irc u mstanc es , a nd knowledge and skills.
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Client-caseworker relationships can make all of the difference in Pathway of Hope. B Y CAR OL S E ILER PHOTO COURTESY OF USA CENT RAL T ERRIT ORY
Implicit in the American Dream is the concept of upward mobility—that individuals can rise above poverty through hard work and perseverance. Yet, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, 42 percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the economic distribution remain in the bottom as adults. After years of wondering if the cycle of generational poverty could ever be broken with the same system and methods, The Salvation Army Central Territory shifted its approach. In 2010, The Salvation Army National Advisory Board in the U.S. and the nonprofit Bridgespan Group implored Army leaders to move from “serving” to “solving.” As of this January, every division in the Central Territory had implemented a new program called Pathway of Hope, with more than 380 families enrolled. By 2016, every corps in the territory will be trained in Pathway of Hope. The p rogra m he l p s c l i e nts ex p e ri e nc i ng homelessness gain housing, employment and self-sufficiency through one-on-one case management. In the program’s first 18 months in the Kansas and Western Missouri Division alone, 30
caseworkers served 154 families, including 199 adults and 372 children. Nearly 20 percent of the families graduated from the program. Each client’s progress is evaluated quarterly via both the Self-Sufficiency Outcomes Matrix and the Herth Hope Index. The average client in the division posted a 1.6 percent growth rate after the first quarter but increased it to 9.3 percent after a year. The average client’s yearly household income also increased by 51 percent within six months of entering the program. While Pathway of Hope contains many moving parts, it’s often the client-caseworker relationship that plays the biggest role in building individuals’ confidence. Referred to Pathway of Hope by the local public school district homeless program, Monica had been a victim of human trafficking and domestic violence and found herself in a conundrum with her 12-year-old daughter. When our caseworker met Monica, she was hesitant to share her story. One of the first questions Monica asked was, “How did I get to this point?”
Yet over time, as they built trust, Monica began to open up about her journey from a professional in her home country to working in yards after being deceptively led to the U.S. Monica finally fought her way out and went to the police for help. During one of her Pathway of Hope visits, Monica expressed how insignificant she felt as a human being. Her caseworker told her Jesus personally cared for her. “Some of us have gone through worse things than others, but all of our stories have significance in the eyes of Jesus,” she said, then sharing her own personal testimony and leading Monica to Christ. While The Salvation Army still serves those with basic needs, it now also sets goals with families willing to work in partnership. The Army helps families hold themselves accountable in a working relationship with increased capacity frontline staff. Monica is now working to plan a better life for herself and her daughter.
AVERAGE PATHWAY OF HOPE (POH) CLIENT GROWTH RATE After first quarter: 1.6% After 1 year: 9.3% AVERAGE POH CLIENT’S YEARLY HOUSEHOLD INCOME Upon entering: $13,430 After 6 months: $20,255 An increase of: 51% In 2013, clients achieved 38% of their goals every six months Graduates achieved 83% of their goals SOURCE: The Salvation Army Kansas and Western Missouri Division
DO GOOD Donate to the Pathway of Hope program at bit.ly/pathwayofhope. Donate an extra set of professional attire to Dress for Success to help someone in need ace a job interview at dressforsuccess.org. Sign the petition urging members of Congress to support the Healthy Families Act, legislation that would guarantee workers the right to earn paid sick days—a benefit over 40 million people currently do not have. See more at bit.ly/healthyfamact.
COMMISSIONER CAROL SEILER is president
of women’s ministries and coordinator for strategic mission planning for the USA Central Territory.
—WITH NANCY RODRIGUEZ
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TRANSFORMING WATER A book you won’t put down.
