One of the main barriers to consistent employment for low-income people: Unreliable transportation. If the bus is late or doesn’t serve the area where people live or work, say, or a child’s school or daycare is at a distance from a parent’s workplace, it can lead to missed shifts and a lost job — leaving the family worse off than ever.
This is where Wheels to Work steps in. The nonprofit, which serves a variety of locations throughout the U.S., including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California and South Dakota, accepts donated vehicles, fixes them up and provides them to struggling families — either for free or for a low price.
Before receiving the keys to a dependable car, participants in the Wheels to Work program sponsored by the Wisconsin Automotive & Truck Education Association (WATEA) must take a course called Money Smart, which teaches them about money management, vehicle maintenance and budgeting. Meanwhile, WATEA enlists the help of students overseen by mechanic mentors to repair the vehicles, teaching them automotive skills that might lead to a career.
Participants in the WATEA program must earn no more than twice the salary of the federal poverty level, possess a driver’s license and a good driving record and either have a job or be actively looking for work.
The program has shown such promise that more communities are introducing it every year. The city of Charlottesville and the Monticello Area Community Action Agency hope to introduce Wheels to Work in Virginia early next year, but first, according to WVIR, they’re seeking help from the community to launch it by looking for partners who will help them repair donated cars.
One recipient of a Wheels to Work vehicle named Charles from Virginia, used to be a drug addict but has turned his life around. He now works as a limousine driver and relishes the freedom that the Wheels to Work car has brought him. “I am able to give people rides now,” he tells Jennifer M. Drummond of CARITAS. “I can visit my grandchildren and it gives me an opportunity to enjoy life more.”
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Tag: low-income families
Meet the Sanitation Worker Who Founded a Nonprofit That Helps the Homeless
Garbage collectors take care of a lot of stuff many of us prefer not to think about. And for the past seven years, one especially thoughtful sanitation driver in Silver Spring, Md., not only collects his community’s trash, he also keeps an eye out for people who need help.
In 2007, Harvey was driving his route for Waste Management when he noticed a lot of people sleeping out on the streets — despite the fact that there were shelters nearby. “Sometimes I guess when the shelters get full they have no other place to go,” Harvey tells Good Morning America. “So they’ve got to turn to the streets even if it’s for a night or two they’re out there.”
Harvey couldn’t get the homeless people out of his mind. He and his wife Theresa began to make sandwiches and collect blankets, which he then distributed. But Harvey wanted to help even more. According to People Magazine, his brother helped him make a video of the homeless people along his route, which he showed his manager and then asked, “Is there anything we can do as a company?”
Harvey began to collect donations at work, and he and his wife soon founded God’s Connection Transition, a nonprofit that helps 5,000 homeless and low-income people a month. The Harveys convinced companies including Safeway, Pepperidge Farm and Costco to donate food, which they stock in a rented Gaithersburg warehouse. Hundreds of needy families stop in once a week to shop for what they need.
“As long as I know there’s somebody out here … It’s hard to go home sit at a table eat a meal,” Harvey, who still delivers care packages to homeless people in the early morning hours, tells Good Morning America.
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For Those Most in Need of Low Utility Bills, There’s Free Solar Energy
Normally, the families that can afford solar panels are the ones who are least in need of the energy savings that accompany the green technology. But now, a new program in Denver is giving some low-income households free access to solar energy.
The charter elementary school Academy 360 (80 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch) in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood focuses on health and wellness in its curriculum and provides wholesome breakfasts and lunches to all its students and encourages plenty of exercise. And now, the new solar program, which was announced by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock last month, should bring more overall wellness (not to mention budget savings) to the families of each of the 125 students enrolled in the school.
Last year, Colorado became the first state to give people the option of accessing solar energy by subscribing to a solar garden connected to their houses via an energy grid, rather than purchasing and installing their own solar panels. This type of thing isn’t legal in every state, but four years ago Colorado legislators passed the Community Solar Act, allowing for partnerships between solar and electrical companies.
The first two solar gardens were located in Colorado Springs, and now a company called SunShare is bringing this option to Denver. The first subscribers will receive six-tenths of a kilowatt of solar energy and should see their home energy bills reduced by twenty percent, according to Anthony Cotton of the Denver Post.
“When I was your age, I used to see these magical solar panels on houses, and I wondered what they did,” Mayor Hancock said as he spoke to the Academy 360 community. “They were very expensive to have then, and they still are. But because of this project, we’ll all be able to share in affordable energy.”
SunShare CEO David Amster-Olszewski tells the Post that he thinks the program will bring a variety of benefits for the Academy 360 families: “It means they’ll be able to put healthier foods on the table or buy more sports equipment for their kids’ health.”
