These Volunteers Help Low-Income Families Prepare Their Taxes for Free

Filing taxes is required by law, but 57 percent of Americans don’t understand the tax code. That’s not surprising, since the code, and documents associated with it, add up to more than 76,550 pages.
Complicating things even further is the GOP tax bill that took effect in 2018: people who itemize deductions on their returns are paying less than they should during the year, thanks to outdated W-4 forms not tailored to the new code. That could mean a payment instead of a refund in April — something that 27 percent of taxpayers aren’t confident they’ll be able to pay, according to a survey by Tax Slayer, an online filing service.
That’s where VITA comes in: Thousands of trained and certified volunteers complete millions of tax forms for families who qualify for assistance each year. One of VITA’s main objectives is making sure families take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, something a fifth of taxpayers who qualify for don’t take. This credit lifted 5.8 million people out of poverty in 2016.
Watch the above video to learn more about how VITA and similar organizations work to help families in need during tax season.
More: This Anti-Poverty Initiative Was Born in a Hospital Waiting Room

Fixing America’s Schools

Ted Dintersmith isn’t your typical philanthropist. The straight-talking venture capitalist and former Obama appointee to the 2012 U.N. General Assembly is also one of the nation’s foremost voices on education reform. Dintersmith has no problem calling out other education reformers, such as tech billionaire Bill Gates or Success Academy Charter Schools founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz, on what they’re doing wrong with their approach to improving public education.
“Eva Moskowitz gets called a hero by some, but would any of those people [who are] cutting big checks to her send their kids to those schools? Hell no!” says Dintersmith, adding that schools need to change their focus from test scores to more meaningful measurements of success. “So much of education’s decline is based on these eight words: ‘But we have to be able to measure.’ That’s false. We have to be able to assess.”
In his new book, What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America, Dintersmith visits schools in all 50 states and discovers teachers doing extraordinary things with limited resources. Instead of reminding us that our public school system is broken, his message is one of hope. NationSwell sat down with Dintersmith to discuss his top four education innovations and solutions that he encountered while venturing across the country.

SOLUTION 1: REIMAGINE THE HIGH SCHOOL TRANSCRIPT

In 2009, New Hampshire — along with a handful of cities across the nation — adopted a competency-based approach to grading students, as opposed to the typical A-to-F letter grades.
Students tend to forget information after they take a test, especially if they cram for it. But with a competency-based approach, high school transcripts look more like scorecards, reflecting student comprehension of classroom topics rather than just a GPA based on letter grades.
“If we are going to hold kids and teachers accountable [for what they learn in school], we should look to New Hampshire, with kids demonstrating real competency of standards that are driven by design and based on real performance,” Dintersmith says. “And I think it is really encouraging because it shows what can be done at scale.” After a pilot program in 27 New Hampshire schools, the competency-based approach was introduced as a statewide initiative.
“Legislatures, school boards, commissioners  — all trusted teachers to lead the way in how they could reinvent the high school transcript,” Dintersmith says. “They turned it into [something] confidence-based and performance-based, with kids demonstrating important accomplishments and skills instead of [focusing on] getting a 70 or higher on multiple-choice tests.”

SOLUTION 2: BE IN THE STUDENTS’ CHAIRS

In another competency-based curriculum, teachers in Iowa thought the best way to get students interested in learning was to have them tackle real-world business and community projects. The program came about after an educator-led experiment asked about 60 local business and community leaders to put themselves in the shoes of students for a day.
“They got movers and shakers from all over Cedar Rapids to come in for a full school day, to see what life is like as a student,” Dintersmith says. “And then at the end, the teachers asked [them], ‘Do you think we should just try to keep doing what we’ve always done, or should we be thinking big?’”
The resulting program, named Iowa BIG, pairs schools in Cedar Rapids with nonprofit, business and government agencies. Students solve for community needs, such as creating public data portals for local sports results that reporters can use and building robotic kayaks that use spectrometers to beam back data on water quality.
Dintersmith says he was blown away by the program. “Kids do just as well on standardized tests because they are really energized, and [teachers] tell me 98 percent get into first-choice colleges,” he says. “Kids are getting great summer jobs too.”

Dintersmith School 2
In his new book, Ted Dintersmith argues that schools need to change their focus from test scores to more meaningful measurements of success.