B Y K RISTIN E B EN DER • P HO TO S C O U RTESY O F WATER i s LIFE
F
rom a straw filter to household water filtration units, borehole wells, pump repair, water systems and water source fencing, to proper sanitation training and development and integrated hygiene curriculum programs, WATERisLIFE has worked since 2009 to transform communities with long-term sustainable solutions. Between 1990 and 2012, 2.3 billion people gained access to improved drinking water, yet roughly 748 million people still did not have access to improved drinking water in 2012, according to the World Health Organization/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation 2014 report. Water is one of the leading, and in many cases ignored, causes of poverty, often causing illness and loss of time in school. We know that providing clean water to communities will drastically affect their health, their environment, their economics and most importantly their education. According to the World Health Organization, an integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases by an average 65 percent. So, WATERisLIFE is using technology to change lives and alleviate poverty—now through the Drinkable Book. WATERisLIFE and DDB, a worldwide marketing communications network, created the book in partnership with Dr. Theresa Dankovich. Using Dankovich’s silver
nano technology, the innovative paper kills disease like cholera, E. coli and typhoid. One of the book’s roughly 20 pages can be ripped in half and slid into the filter box, which is also the cover for the book. You pour contaminated water through and minutes later the bacteria is reduced by 99 percent, making it comparable to U.S. tap water. Costing just a few dollars per book, each one provides the tools to filter clean water for about a year. The book’s pages also help teach safe hygiene and sanitation habits, printed in both English and the local language. “A lot of water issues aren’t just because people don’t have the right technology, but also because they aren’t informed why they need to treat water to begin with,” Dankovich told NPR. “So I really like the educational component, and it’s very nice to store it in a book.” WATERisLIFE is working with funding partners to produce the Drinkable Book in 2015. Each copy will help save lives and ultimately be a key element in an incredible program to transform communities through education and clean water. KRISTINE BENDER is president of WATERisLIFE.
Connect with WATERisLIFE website waterislife.com facebook waterislife.com twitter @waterislife
DO GOOD Read the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation 2014 update on progress at wssinfo.org. Find more information on action toward achieving sanitation and hygiene for all at sanitationdrive2015.org. Donate to specific WATERisLIFE projects in India, Haiti, Ghana or Kenya—starting at $10 for a straw filter—at waterislife.com. Spearhead a WATERisLIFE Change iT campaign to find and save change with your family, school or community to fund water filters, a long-term water source and health and hygiene training in a partner village.
SINCE 1990 WELL OVER 2 BILLION PEOPLE have gained access to improved sources of drinking water. 748 MILLION PEOPLE still did not have access to improved drinking water in 2012, 43% of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. MORE THAN ONE THIRD OF THE GLOBAL POPULATION —some 2.5 billion people—do not use an improved sanitation facility, and of these 1 billion people still practice open defecation. SOURCE: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation
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ROUGHLY 45.8 MILLION PEOPLE— OR 14.5 PERCENT OF THE U.S. POPULATION— LIVED BELOW THE POVERTY
T
LEVEL IN 2013, ACCORDING TO THE UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU.
FINDING THE END To e r a d i c a t e t h e i s s u e ,
The Poverty Initiative focuses on the who and why. B Y
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C H A D W I C K
P H I L L I P S
o eliminate poverty, Liz Theoharis knew she needed to first understand who it impacts and why, rather than simply acknowledging its existence. So, she went straight to the source: those living below the poverty line. “One series topic that is studied is who is poor and why are people poor,” Theoharis said. “A lot of this focuses on trying to broaden how people understand poverty. Some statistics show that in the United States, 1 in 2 people at some point will experience poverty or be low income. So, we take a look at who exactly is poor and why they are poor.” In 2004, Theoharis, co-founded The Poverty Initiative, a social movement to end poverty formed in partnership with Union Theological Seminary in New York. It has since worked to place poverty at the center of both theological study and the prevailing human rights discourse in the U.S. Theoharis, an ordained Presbyterian minister, began a master’s program at the seminary in 2001 and has since worked with students and staff to end global poverty. “After conducting a survey of about 30 well-known and prominent Christian seminaries, we found that despite the kind of biblical mandate to do something about poverty, and despite the fact that the church and other religious institutions are often the first stop when someone is in crisis dealing with poverty, that none of these 30 seminaries that we surveyed were doing anything systematic,” Theoharis said, “especially from the perspective of actually alleviating and eradicating poverty, particularly from the perspective of poor people themselves.” Union Theological Seminary has worked with The Poverty Initiative to develop a new curriculum for students that includes poverty immersion courses and service learning programs. To date, The Poverty Initiative has organized multiple semester-long courses that focus on various issues relating to poverty along with one-day, one-credit seminars that focus on more practical issues. These one-day courses vary from an array of topics and include teachings on health care and how churches can go from doing charity work to justice work. “The cornerstone of The Poverty Initiative is our Poverty Scholars Program,” Theoharis said. “The coordinator of the program is a Poverty Initiative scholar and resident who has about 45 years of anti-poverty organizing experience and was formerly homeless himself.” The initiative is committed to connecting and training not only students, but also future pastors and religious and theological leaders. Additionally, the program hosts lectures and arts and cultural events. “We have conducted three National Poverty Truth Commissions to date and we invite people who are impacted by poverty firsthand,” she said. “As a part of this, they get the opportunity to tell us what is going on in their lives.” Theoharis believes the movement’s educational work is crucial to eliminating poverty. “If we are really going to be able to end poverty in the world, we have to first end poverty in our minds,” Theoharis said. “We first have to believe that it is possible to end poverty and we have to understand what it is going to take to end poverty.”
