This February, on the exact same day, two governors from two very different states — Nikki Haley, a Republican in South Carolina, and Dan Malloy, a Democrat in Connecticut — both announced social impact bonds to promote family care: one for low-income moms, the other for parents struggling with substance abuse. Both of these bonds (also known as “pay for success”) deployed private dollars to fund the scaling of a social program. If the project succeeds in meeting specific, predesigned metrics, the private backers will profit from their investment; if not, taxpayers don’t owe a penny more. Behind both of these innovative, cross-sector partnerships was Tracy Palandjian, CEO of Social Finance, a nonprofit intermediary between all the parties, who helped bring the “pay for success” model to the United States after seeing it first implemented in England in 2010.
NationSwell spoke with Palandjian by phone from Boston about the daily obstacles and excitements that come with rethinking how American social services can reach more people in need.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I have two. The first one is an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others.” Just because one has a great idea and one could often accomplish a lot more, going at it alone is often insufficient if you really want to deliver a movement. That’s hugely evident in our work here. Imagine these very funky public-private nonprofit partnerships with so many stakeholders with very divergent motivations. What motivates a private investor? A sitting governor or mayor? The executive directors of these classic human service providers? We have everyone sit around a table to articulate a common goal — in this case, delivering results to our communities — when they have often conflicting frameworks and very different languages they speak in and very different world-views. Bringing them together around a very common goal among very uncommon stakeholders is something that we have found, yes, it’s challenging, but if we can rally this forth, we see enduring, powerful results coming out of those partnerships.
By way of background for my other one: I didn’t grow up in this country. I’m Chinese, and I grew up in Hong Kong. My grandfather whom I was very close to, his favorite quote was (translated to English): “Distance tests the strength of forces, time tests the hearts of men.” It really is a message about patience. A lot of things take time, and the people who can stay steadfast on that vision could achieve the most. My grandfather was born in 1903 in China. He took his courageous wife — my grandmother — and, at that point, four children, and literally fled the Second Wold War on foot, by boat and by train out of China into Hong Kong and then to Taiwan ultimately. He was a chemical engineer, completely self-taught. He left everything behind when he fled. Along the way, he lost two children. After they made it to safety, he started all over again. He made consumer batteries and completely rebuilt himself, his family and his business. I always think about their lives and what they were able to overcome and what they were able to accomplish. Sometimes, we take three steps backward to take five steps forward.
What’s your favorite book of all time?
One of my favorite books, which I’m proud to say is the namesake of our eldest daughter: a Chinese classic, “Tao Te Ching.” It’s just so poetic and so poignant about how one should live. And it’s full of these non-intuitive sentences like, “It is through being effortless that you can achieve the most.”
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
Taking a step back, social impact bonds are probably the latest and the most recent comer to this broader investing landscape. I agree there’s been a lot of hype, but the reason why people are excited about it is that the impact is so direct. When our investors get their money back and then some, it’s because somebody’s life has been improved. This very articulated, metric-driven all-around life improvement, whether it’s recidivism or job attainment or education attainment or improved health outcomes, these are the metrics of each of our deals. Someone’s life improvement is the source of the return back to the investor, and that connection is really powerful. While the field started off in criminal justice (and still a lot of projects are focused on reducing recidivism), we’re excited to see there are a lot of projects in early education, in early childhood, in health and in workforce development.
How do you try to inspire others?
I just try to be who I am. I believe, as a person, I’m best when I’m aligned as a human being and I’m 100 percent authentic. I don’t try to say something because it will inspire others. I don’t try to do something because, well, that’s what I believe a good leader should do. I try to model good behavior for my colleagues. I’m not perfect, I have lots of limitations. I try to be a good parent and model good behavior for our children. I feel very strongly about this; I feel like there are too many lessons and advice that people give. People just need to be authentic.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I am probably most proud of the fact that I really think that I understand two cultures perfectly well. Obviously, I grew up in my own [Chinese] culture. My whole family’s still in that part of the world. You never forget your own culture and your native language. But I also think I’ve worked in America long enough and I’ve worked with enough different sectors and different kinds of people that I really understand how this country and this culture works, too. I think that’s just a huge skill to be able to be empathetic, to be able to step into the shoes of others. I think it’s a really important skill to have, especially for our work, which requires us to talk across sectors and work across disciplines.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I’m an artist at heart. That’s what I did as a young kid, all throughout high school and college, I painted a lot, I drew a lot, I experimented with all kinds of mediums. I miss that part of my life. I haven’t done much since I graduated from college. Now, I watch my kids do it, and it makes me very happy.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Tag: south carolina
Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
Gazing out from the columned manor of Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, S.C., visitors can admire green gardens, footbridges over burbling canals and moss-cloaked cypress trees. When the azaleas bloom each spring, one can almost forget that these 500 acres (originally, it was 2,000 acres) of Lowcountry Field were once a working plantation where dozens of slaves toiled growing rice. Staring the brightly colored flora, it’s difficult to comprehend the majestic home hasn’t always been a place of beauty and was once a site of exploitation, whippings and sexual violence.