SOLUTION 3: CONNECT KIDS TO THE WORLD

Every spring, Coachella Valley, California, experiences a massive boom in population when it hosts its annual music-and-arts festivals. But whereas millions of dollars pour in over the course of just a month, Coachella Valley’s schools are some of the poorest in the nation.
“There are a lot of homeless kids, a lot of kids living in trailer parks — which is luxury housing for these families,” says Dintersmith, who visited the city during his tour. “These are kids desperately trying to escape poverty, but they’re under-resourced, which is the story of education in America.”
Coachella Valley’s school superintendent, Darryl Adams, recognized that one of the biggest challenges for students was access to technology. So Adams, a former musician-turned-music teacher, got a $45 million bond voted on by residents to focus schools on reducing the so-called digital divide, where poor students have less internet access than their wealthier counterparts. The money paid for an iPad for every one of the 18,000 students in the district. The grant also provided for WiFi on eight school buses that then parked outside of the city’s trailer parks, providing internet access for everyone in the neighborhood.
“Adams focused the schools on teaching students to create and invent [things like websites and robotics], and to use technology to show that you can make things that will impress other people, will be valued by other people, will make your world better, and will help you escape poverty,” Dintersmith says. “So really hard-hit kids suddenly have a reason to come to school and are getting good at something that will give them multiple career options going forward.”

SOLUTION 4: TRY OUT TRADE SKILLS

In Waipahu, a suburb of Honolulu, the poverty rate is 2 percent higher than the state average and disability rates are almost double. That translates into little funding for local schools — especially for the expensive hardware that much of technology requires.
“We all think of Hawaii being luxury hotels, but Hawaii has these acute pockets of poverty, especially in Waipahu, one of the poorest areas outside of Honolulu,” says Dintersmith, who was intrigued by one school’s approach to integrate design thinking into their curriculum.
The school asked technology companies to partner with its students. The idea was to mix applied learning with classroom instruction. Students learned how to create products and build out technology-driven solutions to help other members of the community.
“These kids were so impressive,” Dintersmith says. “They’re mixing the applied with the academic, and they’re getting these great career paths, but they take such pride in their school and their community. Again, it’s that really clear understanding that the applied is a great way to develop academic perspective.”
Dintersmith also found out about another school not far from Waipahu that was using a similar applied-learning approach, but with marketing and journalism instead of tech.
“If you simply relegate these kids to an academic-only environment, many kids find it’s not interesting, and when you get them in high school, you only have one option, which is college,” Dintersmith says. “As they come through school, we owe it to these kids to give them as many possible career options outside of a more formal education. Because, at the end, all they’ll do is keep their fingers crossed and hope they can find a career.”

Would Your Opinions of Criminals Change if One Cooked and Served You Dinner?

In the far southern outskirts of Dallas County, Chad Houser pulled off the I-45 highway, drove onto a dead-end road leading to several shooting ranges and made a quick right turn to his final destination: the Dallas County Youth Village, a non-secure juvenile detention facility for 10-to-17-year-old boys. Stepping out of his car, Houser, a chef at the acclaimed Dallas bistro Parigi, noticed a putrid stench rising from the nearby landfill and water treatment plant. He grabbed a bundle of fruits and herbs from his car and strode into the compound, where he planned to teach a class on making ice cream.
The whole ride over, Houser fretted about the disrespect and back talk he was about to endure, and he steeled himself as he signed in. But when he arrived in the kitchen, none of the eight boys were the tattooed toughs he’d expected. “I had stereotyped them before I even met them,” Houser recalls. “All eight looked at me when they spoke. They said, ‘Please,’ ‘Sir,’ and ‘Thank you.’” They all listened closely, he adds, eager for “a first-time feeling” of crafting something they could take pride in and savor.
After class, Houser hosted the kids at Dallas’s central farmers market, where all their ice cream flavors were entered into a competition. One of the boys took home first place and the $100 prize, beating out culinary students and trained professionals. The young man ran up to Houser and told him, “I just love to make food and give it to people and put a smile on their face.” “Wow,” Houser thought, amazed at this teen’s desire to use food to give joy to others. The young man continued, “When I get out of detention, I’m going to get a job in a restaurant.” But he had one question for which he wanted Houser’s input: “Sir, where do you think I should work?” Fast food like Wendy’s or casual dining like Chili’s? he asked. Houser paused before saying, “Sir, I think you should work for whomever hires you first.”
That exchange occurred in 2007, and Houser pondered it for more than a year, feeling helpless at first, then angry at the lack of opportunities for the young men trying to leave their mistakes behind. One night in 2009, as he was closing up Parigi after dinner service, he told his business partner he felt dishonest. A year had passed, and the boys at the Youth Village weren’t any better off. He felt like he’d broken a promise. “I just want to open a restaurant and let these kids run it,” he confessed. He wanted a place where kids were could learn “more than how to cook.” He wanted them to gain life skills like personal responsibility, social skills and financial management. “I wanted them to be exposed to things they had never been exposed to,” Houser says. When his partner told him it sounded like a pretty good idea, he devoted all his energy to making the establishment a reality.