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DO GOOD Find more about the Poverty Initiative at povertyinitiative.org. Share your experiences and “best practices” of anti-poverty work via email at poverty@povertyinitiative.org. Read “Illusions of Prosperity: American Working Families in an Age of Economic Insecurity” by Joel Blau (Oxford, 1999). Watch “Disruption,” a new film by Peter Kinoy and Pamela Yates, that chronicles the work of Fundación Capital, a group of Latin American activist-economists working to place women at the center of the drive for social change. Its work won a 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
CHADWICK PHILLIPS is a freelance
journalist based in Southern California Connect with Chadwick email chadwick.a.phillips@gmail.com
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ARTISTS AND ALLIES POVERTY AND THE ARTS DIMINISHES CLASS LINES AND OFFERS COMMUNITY.
B Y V IVIAN GATICA • P HOT OS BY REBECCA KINSL OW BERRIOS AND COURTESY OF POVERT Y AND T HE ART S
Kateri Pomeroy, 63, has lived on the streets for over two years. Arthritis limits her mobility, let alone her job prospects. Art provides solace. “I find it spiritually soothing…[and] therapeutic, especially when you’re in a homeless situation and the stress is just bad alone,” she said. “It helps release tension and anger.” Pomeroy started her art career in Tennessee through the Nashville-based Poverty and the Arts. Created by Nicole Brandt in 2011, Poverty and the Arts is part of an on-campus community service project at Belmont University, hosting community art days where volunteers and homeless artists create art together. This year the organization obtained nonprofit status. “Being a music city, we have a bunch of creatives that come and are growing [in number] and we have a ton of musicians that have come and don’t make it and find themselves on the streets with different problems,” Brandt said. “I felt like there was this need in Nashville. There was nothing set up where we could all just be equal.” The biannual community arts days in March and November evolved to include four branches of the arts: visual arts with creating and discussing art in response to a prompt; music in a “jam session” of various instruments; creative writing to pen stories and poems together; and theater with improv CARING
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games. Poverty and the Arts then hosts showcases of the art created or performed at community arts days to raise awareness of homelessness. “Our mission is to break down class lines and empower the homeless community through the arts,” Brandt said. “The idea is that our volunteers get a chance to create with our homeless participants versus typical us-versus-them service opportunities, and through that experience they get to see our homeless participants as creative and talented and have meaningful conversations.” Mary Elizabeth Vance started volunteering with Poverty and the Arts when it first launched. “Initially, I wanted to help [Nicole], but I was also really inspired by the vision because I think art really historically has had this ability to create social change and I think that the creative process itself can really open up dialogue between people who wouldn’t necessarily get to talk to each other or see each other or engage with each other in such a personal way on a regular basis,” Vance said. She not only enjoys volunteering because it involves her artistic passion, but also because of the meaningful relationships she’s built. “As an artist myself, it’s always rewarding to talk 36
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WHISPERS OF TRUTH, COMPASSION AND BEAUTY
Kateri Pomeroy
“To read muted hosannas is to enter the world as viewed through
IN 2013, ART WAS THE PRIMARY JOB for 2.1 million people, while 271,000 workers held secondary employment as artists.
writer and photographer.” —KEVIN JACKSON
THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FOR ARTISTS totaled 7.1 percent in 2013. SOURCE: The National Endowment for the Arts
DO GOOD Adopt a homeless artist at povertyandthearts.org.
