More than just a place where women can learn practical skills that can benefit their career, it’s also a safe haven that provides counseling, rides to doctor appointments, GED classes or other job readiness programs.
Graduates were able to find employment, and are grateful for the role Foundation House played in getting them there. “My proudest accomplishment from my time there is becoming who I am now,” says former resident Kayla Jones.
To learn more about Foundation House, watch the above video.
MORE: It’s Time To Stop Replacing Broken Things. These Cafes Have The Solution.
Tag: Tennessee
Upstanders: The Mosque Across the Street
When an Islamic center purchased a plot of land opposite a church in Memphis, Tenn., the local Muslim community expected hostility. Pastor Steve Stone had something else in mind.
Upstanders is a collection of short stories celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities produced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran. These stories of humanity remind us that we all have the power to make a difference.
Every City Should Replicate What This Michigan City Did, A Smarter System for Doctors Making House Calls and More
The City That Unpoisoned Its Pipes, NextCity
The idea of preemptively improving infrastructure long before a crisis hits is foreign to most Americans. An hour’s drive west of Flint, Mich., the entire water system in Lansing (which once contained lead-lined service mains) will be declared lead-free in 2017 after a decade spent switching to copper pipes. Soon, residents will have the ability to swig their H2O without worry.
A New Brand of Doctor Targets the Unhealthy in Rural Tennessee, The Tennessean
In rural areas, there are a lot of benefits to a country doctor who makes house calls: a robust patient-physician relationship, no administration contributing to overhead. But isolation limits those medics’ ability to understand what’s affecting their region. By banding together, a network of primary-care physicians in 50 desolate counties across Tennessee now share knowledge such as health trends among their populations and best practices for dealing with insurance companies.
The Collapsible Helmet that Could Revolutionize Bike-Share Safety, CityLab
Bike-sharing is one of the easiest ways to get around a city and is friendlier to the environment than a short, gas-guzzling car ride. But cyclists often put themselves at risk on roadways by going without a helmet. To improve safety, a Brooklyn, N.Y., commuter created a collapsible helmet made from paper honeycomb and glue, which folds up to the size of a banana, making a bike-share ride even more desirable.
MORE: In the U.S., 1.7 Million Don’t Have Access to Clean Drinking Water. This Grandma Is Changing That
The Short Tale of How One City Got Its Citizens to Revamp Their Daily Commute
In 2013, 75 percent of Americans drove by themselves to work each day. In Chattanooga, Tenn., that figure was 90 percent, and the city had the poor air quality, high obesity rates and gridlock to show for it. Something needed to change, but how do you convince thousands of dedicated drivers to overhaul their method of getting to work?
Funded by a $600,000 Federal Highway Administration grant, GreenTrips launched in the southern city in June 2013. The program encourages residents to record each trip they make by foot, bike, bus or carpool and rewards them with swag, such as meals at burger joints and burrito restaurants, gift certificates to local florists and gyms, free bikeshare memberships and more. The hope is that great local incentives, along with a ridesharing app that encourages carpooling and a dashboard that shows how much a person saves on transportation, will motivate Chattanoogans to rethink how they travel.
“We felt like if we could get people to see there are other ways to get around, and make it easier for them to do so, we might not have some of the problems that we had,” says Melissa Taylor, director of strategic long-range planning for the Chattanooga-Hamilton County/North Georgia Transportation Planning Organization, the group overseeing the program.
So far, only 1,491 of Chattanooga’s 173,000 residents have enrolled, but the results are startling. In three years, more than 2.4 million miles of healthier, greener travel have been logged — that’s enough to save 82,552 gallons of gasoline and prevent 1.6 million pounds of pollution from entering the atmosphere. Additionally, participants have burned 14 million calories.
Especially satisfying is that what began as a program embraced by urban professionals has slowly expanded its reach, including many participants that reside in economically disadvantaged areas. “It’s not just the $1,000 urban biker. It’s a lot of people who are using carpools better to reduce some of their household costs,” explains Taylor.
Despite its success, challenges remain. GreenTrips needs to recruit more members and get another federal grant to extend the funding that ends at the end of this calendar year. But internal surveys have found that once people give new kinds of travel a try, they tend to do it again. “Not only are they receiving rewards for trips they’re already taking, but [GreenTrips] makes them more likely to take those kinds of trips in the future.”
In order to reduce this country’s greenhouse gas emissions, more Americans need to change their behavior. But as the results
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Rutgers University Admits Unlikely Student Body, Journalists Use Reporting to Urge Politicians to Act and More
A University That Prioritizes the Students Who Are Often Ignored, The Atlantic
Traditionally, America’s colleges seek to attract the best and brightest to their hallowed halls. Committed to cultivating local talent regardless of status, New Jersey’s Rutgers University is bucking that trend, recruiting low-income, public-school graduates with mediocre GPAs and test scores — the very students that other schools shun.
A Plan to Flood San Francisco With News on Homelessness, New York Times
Can journalists advocate for a cause while remaining unbiased in their reporting? Next month, writers and editors from 30 Bay Area media outlets plan to do just that while collaborating on coverage focused on San Francisco’s homeless problem. The goal: To serve as a catalyst for solutions to the seemingly intractable problem.