Chad Houser wanted a place where kids were “learning more than how to cook.”

In 2011, Houser hosted his first pop-up dinner cooked by former juvenile offenders, a long awaited-moment where he “put knives and fire in front of these kids.” Within 15 minutes of prep, the fish he’d ordered was ruined and the smoke alarms were sounding. The staff recovered, and at the end of service, each one of the patrons shook Houser’s hand or gave him a hug and mentioned how closely the young workers resembled their own children. By late 2012, these 50-seat dinners, where proceeds went towards the boys’ wages and a mentoring program, were selling out within minutes, and Houser sold off his ownership in Parigi to pursue opening a restaurant that would employ young ex-offenders full-time. Café Momentum, which can host 150 diners nightly, opened in January 2015 with a baguette-cutting ceremony. This month, nine formerly incarcerated young men became the first to graduate from its first yearlong training program.
For almost all of them, the world of fine dining is an eye-opening experience. For one, there’s some sticker-shock that comes with glancing at the menu: a family ordering three mains (wagyu beef, $26; pork chops, $26; seared scallops, $23) spends as much in an hour as the employees earn in a full day’s work. But the more lasting impression is the taste of cuisine the boys never knew existed.
An appetizer prepared at Bolsa, a Chad Houser pop up restaurant from 2012.

“Most kids come from parts of town that are federally recognized food deserts, which means they don’t have access to grocery stores. These kids literally think that raspberry is a flavor of candy. They’ve never tasted it fresh,” Houser says. “And if raspberry was foreign, imagine having them smell fresh tarragon. It’s absolutely mind-blowing.”
That exposure to luxury may be foreign to these young ex-convicts, but Houser assures them that they deserve to be there. In addition to paying a $10 hourly wage (more than the state’s $7.25 minimum) over the 12-month post-release internship, Café Momentum offers intensive social services, including identifying permanent housing, medical attention, parenting classes and other case management. With those obstacles taken care of, Houser believes he’ll see the young men rise to the demanding expectations he set, which includes making everything from scratch — from the vinegars to the goat cheese. Even the bacon and pork chops are butchered from a whole pig, cut right from the whole animal in the kitchen. As the young men pick up various techniques, they also learn how to glean as much as they can from produce. Take a beet: it can be diced and cooked with coffee grounds, its root grounded up into a sugary powder or its leaves can be fermented into kimchi.
From the very first pop-up dinner, Houser realized that large receipts and fabulous food were well and good, but the most important aspect of dinner service would be breaking down stereotypes, in exactly the same way his conception of juvenile offenders was shattered the first time he met any. And that process, he adds, needs to happen on both sides of the table. Diners need to see that, with some support, these young men aren’t career criminals, and the workers need to see that the rest of the city wants them to succeed. In a city that has a long history of racial segregation, interaction between these two groups of people is rare outside the dining room. Yet, in the ritual of a multi-course meal, a bond is forged between the wait staff and customers and barriers come down.
For the young men in the program, however, needs are more immediate. Two interns working in the kitchen recently took a break from prep work to talk with NationSwell. They said the program’s most significant benefit was a stable income — something that’s hard to come by for most ex-offenders. “As long as I got money in my pocket, I don’t got no worries. That’s been the hardest thing, to even have a dollar in my pocket,” says Raymon, a 19-year-old who lives with his mom and four siblings. He politely declines to talk about why he ended up in jail in the first place: “Different person” was all he would say of his past. Today, he’s staffing the pastry station at Café Momentum. He doesn’t eat a lot of the restaurant’s food himself (“I’m really a burger type of person”), but he enjoys being around other employees who’ve gone through “the struggle.” To him, his boss, Houser, is “a cool dude,” he states. “He’s trying to make sure I stay out of trouble.”
So far, of the 150 youth who staffed the restaurant over the past 14 months, only five went back to jail (two because of a prior charge), Houser reports. That low recidivism rate is unheard of in Texas where 71.1 percent of juveniles are rearrested and 25.5 percent are reincarcerated within three years, according to state data. (Among the 172 kids who staffed Houser’s pop-up dinners and didn’t receive the same intensive social services, a slightly higher 11 percent were reincarcerated, still about half the state average.)
That’s not to say that getting a job at Café Momentum fixes all the problems. After release, the interns are usually living in the same neighborhoods, where they committed their first crime. Jose, 18, another intern living with his mom in West Dallas, started work in February, but says he faces a constant temptation to slip back into his old ways whenever he isn’t working. (When his friends seem interested in causing trouble, he tells them he has to go home.)
Houser says that self-doubt is common after the first few months of working in the program. Akin to the sophomore slump, the high of a brand new job has worn off, and the young men often begin to question whether the program is all it claims to be. “They’ve used to being deceived. They’re used to people overpromising and underdelivering,” he says. Once that phase ends, the boys become self-sufficient, Houser adds.
Chad Houser speaks to a restaurant full of family, friends and long-time supporters during Cafe Momentum’s inaugural graduation ceremony held April 3, 2016.