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Through This Simple Household Task, Volunteers Show Their Love for the Low-Income and Homeless
If you’re lucky enough to have someone else washing your clothes for you, chances are that person loves you. (And it’s probably your mom, dad or spouse doing the dirty work.)
A volunteer mission called Laundry Love, however, spreads the affection beyond the immediate family to help the needy get the clean clothes that otherwise might be hard to come by.
According to the nonprofit’s website, Laundry Love began about 12 years ago when members of a church in Ventura, Calif., wanted to know what they could do to help a homeless man known as T-Bone. He said, “If I had clean clothes I think people would treat me like a human being.”
Since then, many other churches and volunteer groups have joined the effort, renting out a number of Laundromats across the country for a night to wash the clothes of homeless and low-income people, while also getting to know them and trying to help them in other ways.
Krysta Fauria of the Associated Press spoke to Victoria Mitchell, who began coming to Laundry Love gatherings in Huntington Beach when she was living in her car with her baby daughter. The volunteers took up a collection to help her rent an apartment. Now Mitchell has a steady job, too.
“You’re not just checking a box to give a donation. You’re spending the whole evening with these people and getting your hands dirty and it’s intimate — you’re doing people’s laundry,” Mitchell’s friend and Laundry Love volunteer LuzAnna Figueroa tells Fauria.
Some of the volunteers were once down on their luck, too. Christian Kassoff, founder of the Huntington Beach Laundry Love chapter, was once addicted to heroin and living out of his car. Now he leads an enthusiastic group of volunteers helping others. “I’m not wealthy, but I have the gift of time and a heart for it, so this fits,” Kassoff tells Fauria.
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When Food Is Left Unharvested, This Organization Gleans It and Feeds the Hungry
Dotting the Maine countryside are small plots growing more fruits and vegetables than the farmers who work the land could ever pick. But despite this bountifulness, some of the state’s residents forgo buying produce because of tight budgets.
This is where Hannah Semler, the coordinator of the gleaning initiative for the nonprofit Healthy Acadia, steps in. Semler leads a team of volunteers to pick whatever is left after farmers have harvested as much as they can.
In Blue Hill, Amanda Provencher and Paul Schultz of King Hill Farm welcome her regularly to their fields. “We just don’t have time to pick everything we grow, so we’d just till it right back into the soil or feed it to the animals, but it’s still totally good food,” Schultz tells Seth Freed Wessler of NBC News. “Hannah is identifying a resource that we have that otherwise we just would not be utilized because there are not enough hours in the day.”
At King Hill Farm and 18 other Maine farms, Semler and the volunteers for Healthy Acadia glean 30,000 pounds of food a year that would otherwise go to waste. They deliver it to food pantries for the needy and to the Magic Food Bus (sponsored by Healthy Peninsula), which delivers produce to schools and housing complexes for elderly people.
According to Wessler, about 40 percent of American crops are never harvested. Meanwhile, 15 percent of Americans are food insecure (i.e. they don’t have enough healthy food).
Rick Traub, the president of Tree of Life, a Maine food pantry that distributes food that Semler collects, tells Wessler, “Poverty here is everywhere. I go to the grocery store and the person who cashes me out, I see her the next day at the pantry. The problem of hunger in the U.S. has very little to do with a scarcity of food. There’s far more food available around here than people to eat it. The problem is really about access.”
With a team of volunteers using their time and muscle to harvest good produce that otherwise would go to waste, access to nutritious food is expanding in Maine. Let’s hope this practice spreads to other states, too.
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If Low-Income Families Can’t Settle Their Unpaid Bills, This Cable Company Provides Affordable Internet Access
It’s back-to-school time. And while parents still need to load up on traditional school supplies such as pencils, notebooks and erasers, there’s a more expensive item that’s increasingly a necessity for students: Internet access.
Several companies and communities have provided inexpensive Internet access to low-income families. But when bills mount and are left unpaid, the service is often turned off, leaving kids unconnected and falling behind their peers in technology.
Three years ago, Comcast launched Internet Essentials, a program that gives low-income families Internet access for $9.95 a month and discounts on PCs. To apply, families must have at least one child qualifying for the federal school lunch program and any outstanding bill they have with the cable provider must be settled — the latter requirement leading some to criticize Comcast for punishing the poor.
In response, Comcast recently announced that it will forgive unpaid bills that are more than a year old and allow these families to sign up for the program. It will also waive the first six months of fees for those new to the program, which will get families well into the school year before any money is due.
