When asked what they want to be when they grow up, many little boys say that they want to be farmers. But when those small men become full-grown ones, a career in agriculture is often far from their minds.
That’s precisely the problem facing Minnesota. Those who own the state’s 69,000 farms are aging — averaging 56.6 years old — and many of their children aren’t interested in continuing the family business.
At the same time, more Latino immigrants than ever before are flocking to the state, and many of them would love to own their own farms, but they lack the necessary capital to purchase land.
It’s precisely these two demographic trends that inspired Ramon Leon, the CEO of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC) in Minneapolis, to find a way to help low-wage Latino workers become farmers.
Leon has experience in transforming the lives of low-wage immigrants. According to Tom Meersman of the Star Tribune, Leon’s organization has already helped many people previously employed as dishwashers and drivers become business owners. And three years ago, the LEDC established a training course for prospective farmers, provided them with loans, and set up Latino farming cooperatives, such as the Agua Gorda co-op (named after the Mexican town that many meatpacking workers in Long Prairie, Minnesota come from).
“There are a lot of Latino workers in agriculture that aspire to be farm owners if they had a chance,” John Flory of the LEDC told Meersman. “The question is what model can we use to bring them from being low-wage agricultural workers to having an opportunity to be a farm owner.”
The workers in the co-op keep their day jobs while farming rented fields on evenings and weekends. The first year, each member contributed $250 and all together, the group took out a $5,400 loan. They sold $7,000 worth of produce (including peppers, tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers), and eventually were able to expand their acreage and their sales to $40,000 last year. Their main focus? Developing connections in the community so that they can sell all of the produce they grow.
Many of the immigrants find that as their work roots them to the Minnesota soil, long-time residents are becoming more accepting of them. “When you go to communities the people start seeing you there working so hard, and they give you some respect,” Jaime Villalaz, business development specialist for the LEDC told Meersman. “They start thinking of us as good people.”
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Category: Making Government Work
This Camouflaged Credit Union Saves Immigrants From Predatory Loans
If you see a neon sign on a storefront reading “cambio de cheques” (check cashing), you probably think it’s just like any other check-cashing and payday loan purveyor out there.
But while the Community Trust Prospera in East San Jose, California, is situated in a strip mall next to a beauty shop (like many other check-cashing joints), it’s anything but your typical check-to-cash operation.
The Community Trust Prospera is actually a credit union, offering its patrons (many of which are Latino) much more than just quick access to greenbacks. It provides patrons the opportunity to build their credit.
Many immigrants conduct their lives on a cash-only basis, steering clear of intimidating banks. Last year, the National Council of La Raza estimated that 20 percent of Latinos in America don’t use banks, a higher rate of bank avoidance than what is found among any other group.
In response, Self-Help Federal Credit Union has opened six branches including Community Trust Prospera in San Jose and Los Angeles to try to reach some of these underserved communities. These branches now boast 11,000 members, who have socked away a whopping $1.3 million in savings.
Community Trust Prospera offers many of the same services that check-cashing and payday loan establishments do, but without the oft-typical predatory interest rates and fees. Alexia Fernández Campbell of National Journal spoke to Darwin Morán, who uses the financial institution to wire money to his family in El Salvador and to cash checks from his landscaping work. Initially, he resisted opening a bank account, but the staff there finally convinced him to.
“I started to become friends with them and slowly I started to change my mind,” Morán told Fernández Campbell. “Fixing my credit and paying my debts was so important to me,” he said.
Improved credit and a bank account gives low-income people a greater ability to rent an apartment. And taking advantage of programs such as Community Trust Prospera’s Fresh Start Loan (which is a type of loan that requires a deposit), eliminates the need to visit payday lenders — yet another important step towards establishing a more secure financial future.
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5 Gorgeous New High-Speed Rail Stations Coming to the U.S.
Chances are, if you’re fond of traveling you’ve probably wondered why high-speed trains have existed in Europe and Asia for years, yet they’re non-existent here in the United States.
But the reality of a high-speed rail network is edging closer and closer. As Gizmodo reports, cities have already begun planning — and in some cases, already building — new stations in five cities across America. These stations will combine the old elegance of train travel with lightning fast speed — with the hope that in the future, these trains will be well used by passengers.
