Join us Oct 12th

From Isolation to Access: Communication that Expands Our Community’s Capacity to Care

“The isolation of poverty perpetuates it.” - Dr. Donna Beegle, Ed.D

An evening with award-winning anti-poverty scholar, teacher and organizer, Dr. Donna Beegle, Ed.D.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

5:30-7:30 pm    Presentation begins at 6pm.

RSVP appreciated - Email rsvp@cvm.org by October 7, 2011

Seattle Public Library (Downtown) - Suggested reading

Light refreshments provided.

On September 13, the US Census reported that poverty in the United States has risen to the highest levels since 1993. How can we respond? How can we adjust the way we think about and communicate with people in poverty to help – really help?

Join Community Voice Mail National and Dr. Donna Beegle to learn how we can translate effective communication with people in poverty into our helping organizations and systems to expand our community’s capacity to care.

Donna is the only member of her family who has not been incarcerated. After growing up in generational migrant labor poverty, leaving school for marriage at 15, having two children and continuing to cope with poverty, she found herself, at 25, with no husband, little education, and no job skills. What followed in 10 short years were: self-confidence, a G.E.D., an A.A. in Journalism, a B.A. (with honors) in Communications, a Master’s Degree in Communication with a minor in Gender Studies (with honors), and completion of a Doctorate Degree.

Since rising out of poverty, Donna Beegle has studied and worked with educators, social service professionals, faith and community-based organizations, and health professionals to help large helping systems truly help by shifting ways of thinking and communicating with people in poverty. In 2006, Donna founded Poverty Bridge, a nonprofit which strives to reduce the isolation of poverty by connecting people in poverty to people who are not. Her publications, “See Poverty, Be the Difference,” and "An Action Approach to Educating Students in Poverty", offer groundbreaking strategies for breaking poverty barriers.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Donations to Community Voice Mail National are gladly accepted. 

Bombshell Letter

Last week, Terry got a bombshell letter from the unemployment office. She learned her unemployment benefits will expire for good before New Year’s Day. Do you know someone like Terry?

For millions of “99ers” losing their unemployment benefits after nearly two years, no new extended benefits are coming their way. Although this issue has received little local media coverage, state officials are wracking their brains, anticipating a coming tidal wave. As public coffers shrink, agencies are looking to community-based nonprofit agencies to help cushion the blow.

Right now, Community Voice Mail is mounting a response. To learn more you can read our project proposal.

Will you help us? If you are able, I hope you will. Please be as generous as you can so we can be there for our friends and neighbors who need us.

Thank you for caring, and for showing you care.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Brandon

Executive Director

P.S. Community Voice Mail works. Click to hear how.

"Nouveau Poor" in Los Angeles

The LA Homeless blog references a recent article in the LA Times which serves as a high-level primer for the "newly poor" in Southern California, focusing on how people who are new to deprivation can obtain food, housing, and healthcare. The information in this "consumer guide for the nouveau poor" is pretty startling, but it's likely that similar things are happening around the country. Here are the high(low)lights:

• LA County 211, an information and referral line that people call to find out about services, is taking over 50,000 calls a month now. Last year at this time, they were taking 30,000, so a 67% increase.

• Demand for food from the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank is up 41% over last year, but the supply of food has only increased by 33%. The 400 pantries in this network are handling the shortfall by giving less food, and/or serving fewer people.

• Subsidized low-income housing is extremely scarce. The waiting list for Section 8 housing (a Federal subsidy program) is closed, and while it may reopen in early 2009, it is expected that only 3,000-4,000 families may be placed in housing through this program. 300,000 are expected to apply. Those who stay on the waiting list "may get placed in five to ten years." Approximately 17,000 people are on the waiting list for subsidized apartments owned by the LA Housing Authority, and there's only a 3% vacancy rate. While waiting for housing, most people in need likely move in with family or friends, crowd into other housing, live in a car, or end up on the streets.