JEFF CARTER
muted hosannas
muted hosannas Author and photographer Jeff Carter at Masada
|Photo by Major Noel Mason
VIVIAN GATICA is an editorial assistant for New Frontier
Publications. Connect with Vivian
Volunteer at a Poverty and the Arts community arts day in Nashville, or host your own in your local area.
To read muted hosannas is to enter the world as viewed through the eyes of a talented and meticulous writer/photographer. A wordsmith and a thoughtful thinker, Jeff finely crafts his poetry compelling the reader to appreciate the language of belief while challenging us to cogently navigate our way through our faith journey. Jeff’s photographic images provide a source of illumination to accompany his written word. muted hosannas is a profound and enlightened first book.
original poetry and photos by Jeff Carter —MAJOR KEVIN JACKSON
website caringmagazine.org facebook caringmagazine twitter caringmagazine email vivian.gatica@usw.salvationarmy.org
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Create and sell art and donate the proceeds to charity.
frontierpress.org ISBN 978-0-9908776-0-8 • $14.99 frontierpress.org
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Frontier Press
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the eyes of a talented and meticulous
JEFF CARTER
CARING
“My artwork is getting out there,” said Pomeroy, who recently sold two pieces at the monthly local Wedgewood/Houston Art Crawl. Poverty and the Arts will partner with How’s Nashville in 2015, offering creative classes to those receiving housing through the program. Classes will vary depending on the strengths of the Poverty and the Arts volunteers, but current ideas include sewing, crafts, jewelry making, songwriting, photography, gardening and metal and woodworking. “A mindset is created when you’re on the streets and enter homelessness, and unless there’s a way to refrain that mindset it’s really easy to keep cycling back into poverty,” Brandt said. “We hope to be an integral part of what’s happening with housing and homelessness in Nashville, and be a resource both for homeless communities and homeless organizations as well as art organizations...broadening the perspective of who an artist is and bridging the gap of those communities here.”
muted hosannas
to other artists, [and] hear their stories,” she said. “It’s been great to grow in relationships with people and really get to change my own perspective on the struggles of that community and how brilliant those people are. I see the arts as such a deep part of my own identity, and to be able to affirm that identity in other people is just a really rewarding experience.” Recently, Poverty and the Arts added the Adopt a Homeless Artist program that allows people to sponsor artists experiencing homelessness for $200, which provides art supplies, storage and studio space, exhibition and art-selling opportunities, and professional development. “The program has given me hope that I can get out of this cycle that I’m in,” said Pomeroy, an adopted artist. “I always told myself that it would be temporary, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to go about it. I was very depressed. Normally I’m an upbeat person and I try and look at the positive side of things, and I was just not myself and [was] emotionally and spiritually just sliding down. When this opportunity unveiled itself to me it was just to me a godsend. It was an answer to prayer actually.” In September, Poverty and the Arts hosted its annual gala, displaying and selling art by those in the Adopt a Homeless Artist program. The artists, including Pomeroy, earned over $700. Art that did not sell at the gala was sold online.
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A GLIMPSE into the step-by-step process of seeking
FINDING COVERAGE
assistance at a community clinic like AltaMed Health Services.
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“It’s not beneficial to have groups of people neglected. Having insurance isn’t the same
Receptionist screens clients to determine eligibility and make sure they have proper documentation on hand to process the enrollment.
as having care.”