This year, Union Station in Los Angeles celebrates its 75th anniversary and with it comes a redesign. The plan includes stations for buses and trains plus a new subway system as well as bus, bike and pedestrian connections. Designed by Grimshaw Architects and Gruen Associates, the design also includes a high-speed rail terminal, as well as hotel and office towers, park land and better access to the neighborhoods surrounding the station and the nearby L.A. River.
Already under construction, the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco is going to be replaced by the new Transbay Transit Center — combining access to the Bay Area’s transit, including BART, Muni, and Caltrain, as well as accommodations for Amtrak trains and a possible high-speed rail. Cesar Pelli designed the new station — complete with a 5.4 acre public park on the roof — all of which are scheduled to open in 2017.
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Now that Denver’s new train station is complete, the Mile High city’s historic 1914 Union Station will become an area for shopping, restaurants and a boutique hotel. In turn, all modes of transit have been consolidated into this newly-designed spot, which also has room for offices and public space — all designed by SOM.
Down south, the first privately financed and run rail network in the U.S., All Aboard Florida, is invigorating its existing 235-mile railway, with plans to complete it by 2016. The train runs from Orlando to South Florida, ending in the brand-new hub designed by SOM that is planned for downtown Miami. Shopping and entertainment, plus a 80-story tower, will all be included in the complex.
Finally, Anaheim’s Regional Transportation Intermodal Center will open later this year, looking like a “translucent, glowing balloon” thanks to the ETFE polymer pillows. While the the improved local rail and bus connections help Orange County now, there are high hopes for California’s high-speed rail to begin here.
A Life of Service: This Couple Wants Every Latino to Achieve the American Dream
Seeing young people not get their fair shake day after day can have a lasting impact on someone.
That was certainly the case with Richard Farias, who began his career as an educational liaison in the Houston, Texas juvenile justice system and now most recently, founded the Houston-based nonprofit American Latino Center for Research, Education & Justice.
“I became much more empathetic,” Richard told Lindsay Peyton of the Houston Chronicle. “I saw my job as trying to help kids, instead of trying to catch them and lock them up. I have a lot more insights on how to help them with the day-to-day.”
Moving on from the justice system, he started one of the first charter schools in Texas in an effort to address the problems he saw. Later on, Richard became the executive director of an alternative high school that gave dropouts a second chance.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker awarded Richard a lifetime achievement award in 2011, but as the launch of his new nonprofit demonstrates, he’s not done helping people yet.
Now with the help of his wife Rita, Richard is seeking to transform Houston neighborhood by neighborhood to become a city that boosts its low-income Latino youth to success. While the Latino population in northwest Houston is growing, Richard told Peyton, “there’s minimal support services for Latinos and their children here.”
Using their knowledge and experience, the couple has already started helping families at a mobile home park in the area. Describing it, Rita said, “You wouldn’t even know it’s there, and the living conditions are terrible.” As they work to transform the neighborhood, they keep the goal of their nonprofit in mind: To enrich the lives of low-income communities through education, arts, justice, and economic opportunity.
While the Fariases are zeroing in on one neighborhood, their nonprofit is also focusing on the big picture — by organizing the Latino Education Summit at Rice University in August. “It will hopefully serve as a catalyst to affect changes at the state level,” Richard told Peyton.
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Bringing Bhutanese Village Life to Refugees in New Hampshire
Getting down and dirty in the garden offers a multitude of health benefits.
And now, a community garden in Concord, New Hampshire is helping Bhutanese refugees with homesickness by recreating the village atmosphere they miss.
Ghana Khatiwada, a translator fluent in Nepali and English who works as a cultural liasion for the garden, told Megan Doyle of the Concord Monitor, “To them, it’s like a home feeling to come here and work in a garden,” she said.
The Sycamore Field Community Garden charges only $15 for a plot each season, so even the most impoverished refugees can participate. Organizers give away free seedlings to the immigrants.
While all this sounds great, it isn’t problem free. Each year, there’s a giant waiting list for the 138 garden plots available; this season, 70 families entered a lottery for the four open slots.
The lucky winners of plots emerge from the growing season well-fed, with extra cash in their pockets. “We are saving a lot of money,” gardener Ghana Khatiwada told Doyle. “In the winter, we spent a lot of money on vegetables like tomatoes, okra, eggplants.”