It’s important to note that Houser has taken a key first step in employing these young men during that difficult year of post-release, but it remains to be seen whether their experience cooking at Café Momentum translates into long-term employment. When Jose finishes the internship, he is planning to look for a job in a hotel. Raymon is saving up for a place of his own. For his next job, he knows he’s a “good waiter” or “servant.” (He struggles to pick the right word, one without racial overtones.) But he also says, “That’s not a dream job.” At night, he thinks about being a cardiologist. Only time will tell whether the recidivism rates stay low for the entire three-year period over which they’re normally measured.
In talking with the boys, however, Houser believes that even the most hardened of the bunch seem to benefit from working at Café Momentum. The boys who were thrown back into jail for a second offense have all written Houser letters, explaining where they “tripped up” and how motivated they are not to return to jail a third time, he says. And earlier this month, a boy Houser thought would never make it through the program graduated with the first class. Twelve months ago, Houser helped him off the streets and into stable housing. He made sure the young man had groceries and money to get to work. But for much of the first month, the employee wouldn’t show and didn’t call to explain why; when he did arrive, he was either stoned or defiant, Houser recalls. As the months went on, he grew more dependable. But there were still slip-ups, like the time he asked Houser for help after he got his girlfriend pregnant. A few days before graduation, the boy pulled Houser aside and asked if they could have another talk. From experience, Houser expected the teen was back in hot water.
“What’s going on?” Houser asked.
“Well, the boy said. “I want to give you a hug.”
“Okay,” Houser answered, unsure where this was leading.
“You’ve changed my life,” the boy said. “I’m serious.” He went on, “Last year, I knew I was going to prison, so I was preparing myself to go.” He confessed to Houser that, shortly after his release from juvie, he sold as many drugs as he could to ensure his mother’s finances would be sound, and he made gang connections to ensure he’d be protected once he was back in the slammer — a return he once believed was imminent. “But, you know, I’m never going to go to prison,” the boy said. “I’m not. I’m going to succeed, and I just wanted to say thank you.”
For these young men, life once looked like a series of lockups. But as Houser’s argued and as the graduates are now making clear, working in the kitchens of Café Momentum has given these young men a taste of a better future.

This Is How You Create a Successful, Equitable Economy

Time is the scarcest resource that we have, but it’s something everyone has access to it — whether you’re Bill Gates or a person living on the street.
This basic equality of time is the foundation for the online time banking platform TimeRepublik, which provides an alternative to the monetary economy. Anyone with an Internet connection and some type of skill can create an account with TimeRepublik, posting what talents she can offer or search for services that she needs. By giving time, participants fatten their digital “time wallet” with hours that can be cashed in later for something they need. Many exchanges cross international boundaries and most take place online, using tools like Skype or Google Hangout. When users exchange services in the same city, they often opt to meet face to face.
TimeRepublik co-founders Gabriele Donati and Karim Varini were childhood friends in their home country of Switzerland and spent a lot of time as teenagers and young adults at a remote mountain cabin rented by Donati’s parents. The two recognized that living without modern conveniences (there was no running water or electricity) led them to connect with people on a deeper level. Many long conversations led them to the conclusion that something was amiss in contemporary society — how value is assigned. Seeing that value really resides in human relationships, the two slowly formed an idea that eventually led to the creation of TimeRepublik.
Donati and Varini launched TimeRepublik in October 2014.  Unlike some other time banking platforms, it does not evaluate the worth of various skills. An hour is an hour — whether it is from a graphic designer fulfilling a logo request or a dog walker helping a busy mom on a hectic morning.
“Everybody’s asking, you know, ‘what about the difference of value between the musician and the lawyer or the musician and the doctor,’” says Donati.  “They tend to forget that what we’re trying to do is to try to scale trust more than trying to give value to things.”
Since TimeRepublik’s launch more than 30,000 people from 110 countries have shared approximately 100,000 talents. The company’s goal? To eventually create a secondary system of exchange that equally values everyone’s time, regardless of specific expertise.
“Everybody knows that trust cannot be bought,” says Donati. “Once you have established trust in a relation[ship], that’s when you can start changing things.”