S o c i a l h e a l t h c a r e o p t i o n f o r l o w - i n c o m e c i t i z e n s ex p a n d s
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—ALICE CHEN
B Y KI M I YA S H O K O O H I
Stuffy
and congested, the streets of downtown Los Angeles bear some resemblance to a doctor’s waiting room. On this day, Dyanna Falconer and her boyfriend pull up to the hospital emergency room, the streets and waiting room unusually quiet. Falconer guides her boyfriend out of the car and into California Hospital Medical Center. The 66-yearold had been having sharp pains in his thyroid. She sat outside, unsure of his health care coverage. That very day, millions of Americans became eligible for health care under the Affordable Care Act. Eligibility for many of the country’s most vulnerable citizens, however, has not equated to coverage. Despite ongoing bouts with mental illness and sexually transmitted diseases, Falconer herself had avoided doctors and hospitals since she became homeless at age 18. “I’m 24 years old now and I’ve had a hard life,” she said. In that respect, Falconer is not alone. As of August, 28 states had implemented an expanded Medicaid program. The option surfaced in January as part of sweeping changes to health care policy under the Affordable Care Act. The social health care option for low-income citizens expanded to include single adults with no children and it raised income eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty line. In other words, someone making up to $16,000 a year could qualify for Medicaid. Many states opted out of the expansion, but are now reconsidering their positions. “The goal is to see if we can get past the rhetoric CARING
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and get down to actual public policy,” said Anne Dunkelberg, the associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas. Under expanded Medicaid, the federal government would cover 100 percent of added costs for newly eligible Americans in the first three years. Federal cost sharing would gradually decrease until it reaches 90 percent in 2020. “It’s not beneficial to have groups of people neglected,” said Alice Chen, a health economist and professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. “Having insurance isn’t the same as having care.” Covered California, the entity leading the Affordable Care Act in the state, announced it will spend $46 million for statewide advertising and $14.6 million for community outreach funding in 2015. “We have found that the personal one-on-one touch has been very successful,” said Larry Hicks, a spokesman for Covered California. Certified enrollment sites include city government agencies, community clinics, faith-based organizations, labor unions, community nonprofits and school districts, among others. The application typically requires a Social Security number, employer and income information and federal tax information, but community outreach sites have the capacity to help people find the information they need to apply. “We’ve been in these communities for a long time and we’re a trusted resource for care and in connecting them to the insurance they need,” said Lauren Astor, a spokeswoman for AltaMed Health Services. The community care organization has 44 sites throughout Southern California with two primary enrollment offices in Los Angeles and Santa Ana. It is the largest recipient of the 66 grantees under the Covered California community outreach program. For AltaMed, the largest hurdle has come in reaching citizens who are still on the fence about the longevity and sticking power of expanded Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. “We’ve seen patients not only get insurance, but turn their health around,” Astor said, “and really get access to care.”
Clients are then referred to the next available Certified Enrollment Counselor (CEC) to start the application process.
3
Once the application is completed, a follow-up appointment is scheduled to help clients understand health plan options and medical and dental group selection based on medical needs.
DO GOOD Donate to the Foundation for Health Coverage Education and learn more about its efforts at coverageforall.org. Support the work of Doctors Without Borders, which provides emergency medical aid to people worldwide affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care at bit.ly/DWBsupport.
KAMIYAH SHOKOOH is a freelance journalist based in Southern California.
Connect with Kimiya twitter @kimiyasho
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GOOD MEDIA
Trivial Pursuits: Why Your Real Life Is More Than Media, Money and the Pursuit of Happiness
Yes or No: How Your Everyday Decisions Will Forever Change Your Life
Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions
Admitting Failure
Donate a Photo
Hunger Crunch
Timeful
As taking photos becomes a
Hunger Crunch is a game that
Timeful is not your typical calendar
Authors Steve Corbett and Brian
Admitting Failure is designed to
In “Yes or No: How Your Everyday
daily part of telling our life story,
tackles the hunger issue in both
app. It has all the components of
Fikkert, along with Katie Casselberry,
eliminate the stigma behind failure
the virtual and real world. The
one, but with a twist. Its purpose is
“Trivial Pursuits: Why Your Real
aim to create a new paradigm for
Johnson & Johnson has turned
Year” (Thomas Nelson, 2014),
Decisions Will Forever Change
and turn it into a life lesson instead
game is operated by Rice Bowls, an
to not only remind people of what
Life Is More Than Media, Money,
short-term missions in “Helping
it into a way to better the life of a
and how he found a meaningful
Your Life” (David C. Cook, 2014),
because “the only ‘bad’ failure
organization dedicated to feeding
they need to do for the day, but also
and the Pursuit of Happiness”
Without Hurting in Short-Term
person in need through the Donate
faith. He guides the reader on a
Jeff Shinabarger provides a guide
is the one that’s repeated.” It is
orphaned children in need around
to teach them to be mindful of how
(Baker Books, 2014) by Ian DiOrio
Missions” (Moody Publishers, 2014).