Ideally, garden manager Cheryl Bourassa would expand the garden, but she’s limited due to the amount of available water. To increase the number of plots, the nonprofit, which relies on grants and donations for its funding, would have to dig a new well — at a cost of $15,000. So recently, they filmed a video of the bustling activity in the garden to feature on Faithify, a crowdfunding website that will launch next month. Lea Smith, who shot the video, told Doyle, “Maybe somebody in Idaho will be inspired to help refugee farmers in Concord, New Hampshire.”
It’s clear that the atmosphere in The Sycamore Field Community Gardens is worth sustaining. Bourassa told Doyle that in the summer when the plants are burgeoning and the gardeners are there to tend them, “It’s almost like a little social club. It’s this real sense of life in a village.”
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1 in 4 Can’t Retire Through Their Employer in Connecticut. Now the State Is Changing That.
As America prepares for the baby boomers to enter their golden years, it’s disturbing to hear that only 18 percent of Americans feel secure in their retirement, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Enter Connecticut and its plan to research ways to help create a comfortable retirement for its private-sector employees. State lawmakers recently dedicated $400,000 toward the exploration of a potential private-sector retirement plan. Why is the government so interested in these employees? Perhaps it is because 740,000 of the state’s residents currently are not able to have a retirement plan through their company. The goal of the research is to develop a plan that would set up retirement accounts for the private-sector employees, which would be filled with money automatically deducted from their paychecks. For a small fee, these accounts would be monitored — and there would be an assured rate of return. However, not all of Connecticut’s lawmakers are in support of the plan. Opponents argue that this would interfere with the functioning of Social Security and other federal laws, or it would put more of a burden on taxpayers. These concerns are all things that need to be considered and addressed during the research. Connecticut may be the first state to commit money to the project, but it is not the first to toy with the notion. In 2012, California passed legislation to establish a similar program, but they are still in the process of raising funds. The hope is that by 2016, 7.4 million people will be served by a plan. Additionally, Illinois, Maryland, and Washington all looked into the option, but have not developed anything. While Connecticut is only committing itself to research, this is still a step forward and may encourage other states to follow suit.
Louisville Stretches to Help its Public Workers
Reach for your toes, reach for the sky, hold for 10 seconds…
This is what Louisville, Kentucky public works employees hear every morning before heading out on their routes.
Granted, it sounds a little odd. But a morning stretch is just one aspect of Louisville’s plan to prevent injuries among its garbage collectors. A little extra agility is never a negative, and over the past two years, city officials have been promoting it with their workers as well as incorporating it into their own policies.
Why?
January 2012 began with 32 percent of Louisville garbage collectors not working or having their duties limited due to serious injuries. Comparably, two years later in January 2014, that number was reduced to 15 percent. This staggering drop is a result of a three-part plan initiated by the city as part of its metrics-driven performance improvement.
Step one is the stretching routine that begins at 6 a.m. sharp every morning. Before the employees head out, all of them — including administrators — join together for a wake-up stretch led by a different designated leader each day. In a circle, everyone participates in the toe touches, jumping jacks, and squats to prepare for the busy day ahead.
Step two is the Accident Review Committee. For the committee, every injury is important, and it reviews each one — leading to a list of suggested measures to prevent them from recurring. Their recommendations are passed to department management who then compiles a final list and passes it down to the staff.
The final step is the modified duty policy. Typically, a worker is out for six to ten weeks following a serious injury. This new policy, though, gives them the option to return to work after one week, performing less strenuous office work.
The beginning of 2012 also saw the formation of the Office of Performance Improvement whose greatest accomplishment is the establishment of the Louie Stat — which increases communication between the mayor and all city departments by holding regular meetings during which relevant metrics are reviewed and plans are established for future improvement.
Just like the workers who wake up every morning to stretch their muscles, Louisville city officials clearly have taken the extra step to expand their programs and influence to benefit their workers.
A National Effort to Boost Local Resources
As smaller cities across the country grapple with poverty, unemployment, failing schools and other indicators economic distress, little time is devoted to ensuring they’re receiving the best tools and resources for better solutions.