Out of sight from the main residence, stand four extant wood-sided cabins, painted white. Here, slaves slept and ate and prayed and sang, raising families in single rooms. Amid the lovely Southern grounds, these dwellings stand as a reminder of the captive men and women who lived and died on the land they were forced to cultivate.
Across the country, these shacks and cabins are under threat. Unlike the mansions where slaveowners displayed their wealth, these dwellings are far from magnificent. Housing fieldhands, many were built from the cheapest material available. Most resemble tool sheds, which, some might say, is effectively what they were. Among the catalog of historic homes, battlegrounds and memorials worthy of recognition, these hovels rarely make the list.
That’s why Joseph McGill, a Charleston native, began sleeping overnight in these crude shelters in 2010. Now nearing 80 overnight stays in 16 states, McGill says what started as a kind of publicity stunt to draw attention to the structures has grown into a movement. After the election of our nation’s first black president, the conversation around daily violence in urban communities and the retirement of the Confederate flag in South Carolina, McGill hopes the preservation of these makeshift homes will play a part in how America comes to terms with its racist past. Without the buildings, he argues, what’s there to remind us of the institution of slavery?
“One of the things that we need to understand is that 12 of our former presidents were slaveowners, eight of whom owned slaves while they were in office. Even those who contributed to those major documents that we live by today — you know, the Constitution’s ‘We, the people.’ It should have read, ‘We, the people,’ comma, ‘here in this room,’ because otherwise that document meant nothing to you,” McGill tells NationSwell. “Even after emancipation, there were obstacles put in place to deny those recently freed people their pursuit of happiness. Reconstruction was replaced by Jim Crow laws and white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings. We’re still being denied opportunities to pursue that happiness. We’re dealing with the residuals of that today.”
McGill always loved history. In his prior day job at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he safeguarded America’s iconic buildings. And on weekends, he dressed up as a solider for Civil War reenactments. (As a black man and descendant of slaves, he “fought” for the Union.) But he began to notice that African-Americans’ place in history, especially antebellum history, was often glossed over. It’s undisputed in textbooks that landowners held slaves and a bloody conflict erupted over their freedoms. But outside of, say, Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass, there’s little public knowledge about the everyday lives and traditions of the enslaved. Across the South, McGill felt like he had a much easier time spotting statues of Johnny Reb (a personification of Southern states) than seeing plaques about early African-American figures.
McGill slept in his first cabin — on the oak-lined Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, S.C. — in 1999, as a way to get footage for a documentary about war reenactors. He didn’t think of the meager buildings again until 2010, when he was asked to consult on the restoration of Magnolia Plantation’s slave cabins. After his second overnight stay, he realized these places had to be preserved. “When the buildings aren’t there, it’s easier to deny the people who lived in those buildings,” he says. “The fact that they exist is an opportunity to let the world know that these people not only existed, but contributed highly to the fruits of this nation.”
McGill started contacting historic sites and preservation groups across the Palmetto State and soon, up and down the entire Eastern seaboard (including several in the North, where, we often forget, slavery persisted through the late 18th century), asking to visit their slave residences. Because of their enthusiastic responses, he created an official organization — the Slave Dwelling Project — that works to protect the homes that remain standing more than a century and a half after being erected.
Soon, people started reaching out to him (both individual families researching their lineage and established historical societies hoping to broaden their offerings), wanting to join his overnight visits. “I’m seldom sleeping in these places alone anymore.”
Putting together a group isn’t always easy. McGill has to fend off ghost hunters and treasure seekers. And some private hosts worry that descendants of slaves will knock on their door asking for what McGill calls the “r-word”: reparations. And interestingly, McGill says blacks can be hesitant to participate. “There are a lot of us, being African American, that don’t even want to set foot on a plantation,” he says, explaining that they don’t want to go to a place where their family was held as chattel. “I express to them that they are part of the problem, not the solution. As long as we continue to be afraid to even want to come to these places and have the courage to tell that story, [others] are going to tell it the way they want,” referencing tour guides who say masters were kind and treated their slaves well, calling that narrative, “junk history.” Once that message is delivered and it becomes clear that these stays are about African Americans and their history — revisiting history, not revising it — most agree to participate.