a Photo app. The app lists causes
pilgrimage of exploring practices
to good choices for everyday
a medium where organizations
the world. All proceeds from in-
and what they spend their time
analyzes societal influences that
“We should consider trimming our
for people to choose from and for
that usher one into a deeper life
decisions. He aims to help the
can share their failure stories
game purchases go directly toward
doing for better time management
are steering individuals toward
spending and scale of trips,” they
each photo taken and “donated” to
with himself, God and one another.
reader evolve as an avid decision
and learn from them to become
write, “and instead give that money
the Rice Bowls cause to combat
the wrong paths. Rather than
maker by encouraging him to
the app, Johnson & Johnson gives
and habits. timeful.com
thesacredyear.com
better versions of themselves.
to proven, trusted organizations that
$1 to the contributor’s cause of
hunger. hungercrunch.com
meaningless things meant to
confront his fears, consider the
admittingfailure.com
fill the presence of God, DiOrio
consequences of choices, and
are engaged in effective, asset-
shows readers how to incorporate
adopt a decision-making process.
based development work via local
him into their lives again.
shop.plywoodpeople.com
churches and workers.” chalmers.org
Michael Yankoski shares his own story of experimenting with spiritual practices in “The Sacred
choice. donateaphoto.com
bakerpublishinggroup.com
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GOOD MEDIA
The Sacred Year
POVERTEES Wear art on your clothing with the Povertees collection featuring pocket designs of classic art pieces, such as Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” featured GOOD STUFF
on this hoodie ($45). Each signature pocketed clothing item allows the Povertees team to distribute provisions and establish relationships with individuals experiencing homelessness in downtown Los Angeles, connecting them to rehabilitation services and in-patient
HAND IN HAND
resources. povertees.com
Each bar of soap from Hand in Hand—like this two-pack set of white tea soap bars ($18)—is made of sustainable resources and is fair trade certified. Each purchase provides a bar of soap to a child in need, along with a month’s supply of clean water, and saves 50 square-feet of rainforest. handinhandsoap.com
GROWN By purchasing a pair of GROWN “KICKER” stained bamboo sunglasses ($124.99), you fund a sight-restoring surgery for an individual in a developing country or eye exams for 12 children. The Australian company’s sunglasses are handcrafted using ethically harvested organic materials. growndesigns.com
LYDALI This vibrant handmade tribal wool clutch ($48) was woven by Paco and Josefina in Mexico, giving the couple
BOGOBRUSH
STORY COMPANY
a sustainable income. Lydali
In need of a new
Behind this set of four appetizer
creates employment for other
toothbrush? Consider
plates ($28) are the stories of
artisans like them in Latin
purchasing one from
the potters of Prespot Pottery
America, Asia and Africa,
Bogobrush ($10), which
in Cameroon. By working at
bringing to light their artistic
will give away a tooth-
Presport Pottery, men can
talents and a means to self-
brush with each sale.
work close to home instead
sufficiency. lydali.com
Once you’re ready for a
of leaving their families behind
new toothbrush, pluck
to find employment in other
the bristles off and bury
cities or countries. The Story
the bamboo, biodegrad-
Company partners with fair trade
able toothbrush outside.
artisan companies to provide sustainable
bogobrush.com
futures for workers. storycompany.com
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