While cities like New York and San Francisco benefit from the bright minds of Silicon Valley and other social startups, smaller communities are in need of similar solutions and ideas to restore economic recovery and growth. That’s why President Barack Obama launched the National Resource Network, a pilot program developed to be a consulting agency for policy, technical, and financial support for local governments.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) injected $10 million into the program, forming a network of experts with the New York University and the International City/County Management Association as well as Enterprise Community Partners, Public Financial Management Inc. and HR&A Advisors.
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The goal is to spend a three-year period listening to local governments for the type of guidance and assistance they need. From there, teams will be formed to create customized strategies. Local officials will also have access to a library of resources on government reform and community development, as well as a “311 for Cities.”
What’s that, you’re probably asking? The help line will serve as an online resource for government officials to log in for help with anything from public budgeting to crime prevention. After sending an inquiry, the network will review the problem and within three days, send a response with referrals and resources. The online site is available for about 50 communities and aims to expand to hundreds more over the course of the next three years.
While larger cities continue to innovate new policies and strategies to spur more community development, economic growth, and public and private partnerships, it’s important to keep in mind the thousands of smaller cities without the same resources — but that need of the same solutions. With a one-stop shop like the National Resource Network, help is on the horizon.
Infrastructure: America’s Investment for the Future
Overcrowding, temperamental weather, and economic instability are just a few future trends facing us whose ramifications are already being felt. Take a look around. It’s easy to see their impact through continued job layoffs and random, severe weather.
However, City Lab — a think tank at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design dedicated to solving urban and city issues — believes that there’s one easy solution for all these problems: Infrastructure.
It goes without saying that there is always room for improvement. Anyone who’s sat for hours in traffic — whether it’s the result of emergency road construction or just simply a case of too many people on a road that’s too small at the same time — can attest that is certainly true when it comes to America’s infrastructure. An upgrade just might make life a little less stressful — all the while combating those large problems.
Here, a couple strategies created by CityLab to propel American infrastructure into the future.
• Plan for the unexpected – Anticipate and plan for any potential disaster (natural or unnatural) and act accordingly.
• Design adjustable systems – Natural disasters, stress, and extra loads should all be taken into consideration to create buildings and bridges that are malleable and flexible.
• Create an interconnected system – Most of us know what it is like to either A) be in a city where buses, cars, bikers and walkers all fight for space, or B) live outside of the city where a car is the only viable option. America should adopt an interconnected system similar to Europe where all transportation works together efficiently.
Preparing for the unknown is a difficult task — but one that is necessary. These suggestions from CityLab (see the others here) are just one approach, but, through their implementation, America could get on the fast track to a secure future — and have the ability to adjust to any potential roadblocks.
Texas Lawyers Provide Free Help to Young Undocumented Immigrants
Many young undocumented immigrants brought to America as kids live in a kind of suspended animation — with everything from college to jobs to medical care to driver’s licenses put on hold by their legal status.
Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, such young adults can apply for temporary permission to work, go to school, all the while not worrying about being deported. DACA doesn’t provide a pathway to eventual citizenship as the DREAM Act would if it were ever to pass, but the policy still allows these youth to progress in their lives, go to college, and start careers.
Registering for DACA it isn’t easy, however. Applicants must be younger than 31 years of age (as of June 15). Plus, they must provide proof of continuous residency in the United States. Which could be a problem for some immigrants if they started working after high school and took a job that paid in cash because of their lack of a Social Security number — leaving a gap in their records.
That’s why a group of immigration attorneys in Texas will be offering free legal help to DACA-eligible people on June 5 and 6 at the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) in San Antonio.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, Texas has 210,000 immigrant residents eligible for DACA, the second highest of any state. (California has the most.) Immigration attorney Alex Garza of RAICES told Dana Choi of the Standard-Times in San Angelo that the nonprofit is trying to find and help as many of those people as it can. “We are actually coming out to the towns and counties so (people who might be eligible for DACA) don’t have to travel all the way out to San Antonio for legal assistance.”
Johana Deleón is one young Texan that RAICES helped apply for DACA; she was approved back in March. Now Deleón is studying for her driving test and was recently accepted into Texas A&M, where she will attend if she can find enough financial aid.
The challenges she faces as she continues her education are considerable, but she’s ready. “You can start at the bottom and work your way up,” she told Choi. “We work hard to get where we are, so I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem for us.”
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