Once others started accompanying him, the project’s aims subtly shifted from an external campaign for recognition to an internal dialogue about race in America. Bringing together descendants of slaves and slaveowners in the very place where one group once shackled the other inevitably prompted soul-searching and candid discussion.
One night in Stagville, a historic North Carolina plantation, for example, young black men spoke by glinting lantern-light of the anger, fear and frustration they live with. In Mississippi, one female college student asked McGill if he had ever met a descendant of slaveowners who is proud of his family’s history. On South Carolina’s Daufuskie Island, a young black man, whose family had been enslaved there, stared at a wall built of tabby concrete, made from broken oyster shells, sand and ash. “I’m allergic to oysters,” he said. “I wonder if my ancestors were.” And in the coachman’s quarters on a Hillsborough, N.C., plantation, a 100-year-old matriarch told stories about her ancestors, who had been born into bondage on the property.
McGill’s stays are not just for African Americans; whites who want to revisit their history as a way of making amends often join him. Prinny Anderson, a leadership coach descended from Virginia slaveowners, has joined McGill on 22 stays to date — all within driving distance of her Durham, N.C., home. When descendants of slaves are sharing their family history, she’s largely silent, preferring to listen and absorb. But when the group is largely white, she says she’s an “instigator,” asking critical questions.
Anderson’s most moving trip was a visit to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s hilltop estate in Charlottesville, Va., where she has family connections. She fell asleep in the basement (where the slave workplaces were constructed, hidden from sight), thinking about her distant cousins, white and black, and what it meant to revisit their shared home.
“That really felt like getting the blessing of my ancestors. You came home and slept where your great auntie slept,” Anderson says. “Nobody who lived in the big house during that day ever came down to the [slave] quarters and slept on the floor. In that sense, it was like crossing the bridge.” Spending the night there, it was like Anderson had atoned for something.
Part of the Slave Dwelling Project is to recover slaves’ individual narratives, finding personal stories amidst the black mass in chains. “I think the general perception is that enslaved people were brought here for the ability to do grunt work or heavy lifting: the physical labor. But there’s a lot more to their skills and abilities,” McGill says. From the engineering feat of “taming those cedar swamps” to growing rice and constructing building frames, ironwork, bricks and tools, slaves were vital to the plantation’s production, arguably much more so than any master lounging in the big house.
While the conversation at these places steeped in history may be the most candid talks you’ll hear these days on the subject of race, McGill knows it’s not the only forum for the issue. If anything, he hopes the talks will overflow into guests’ neighborhoods and university dorms. And there, discussion will be led by people who are better informed of their place in the long march for racial equality.
Above all, McGill wants his guests to remember that black history does not begin at a Montgomery bus stop in 1955 and end at a Memphis hotel room in 1968. It spans lifetimes, back to the auction block and long past when Obama leaves office. The recent conflict at the University of Missouri, which ended in the president’s removal, did not begin when these students arrived on campus or even when the school was ordered to integrate by a court order in 1950. Anyone who has listened to Billie Holiday croon “Strange Fruit” knows Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance featuring dancers in Black Panther uniforms was not the first to push the envelope. These victories, whether from the Civil Rights movement or Black Lives Matter, all date back to one common source: slavery, a period we cannot forget, McGill insists.
“Historically, these are some times we have not yet overcome. There’s still things that we have not yet dealt with, rooted in the institution of slavery,” McGill says. “If we should let these buildings go away, then we are going to allow this nation to continually perpetuate that false narrative. We shouldn’t allow that to stand. We shouldn’t let that narrative carry the day. The record needs to be corrected.”
Through McGill’s work, the authentic story is now being told.
Correction: This article originally stated that Magnolia Plantation was 390 acres in size and that slaves worked in cotton fields and later on as freed sharecroppers. NationSwell apologizes for the errors.
MORE: Fighting Prejudice in America: One Woman’s Battle to Change the Rhetoric Surrounding Race
Open Doors in a Maximum-Security Prison: Why This Counterintuitive Approach Works
Within his first two weeks on the job as the new warden of Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in South Carolina, Michael McCall faced a hostage situation. Prisoners captured a guard and held him in a closet until other corrections officers rushed the dorm. Three months later, a group incited another riot. Inmates and guards alike were afraid to walk across the yard. Three or four times a week, McCall dealt with a stabbing, he recalls.