But as Re/Code, the Washington Post, and others have pointed out, the timing of this magnanimous gesture is questionable as it might have something to do with Comcast’s desire to curry favor with the Federal Communications Commission so that its bid to buy Time Warner Cable will be approved.
“While Comcast should be applauded for trying to bridge the digital divide, they are clearly benefiting from the promotion of this program,” said Hannah Sassaman, a policy director at a Philadelphia community organizing group, Media Mobilizing Project.
In an interview with Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post a few months before the unpaid bill waiver was announced, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said that criticism over the company’s ulterior motive for the program, “makes me sigh. You can criticize us for data consumption caps. You can criticize us because cable bills are too high. You can criticize us because the acquisition of Time Warner Cable will make us too big. I can understand that. But every once in a while, even a big company does a good thing for the right reasons.”
While Comcast’s reason to forgive unpaid bills will never be known, it will get more families online at home and improve low-income children’s chances at being successful at school. And that’s an outcome that’s anything but questionable.
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These Innovative Programs Give Poor Families the Means to Solve Wellness and Safety Problems
From being able to buy enough diapers to change babies regularly to sending kids to school in clean clothes and even having the technology needed to find out about weather emergencies — all of these are things that many of us take for granted. But for poor families, they are challenges they face on a regular basis.
Fortunately, the caring people behind some new insightful programs are working to make life a little easier for poor families.
In Richmond, Indiana, Mike Duke realized that many local families couldn’t afford the four dollars it costs to wash and dry a load of laundry at a laundromat. “I see people on a daily basis who just do not have the funds for laundry,” Duke, a Wayne Township Trustee Investigator, told the Pal-Item. So he and Sharlene George of Open Arms Ministries teamed up to launch The Laundry Project, a program that will provide poor families with laundry vouchers.
Just in time to get children ready for school, The Laundry Project will kick off on July 28 with a “Back To School Laundry Bash,” at a laundromat near the homes of many poor families. George and Duke hope to expand the program to offer activities for kids while parents do laundry and receive free health screenings and education about how to stretch household dollars.
Meanwhile, in Story County, Iowa, organizations are teaming up to distribute 100 NOAA weather radios to low-income families. Melissa Spencer, deputy Story County emergency management coordinator told Melissa Erickson of the Ames Tribune, “These radios are more important for families living in mobile homes or homes without basements that may need more time to get to a safe sheltering location. Unfortunately, the relative small cost of these radios may be out of reach for these families or individuals due to a very limited income.”
The families who receive the radios will also be given emergency preparedness kits and batteries to power up the radios. “We’ve had tornadoes in Story County as late as November, and we’ve had occasions in the wintertime with blizzard-like conditions that we’ve had to close Interstate 35,” Spencer said. “This is definitely a tool that can be used year-round.”
Making these families — regardless of their income — safer and better off.
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This Program Has Been Keeping Low-Income Babies and Their Moms Healthy for Decades
As the endless supply of child-rearing advice books suggest, having a trusted source to help you face the challenges of motherhood certainly helps.
Back in the 1970s, University of Colorado pediatrics professor David Olds worked at an inner-city daycare center and was struck by the enormous odds faced by low-income babies and their mothers. They died far more often than babies from higher income families, and it was difficult for their mothers to travel to clinics that might offer them assistance. Olds wondered if sending nurses out to educate low-income mothers and socialize with the families in their homes would help. Out of this notion, the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) was born.
Dr. Olds began testing his program in Elmira, New York; Memphis and Denver to see if it worked in different populations of low-income mothers and babies. The resounding answer? Yes. So in 1996, after testing and adjusting the program, Dr. Olds began to share it with communities across the country. Then in 2003, the Nurse-Family Partnership National Service Office opened its doors.
A recent 20-year study confirms that participation in NFP among low-income families in Memphis reduced the mortality rate from preventable deaths such as SIDS, injuries, and homicides from 1.6 percent to zero. Meanwhile, mothers in the control group who didn’t receive visits from nurses were three times more likely to die than those who did talk regularly with nurses from NFP.
“Death among mothers and children in these age ranges in the U.S. general population is rare but of enormous consequence,” Dr. Olds told Ana B. Ibarra of the Merced Sun Star. “The high rates of death among mothers and children not receiving nurse-home visits reflect the toxic conditions faced by too many low-income parents and children in our society.”
NFP nurse visits begin during pregnancy, educating mothers-to-be about how to stay healthy before and after their babies are born. Studies suggest that this engagement reduces doctor and hospital visits due to injury in kids under age 2 by 56 percent, reduces smoking in mothers by 25 percent, brings child abuse down by 48 percent and even lowers the number of convictions when these children grow up — bringing that rate down by a whopping 69 percent.