• If you don't qualify for the state Medicare systems, you'll have to rely on the healthcare system subsidized by LA County. Non-emergent or preventative care appointments, like routine check-ups, can be "difficult if not impossible" to obtain. Non-ambulance visits to the emergency room can result in very long waits.
  

Much of this will likely be new to people who have never been homeless, hungry or without medical insurance. As the article says

"If you've been a low-income mother of five, you know all the agencies and the nonprofits where you can get help," said John Kim, director of the Healthy City project that is working on a consumer-friendly online guide to these resources.

"But if you just lost your home and your job, you're new to this world. You are looking around, saying, 'Where do I turn?' "

And to this I would add "and when you can't afford your phone anymore, how do you stay in touch with employers, friends/family and others trying to help you"?

Poverty Trends in Google Search

(Greetings to Community Voice Mail supporters who are visiting for the first time. Thanks for reading the email we sent you today, and I hope you enjoy the blog!).

Google.org, the philanthropically-inclined arm of Google, recently launched an interesting site called Flu Trends. By analyzing billions of Google searches made over time for words related to the flu (think "flu shots," "body aches" and other such things), Google determined that what people were searching for could describe actual flu activity about 2 weeks sooner than the data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control. In other words, if a lot of people in Alabama are using Google to search for words related to the flu, this turns out to be a good indicator of actual flu incidence in that state. This is a grossly simplified description of what Google did to analyze the data, but it's a really interesting and useful development that will have implications for other areas.

For instance...given the economic downturn, what if this trend analysis was directed towards Google searches for terms related to poverty? Are there an increasing number of searches using keywords that might be indicative of increases in homelessness, hunger, the need for services and other poverty indicators?

As an experiment, I conducted a very simple search using Google Trends, including just 3 terms: "unemployment benefits," "homeless" and "food stamps." Here's the resulting trend chart for 2008 thus far:


(here's a link to the actual search, for a better view and to let you tweak the search)

Google and the CDC have an army of Ph.D's working on Flu Trends, and I don't pretend to fully understand how Google Trends works. This simple chart, however, appears to indicate that searches for these items are generally trending up in the last half of this year, at least relative to "unemployment benefits" as a search term. Are more people in the U.S. seeking information about food stamps, unemployment benefits and homelessness because they are increasingly hungry, out of work, and suddenly facing life without a roof overhead? Are these symptoms of "economic flu"?

I hope that Google and others use these amazing new databases to start predictive tracking of other ills in society. For the time being, wash your hands, cover your cough, and pinch your pennies.

"Advice for the New Paupers"

In a previous post, I wondered how people who find themselves newly poor will learn how to navigate the social services that might help them. Asking one of my CVM colleagues this question, I was told "things tend to crumble, not collapse, for those entering poverty," which seems pretty close to the mark. It's not often the case that someone suddenly finds themselves broke, homeless and on the streets; it's more likely that they live just above the line but dip beneath it for periods of time as they encounter more problems. Assuming people in this position can get specific help (with a job, housing, etc.), it may be that they can avoid the kind of poverty that leads to homelessness.

Jon Dolan recently published an excellent article on Alternet called "5 Pieces of Advice for the New Paupers" describing his experiences living in poverty. The article doesn't go into a lot of detail about what caused this descent (in his case, a three-month process), but instead focuses on what he learned once he got there. It's a fascinating and scary article, covering everything from the primacy of warmth and why it's necessary to be somewhat pushy at food banks, to the way your sense of shame fades once you've experienced cold and hunger and how you eventually won't mind the smells anymore because everyone smells.

Dolan describes the bitterness you'll feel living like this, and how you have to find a way to shut that off. After describing a job interview that didn't go too well, he says

After months of being a bum, I was the wrong volume, the wrong temperature....You'll find that if you want to get back into that quiet, odor-free, polite world, you're going to have to decompress for a few months. What happened to us is that we fled, found a basement apartment on borrowed money, and stayed there, keeping the heat on high for months. Then we were ready to try again for a job.

This article, and the many follow-up comments, are worth reading. Let's hope those slipping into poverty find their right volume, their right temperature.