In the wake of the dangerous violence, McCall pondered how to excise the brutal culture that dominated the Palmetto State’s largest Level 3 facility. Instead of imposing further punishment, McCall responded by allowing convicts to improve themselves. Solitary confinement wouldn’t change behaviors, but some taste of freedom could.
He created the Better Living Incentive Community (BLIC), a special dorm for prisoners with a clean record where security feels laxer and they’re allowed to take classes. Offenders must apply for acceptance to the dorm — 256 live in the dorm at Lee; another 300 are on a waiting list — and they have to remain on good behavior to stay. Since its founding in 2012, there hasn’t been a single incident requiring discipline: no thefts, no drugs, no contraband phones, no emergency responses. Nothing. Why? The simple fact that no one wants to go back to the pen.
“I was raised an old country boy: ’Lock ‘em up and throw away the key.’ Being born here in the South, you hear a lot of people say that,” McCall tells NationSwell. “That does not work. These guys are going to be our neighbors some day. Our job is to make them a better person, and [through BLIC] we’re giving them an opportunity to do that. I learned that very quickly in my career.”
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McCall, who took a job in corrections because he couldn’t find other work, has since been promoted to deputy director of operations for the entire state’s corrections department. He’s on a mission to bring his more humane methods to other max-security facilities and eventually convert whole institutions — not just individual dorms — to the BLIC model. If his version of criminal justice can work at the state’s toughest prison, he reasons, it can work anywhere.
McCall first developed the BLIC model in 2009 while he overseeing Perry Correctional, another Level 3 facility. His superiors asked him to come up with a faith-based program, but the idea didn’t sit well with him. “I wanted to see a community — a character institution — where everyone was involved,” McCall says. “Muslim, Christian, atheist: I didn’t care what you were. You were coming together as one.” BLIC’s precursor at Perry focused on self-improvement and community-building. Inmates held one another accountable. They talked out problems, rather than resorting to violence.
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The same concepts took hold quickly at Lee. If you walk into the BLIC dorm there, the first thing you’d notice is the serene quiet. Some inmates might be dipping brushes in acrylic paints; others are practicing chords for bass guitar (the advanced group) or keyboard (the beginners). You almost forget you’re in a maximum-security prison.
Elsewhere in the dorm, there’s beekeeping, barbering and Biblical Greek. Instructors are talking about improving character, resolving conflict and reconnecting with emotions. Unlike classes at South Carolina’s other prisons, which are taught by volunteers, all classes at Lee are taught by the inmates themselves. Even with this restriction, there’s four dozen classes at Lee alone.
The opportunity to enrich themselves proves transformative for many prisoners. They begin to realize they may have made a mistake, but that error doesn’t necessarily determine what they do next. “I put myself here [in prison]. I’m responsible for the actions that I took that got me here. I’m guilty. I’m paying man’s price for what I did,” an inmate named Randy, who’s serving a life sentence for murder, tells a local TV station. “But I’m at peace with myself,” he adds about his life in the BLIC dorm. “For the first time since 1977, I can relax.”
Offenders like Randy are the people McCall hopes to reach. They’re the ones who are making the most of their time behind bars, the ones who see incarceration not as a sentence, but as an opportunity.
”Having lived in this department for decades, this new BLIC unit has given me the opportunity to learn what it is to be a man in my six-decade life,” Randy says. “I’ve been a slave my whole life to alcohol and drugs and I couldn’t be freer in this prison.”
A Second Life For Old Shipping Containers: Farms, Shops and Housing
You’ve seen them stacked six high on cargo ships pulling into port, the multi-colored mosaic of corrugated metal boxes carrying products from the other end of the ocean. Built for seamless transition between ships, trucks and trains, the standard size for these crates of steel or aluminum is usually 20-feet long. Worldwide, there’s the equivalent of 34.5 million at that length.
The container’s best asset is its near-endless reusability, a quality that’s attracted those outside the maritime industry. We at NationSwell have written before about how these boxes revitalized downtown Cleveland by lining empty parking lots with pop-up shops, how a homeless man lived in one while he cleaned up a Southern California beach, and how they could be converted into solar power cubes. Seemingly all-purpose, we decided to look into some of the other surprising ways shipping containers are being (re)used to solve social problems. Here’s three inspiring projects we found:
Urban Agriculture
The United States imported more than $100 billion in food in 2013, the bulk of which is grown overseas in places like China, India, France and Chile. Rather than having our produce shipped to us in a container, two Massachusetts entrepreneurs — Brad McNamara and Jon Friedman — converted the boxes into Freight Farms. Inside their containers, dense stacks of plants and vegetables grow hydroponically, meaning their roots reach into a mineral-rich solution rather than dirt. “Our goal was to create a system that works the same in Alaska as it does in Dallas,” Friedman tells Outside magazine. It’s all controlled by computer — the intensity of the LED grow lights, the water’s pH balance, the density of nutrients released through the irrigation system — so crops can grow year-round. “Each farm is a WiFi-enabled hotspot, so your farm gets put down, it’s plugged in and it’s immediately on the web,” McNamara tells the local public radio station. Using a mobile app, farmers can set alerts and alarms. “So if you’re at home and it’s really cold outside, your farm’s covered in snow, you don’t actually have to leave your house to go check on things,” he adds. Each container can produce the equivalent of one acre’s worth of food.