In California, NFP currently serves 21 counties, targeting first-time low-income mothers (especially teen mothers), and the program works so well that the California Department of Public Health hopes to expand it to all 58 counties in the state.
Clearly, for those mothers with the fewest financial resources and very little emotional support, visits from a caring, knowledgable nurse can make all the difference — in not only their health, but the wellness of their children, too.
MORE: How Jobs Give Low-Income Mothers More Than A Financial Boost
This Community Organization Looks to Economic Development as a Means of Reducing Hunger
Do you give a man a fish or teach him how to fish for himself?
For centuries, we have been pondering this question, but the Food Bank of North Alabama (FBNA) in Huntsville, Alabama, thinks it has found the answer. Instead of just providing food for its patrons, it’s creating a whole network to promote hunger awareness and sustainable, local food.
FBNA started with one volunteer at a desk in the local senior center in 1984, and has since grown into an organization that serves 100,000 people in an 8,000 square mile service area. Their mission: provide food and hunger relief to needy residents but also provide the tools to help the community create a sustainable local food system. (The Food Bank isn’t alone in this fight as it has partnerships with 200 organizations.)
So how does it go about creating a local food system? The food bank offers a wide variety of services that raise awareness and provide solutions. These services include education and presentations on regional hunger issues, backpack programs for school children on the weekends and loan programs for local, small growers and helping to form farming collaborations.
To help with the collaborations, the food bank established the “Farm Food Team,” which connects local farmers with schools, hospitals, grocery stores and restaurants to form partnerships that otherwise might not be possible. As a result, already five new farmer’s markets have sprouted in the area.
It wasn’t enough, though, to work with only people in the food business. The food supply should be the concern of the entire area, so the FBNA started the North Alabama Food Policy Council. Comprised of all volunteers, the Council aims to engage all residents and stakeholders. It has three goals in mind: (1) to educate the residents about the food system, (2) facilitate collaboration and (3) recommend regional policy changes.
The newest addition is the “food dialogues,” which, thanks to the Council, took place in 2012 and 2013. These talks involved residents and experts who came together to discuss how to increase sustainability and the local food supply. From these discussions, the Council will make their policy recommendations.
According to Kathryn Strickland, the Executive Director of the Food Bank of North Alabama, the purpose of the organization is to unite and connect.
“The connection between us and our health, between our food dollars and our local economy; and the connections we have with each other and how our friends and neighbors can grow the food for us,” Strictland told Sustainable Cities. “A local food system is all about connections and it’s so important to strengthen those in our community.”
MORE: Why Public Markets Are So Important
These Organizations Are Empowering Female Workers
There aren’t a ton of bright spots in the working world. After all, there’s the continued problem of unemployment, millennials’ struggle to find jobs and the high poverty rate amongst minimum-wage workers — which is something that women struggle with in particular since they make up two-thirds of minimum-wage employees.
However, some organizations and cities are working to alleviate some of that burden. One of which is Seattle, which just became the city with the highest minimum wage: $15 an hour. Fortunately, this wage increase may be just the first of many, now that the movement 15 Now is spreading through the country.
While this will greatly benefit the women in Seattle, women nationwide still earn only 77 cents for each dollar that a man earns. The poverty rates are also higher for women: 15.4 percent in 2012 compared to 11.9 percent for men and 31 percent for women-run households.
That’s why some women are taking matters into their own hands. Instead of waiting for change in government policies, they’re forming worker cooperatives that offer guarantees of fair pay and non-exploitive working conditions. These co-ops focus on specific female needs by providing an empowering environment that helps women fight feelings of isolation, vulnerability and inferiority.
While these co-ops can be found across the country, here are a few examples of ones making a big difference:
The country’s largest female-owned co-op is Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), which was founded in the Bronx in 1985. The group’s business? Direct personal health care. CHCA offers jobs and benefits for 2,000 people, earning $60 million a year. Additionally, the co-op offers a free training program focusing on workforce development to 600 low-income and unemployed women.
The Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) began in 1995 in Oakland, California. Comprised of low-income immigrants (mainly Latinas) the organization now boasts five eco-friendly housecleaning co-ops. More than 95 women are employed by WAGES, all of which are worker-owners — entitling them to vote in business decisions and receive an equal share of the profits.
Another one is the New York City-based Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative, which started in 2008. Working in partnership with the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, the co-op is owned by immigrant women and now boasts 30 members. Its services include business development, nanny training and social support and education opportunities.
While change may be slow, these female-owned co-ops are demonstrating that women are not willing to wait any longer for it.
MORE: Ask the Experts: How Can We Solve the Young Adult Unemployment Crisis?