Commercial Redevelopment
Reclaiming industrial materials is often a go-to for urban redevelopment. On the Jersey Shore, shipping containers that might have once been docked in the Newark Bay ports are being converted into stores and artists studios on the beach. In Asbury Park, N.J., Eddie Catalano sells ice cream; on a boardwalk nearby, another container run by Sari Perlstein offers boutique clothing. “I actually never thought it would be possible to get all the equipment that I need in such a small space,” Catalano tells the local paper. “Lo and behold, six years later, it works. It definitely works.” He says the structures aren’t the “most attractive,” but they’re highly functional. “It handles the elements well, it handles the weather well,” he adds. During Hurricane Sandy, the big box stayed firm on the boardwalk. Perlstein’s brick-and-mortar store, on the other hand, wasn’t spared from the flooding. It’s why she moved her operation into the box on the boardwalk. Now, “if there were a horrific storm we can get a crane and move that thing off. We can take it away,” she says. “That is a plus. Because if it was a building again, you’d just wave it goodbye.”
Homes for the Homeless
Hardy structures, watertight and designed not to rust, shipping containers have been proposed as a solution to our housing crunch. In Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Veterans Housing Development, a recently founded nonprofit, is refurbishing shipping containers into a permanent place for homeless veterans to stay. “Anyone notices and sees homeless veterans on street corners and in tent cities around the Horry County area, and around the country. … I have a passion for this because I hate seeing veterans out there on the streets,” Brad Jordan, a disabled veteran and the nonprofit’s executive director, tells The State. “There’s a lot of funding available for veterans housing, but not a lot of housing available.” The group recently finished their first one-bedroom home and displayed it at a fundraiser. Their ultimate goal is to create a gated village somewhere in town, “a secure and safe environment with programs that are going to assist the veterans,” Jordan adds. “If we build 40 [homes], there would be 40 filled tomorrow. The need is there.”
The Future of Transit in the United States Looks Like…
Electric vehicles (EVs) are cropping up nationwide, with Americans owning around 70,000 pure-electric cars and 104,000 plug-in hybrids in 2013, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But the problem with EVs is the need to recharge batteries frequently, which is why they make up less than 1 percent of the 226 million registered vehicles in the country.
But a South Carolina company has found an alternative for EVs through public transit. Proterra, a manufacturer for green vehicles, is now outfitting about 12 operators with its new 40-foot, 77-seat electric bus. Mass transit routes in urban areas average about 20 miles or less, and the new Proterra bus can run 30 to 40 miles on just one charge. Proterra operates buses in Florida, Nevada, Massachusetts, Tennessee and outside Los Angeles.
As for charging, the bus only takes about 10 minutes to renew its charge, which means a bus can operate all day long, CEO Ryan Popple tells Fast Company.
While pricing is still an issue when it comes to electric buses, Popple contends the price is falling fast. In fact, the first model sold for $1.2 million in 2010; now buses are bigger, yet cost only $800,000. But the steep cost, he claims, is worth the investment, estimating that the operational costs of a diesel bus average about $500,000 to $600,000 over the span of 12 years compared to the $100,000 it costs for an electric bus.
As uncertainty grows over the wavering gas prices, Popple is adamant the future of mass transit is electric.
“[With natural gas], you’re using a temporarily cheap commodity and wasting it as inefficiently as the old cheap commodity,” he tells Fast Company. “You’re going to see a future where electric buses [have] lower costs to operate, lower emissions, and higher performance. They’re going to obsolete [fossil fuel] combustion in transit.”
MORE: Inside the Race to Build an Affordable Electric Vehicle
To Fight PTSD, This Veteran Cross Stitches
With treatments for PTSD ranging from equine therapy and scuba diving to a nudist lifestyle, it’s clear that what works to ease one veteran’s PTSD symptoms might not work for another. Regardless of method, anything that relaxes someone suffering is beneficial.
Veteran David Jurado couldn’t shake the troubled thoughts that serving in Iraq left him with. About his time serving overseas, he tells the Greenville Online, “We definitely saw our fair share of battle. I lost really good friends through IED (improvised explosive device) explosions.”
A few years after Jurado returned home from Iraq to Greenville, S.C., he began to seek help for his PTSD. Companions for Heroes helped him train a service dog from the Greenville Humane Society. “With the resources that Companions for Heroes had to offer, I was able to able to raise my own service dog in about a year’s time,” Jurado says. “The service dog really broke my anti-social shell. I was ready to take on whatever the world had to throw at me.”
While the dog helped, Jurado kept seeking other activities to ease his PTSD — including cross stitching, a craft that his mom taught him when he was eight-years-old. “My wife gave me a pattern, and I jumped right back into it for a reason. It’s something that keeps my mind from wandering into places I don’t want to go or remember,” he says. “Life is pretty simple when all you’ve got to worry about is needle and thread.”
Jurado transitioned from his former career as a police officer to working for Companions for Heroes. He has been so successful with figuring out what techniques help him to manage his PTSD symptoms that the Wounded Warrior Project selected to become a peer mentor for other vets with similar issues.
Now Jurado is always ready to help two other veterans in the Greenville area. “Helping other people with their challenges helps me better handle mine,” he says.
MORE: This 85-Year-Old Knitter Churns Out Hats to Help Homeless Vets
The Coordinated Rescue Team That Saved a Disabled Veteran from Homelessness
You’ve heard the sad stories of veterans falling through the social service cracks and ending up homeless.
This is not that.
Instead, it’s a happy tale about a group in South Carolina that united to patch those cracks in the system and efficiently coordinate resources available to help veterans.
Disabled U.S. Army Veteran Herbert Frink of Beaufort, S.C., hit upon hard times recently. He lost his job and went through an expensive divorce, both of which put him behind on his rent, utility and car payments. Frink gained custody of his two young children, but he knew he might lose them, too, if he lost his housing, so he asked for help at the American Red Cross.
His simple request set off a united effort to keep a roof over his head, made possible by the new Military and Veterans Service Alliance of the Lowcountry (MAVSA). The service, which began this year in the southern state, maintains a database of more than 40 organizations eager to help vets. Representatives from the nonprofits meet once a month to coordinate their efforts.
In Frink’s case, the Red Cross picked up the tab for his overdue electric bills, the Savannah chapter of Wounded Warriors got him up to date on his car payments and One80 Place, a Charleston, S.C.-based nonprofit that aims to prevent homelessness, paid for his rent and even found him a new job with a trucking company. They also found a daycare that would accept Frink’s kids and accommodate his job hours.
“They have done so much for me,” Frink tells the Beaufort Gazette. “The resources started pouring in once I contacted them, and they have not stopped.”
Frink isn’t the only veteran MAVSA has helped. In its first few months of operation, members have also connected a suicidal veteran with psychiatric care and helped others get back on their feet financially. The coalition hopes to expand their scope in the future, updating their website and partnering with law enforcement to initiate special veterans courts.
“As a veteran, it makes me feel so good to know that organizations in my hometown are helping veterans,” Frink says. “I never thought I’d experience it. Now that someone’s helping me, I need to give back. I owe a million thanks to them. They saved me and my children.”
MORE: When It Comes to Helping Homeless Vets, Could Thinking Small be the Answer?
The Standout Efforts That Are Getting Americans Back to Work
After four years as an assistant branch manager at Hudson Valley Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., Dora Coriano was laid off in August 2013, when the bank left the state.
Coriano, who’s 58, soon discovered that finding a new job wasn’t as easy as it had been the last time she’d been unemployed, 15 years prior. “In 1998, you could literally grab a stack of resumes and pound the pavement,” she says. “You went from door to door … you left your resume, you got called, and you got the job.”
A year after losing her position at the bank, and submitting more than 75 job applications, Coriano still hasn’t found full-time work. Instead, she has joined the ranks of the long-term unemployed.
“It’s been really disheartening,” Coriano says. “That’s how I feel — like I’m stuck.”
Despite a dropping unemployment rate, which hit 5.8 percent in October, 9 million people nationwide are like Coriano — stuck without a job.
Across the country, people are working to determine the best way to help those jobseekers find employment. Economists, analysts, policy-makers and not-for-profits are all seeking the antidote to unemployment, so they’re trying out different programs that train or retrain the jobless, help them achieve certifications or land internships.
Several approaches are showing promise. From paid apprenticeships to beefed-up community college programs and public-private partnerships, here’s a look at some of the ways people are getting back to work — including Coriano.
Placing Workers in Apprenticeships
Organizations looking to bridge the gap between job training and job placement are increasingly turning to the apprenticeship model. One of the most successful of these is Apprenticeship Carolina, an initiative of the South Carolina technical college system.
While Apprenticeship Carolina’s main focus is to help businesses that want to expand, says Brad Neese, program director, “a really positive byproduct is that these companies are going to hire South Carolinians.”
Funded by the state, Neese and his crew of consultants help companies to establish apprenticeship programs by connecting them with technical colleges around the state. “We meet with them and discuss the needs of the company,” says Neese. “We personalize the process, and it’s all free.”
So far, it’s working. Apprenticeship Carolina started with 90 companies in 2007. Today, it’s working with more than 700 businesses and over the past seven years has placed almost 11,000 apprentices (in fields ranging from manufacturing to health care).
Seeking Out Trained Talent
While training programs are reaching out to potential employers, some successful programs start the other way around.
In St. Louis, the aircraft company Boeing approached the local community college to set up a 10-week program for would-be assembly mechanics. The class is free for students (paid for by Boeing), and the company hires 87 percent of those who complete it, says Becky Epps, program director.
In Newark, N.J., the Ford Motor Co. sponsored an automotive technical program at the New Community Workforce Development Center. In nine months, students are trained and certified and then placed in jobs through established relationships with Ford, Nissan and Toyota, says the program’s director, Rodney Brutton.
“The placement rate is 60 percent, which is great in this line of work,” he says.
The Ford program helped a mechanic named Tom after he was laid off. Although he had 20 years’ experience, he found he couldn’t get another job without new certifications. All he heard was, “Leave your number and we’ll give you a call.” No one called.
After completing the program, Tom ended up getting 10 certifications, updated his resume and “started hearing from the dealerships,” he says.
Now, he says, he’s making over $25 per hour, and he’s no longer one of the country’s 9 million unemployed workers.
Linking Companies and Community Colleges
Community colleges can play a key role in workforce development. Recognizing that fact, the White House in September announced $450 million in grants to the schools, aimed at improving job training programs.
One popular movement in job training programs, according to Lauren Eyster, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, is to build strong connections with hiring companies, so that trainees can be channeled right into waiting jobs that need their new skills.
Both of these trends are converging at Cape Cod Community College, in West Barnstable, Mass., which won one of the recent federal grants. The school is creating two 12-month programs to train workers to inspect and repair airplanes and airplane engines, in response to the needs of area employers.
“There’s enormous support for this,” says Michael Gross, director of communication. He says the school has letters of support from JetBlue, Delta and Cape Air, which will be looking to hire the first graduates of the program.
Supporting Struggling Students
While community colleges can set people up for new careers, some students have significant obstacles to overcome first, like lack of transportation, child care or money for books.
“The other piece of this is, once you get them into these programs, how do you get them to complete?” says Eyster. “The latest number I saw was only 40 percent of community college students graduate in six years.”
Eyster says some colleges are starting to employ “navigators” to help guide students through school. At the Accelerating Opportunity: Kansas (AO-K) program at Washburn Tech, in Topeka, Kan., students learn technical skills while earning GEDs, with assistance from a navigator provided along the way.
“These students are under-resourced in every way you can imagine,” says Gillian Gabelman, associate dean at Washburn Tech. The navigator helps connect students to social services like child care and veterans benefits.
“The transformation of the students is extraordinary,” Gabelman says. For example, a woman who dropped out of high school to have a baby has been able to go into medicine, and a reformed drug addict went through technical training and is working for a local manufacturer, she says.
Reversing the Snowball of Unemployment
Now Coriano, the unemployed bank worker, may be on a new path to employment, too.
After a year without work, her savings dwindling, Coriano enrolled in a program in Bridgeport called Platform to Employment, aimed specifically at the long-term unemployed, who often face snowballing challenges.
The longer people are out of work, the less attractive they can be to employers and the more discouraged they get. Platform to Employment tries to address both of those challenges with a two-pronged approach.
The first is a full-time five-week course of job preparation classes. “It’s not a job training program,” says Tom Long, vice president of communications and development. “It’s more about taking someone who’s ready to be back at work and helping them improve their confidence and readiness.”
During the course, Coriano and other participants learn how to present their best selves to employers, to develop their “personal brand” and to “conquer their fear about their own limitations,” Long says. They also meet with a behavioral health specialist and learn how to deal with the stress and psychological struggles that come from long-term unemployment.
The second part of the Platform to Employment approach is to place participants in jobs with local employers for a two-month “tryout,” paid for by the program. The try-before-you-buy system allows employers to take a chance on a new employee with no financial risk, since private foundation funding pays for wages.
After a successful pilot program in Bridgeport in 2011, Platform to Employment recently completed a 10-city nationwide expansion. And, with $3.5 million in funding from the Connecticut Legislature, the program is spreading across that state.
When This Veteran Needed Help Paying for His Dog’s Service Training, This Young Girl Opened a Lemonade Stand
After two tours in Iraq and close calls during mortar attacks that left Nicholas Bailey with PTSD, a spinal injury and severe pain, only one thing helped the Army veteran: support from his German Shepherd, Abel.
His wife, Vanessa, tells DaShawn Brown of WCSC, “In the middle of the night when Nick is having a nightmare, he wakes Nick up by licking his hand.”
“It’s like he could feel the pain coming from Nick,” says Vanessa.
Because of this intense bond, the Baileys, of North Charleston, S.C., decided they wanted to train Abel as a service animal instead of applying to receive a new dog trained to help with PTSD. They started training Abel on their own, but once, when they were shopping, a box fell from a shelf and hit Abel, startling him and leaving him hesitant to enter stores — the exact places where Nicholas relied on him to calm his PTSD symptoms.
As a result, the Baileys investigated how to get Abel professional training in Arizona at a facility that can teach the German Shepherd to overcome his fear and complete his service dog lessons.
The only problem? The training (plus kenneling, medications, and food) costs $15,000. (A more affordable training program that the Baileys originally looked into didn’t work out.)
The Baileys set up a GoFundMe account explaining Nick’s condition and that going out in public can be a “nightmare” without the help of Abel.
All of this led to an 8-year-old girl the Baileys had never met, Rachel Mennett, learning of their plight and asking a pet shop in Summerville, S.C. if she could set up a lemonade stand to raise money for Abel’s training.
“I wanted to help him because my brother knew he needed help, and I wanted to do lemonade so I thought I could help him do it,” she tells Brown. The donations flowed in, many people giving money without even accepting a cup of lemonade.
“For me, it’s just amazing that an 8-year-old girl would show any interest in me or my dog,” Nicholas says.
As for that GoFundMe account? After the story about Rachel’s lemonade stand aired, many more people chipped in, and now the Baileys are just a couple of thousands of dollars shy of their goal.
MORE: After Losing Her Marine Son to PTSD, This Mom’s Mission is to Save the Lives of Other Veterans
While Many Ignore the Plight of Veterans, This Motley VW Bug Is Calling Attention to It
Disabled veteran Scott Hicks’s 1965 Volkswagen Bug doesn’t conform to standard notions of automotive beauty. After all, it’s painted in a mélange of greens from mint to olive, has a rusty bumper and in the back window, a note is posted that reads: “Back Off It Doesn’t Go Any Faster!!!”
While the car isn’t your typical coveted hot rod, Hicks is using it to convey an important — and beautiful — message.
In response to his disgust over the recent revelations about the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) delays in treatment, which led to the deaths of dozens of veterans, Hicks launched a project — Inspire Veterans. “I was sick of hearing people talk about helping veterans but not doing anything to fix the problem,” Hicks told Dal Kasi of Fox Carolina.
His plan? The end of June, Hicks set out from Grants Pass, Oregon, in his Bug — named Patina — on a planned 10,000-mile road trip, stopping at veterans’ centers, war memorials, American landmarks, and VW car shows, to talk to anybody who’ll listen about the problems facing veterans today. As he makes his 38 planned stops, he invites local VW Bug owners to rally around Patina.
Hicks wants to call attention to the fact that 22 veterans commit suicide every day, a number he believes is exacerbated by the extensive wait times for appointments with VA doctors. And, as he notes in a video on his Inspire Veterans website, “that is the 2012 number, and the number is probably more like 24 veterans a day that are committing suicide, generally because of depressive disorders related to PTSD. That is a horrible number. I wish it wasn’t even one a day, but it’s a fact, and the government isn’t doing anything to help those soldiers that are coming back.”
Hicks is raising money to fund a documentary of this journey, which he says will capture veterans talking about their experiences and speaking about what kind of assistance they need. “Hopefully that will help the public and the government understand better what’s really going on…Most veterans don’t really like to speak out, but generally they’ll speak to another veteran. That’s why I’m doing this.”
So if you see a man driving a Bug of many colors and wearing a red-white-and-blue bandana while you’re out and about this summer, take a moment to listen and learn what you can do to help veterans.
MORE: How Does Running Coast-To-Coast Help Veterans?