This City Is Giving Away Super-Fast Internet to Poor Students, CNN Money
No longer are the poorest families in Chattanooga, Tenn., forced to visit a fast-food restaurant so their children can access the Internet needed to complete their homework. Two new programs are bringing citizens online in the Southern city, where 22.5 percent of the population lives in poverty.
MORE: Only 1 in 5 New York City Students Graduate from College. This College Is Going to Change That
Everyone Should Stay Warm During the Winter — Especially America’s Heroes
Excluding Veterans Day and Memorial Day, it can be easy to forget the sacrifices that America’s former military personnel made on our country’s behalf. This winter, a national fuel retailer is stepping up to do something more for veterans, providing savings on an essential utility to help them stay warm.
Suburban Propane, a public company with headquarters in New Jersey and 700 locations in 41 states, is offering a special on the next delivery of 100 gallons or more of gas to households where a veteran or active-duty service member lives. For new customers with military ties, Suburban Propane will take $10 off the bill of their first delivery of 100 gallons or more and comp all charges for the change-out, safety check and the tank’s first year of rent. Existing customers have the opportunity to take advantage of the savings as well; they can receive $10 off the next delivery of 100 gallons or more, and by referring another veteran, they can earn an additional 35 gallons of fuel added to their next order.
Across the country, at least 49,900 veterans sleep on the streets on any given night. The shock of combat can make holding down a job, keeping up with bills and being responsible for other aspects of day-to-day civilian life difficult. Suburban Propane decided to lessen the financial burden on veterans after senior management realized how many of their colleagues had military ties, says Mark Wienberg, the company’s chief development officer.
Of Suburban Propane’s 3,600 employees, “many have family members who are veterans or are veterans themselves. Many have sons or daughters, nieces or nephews who are currently deployed. The head of human resources here is a veteran of the Marines. One guy that managed a local service center and is now overseeing our fleet and tank assets, he’s a military vet,” Wienberg says. The savings offer is “our way of giving back to those who have given for us,” he says.
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And it’s a way to reach veterans as the company ramps up recruiting efforts, offering military personnel employment opportunities. “Many, in their duty to the nation, have performed services that are similar to what we do here, driving major trucks and vehicles,” Wienberg explains. “Someone who comes back from duty could be a service technician, or an officer might run a service center.” The company is currently working with lawmakers on legislation at the state level that would streamline the licensing process for veterans who drove vehicles of a similar class overseas. “We’ll do whatever we can to assist them,” Wienberg stresses.
James Marentette, who was stationed on a Navy aircraft carrier in the 1950s, and his wife Cindy, recently signed up for the deal. The couple, who have a grandson serving in the Air Force, met in church after losing their spouses to cancer and now live together in Crossville, Tenn. Frustrated by their previous gas provider’s poor customer service, they switched to Suburban Propane two years ago at their daughter’s suggestion. The special savings for veterans has helped their pocketbooks, as they rely on fixed income from Social Security and a small pension.
“There is nothing more rewarding than serving your country. Not everyone has that privilege — and I considered it a privilege to do that. To be recognized by a company like Suburban, even in a small way, just means so much to me and so much to all of our friends too,” says Jim. “You get a lot of discounts in restaurants and things like that, but I never heard of a company that supplies utilities to homes helping vets.”
“We think it’s wonderful,” Cindy chimes in, “and we’re so thankful. It makes us feel like people really care.”
The offer is good for one delivery taken by March 31, 2016.
Participants Claim This Program Boosts Them out of Poverty. Should Other Cities Implement It?
LaKesha Griffin wanted to get as far from Memphis as she could. A self-described “hardheaded” teen, she ignored her mother’s pestering about college and found a job post-high school as a flight attendant for United Airlines. But in 2001, United Flight 175 brought down the South Tower of the World Trade Center and United Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The airline industry took a massive hit, and despite six years of seniority, Griffin was one of 20,000 people laid off from United. Unemployed, she returned home to Tennessee.
“It was an awful thing,” is how Griffin describes her experience of looking for work for three or four years. “I needed to start all over. It’s not like you walk into McDonalds and make $20 an hour.” She obtained a practical nursing certificate in 2002, but still struggled to find work. When the country fell into recession after the subprime mortgage crisis, Griffin realized she needed a college degree. But as she neared the 72-month lifetime limit on drawing welfare benefits, she realized that she was in a bind: without a full-time job, she couldn’t support herself and her teenage daughter; with full-time employment, she wouldn’t have time to focus on her schooling. That’s when, seemingly by chance, a savior called her on the phone.
Five years later, Griffin has a daughter in college (who’s preparing to attend law school) and a master’s degree of her own. She’s been employed consistently since May 2012, most recently as a social worker for the Mississippi Department of Family and Children’s Services. How did a family that subsided on food stamps become so successful in such a short period?
Family Rewards is a bold attempt to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, but it’s rooted in a simple premise: pay parents small amounts of money so they don’t have to scramble to make ends meet, but make those funds conditional on bettering the next generation’s chances of escaping poverty. (In other words, pay a hungry person to teach their kids to fish.) Known as a conditional cash transfer, the three-year program (which concluded in 2014) recruited 1,200 families relying on public assistance in the Bronx and Memphis. Many were led by single mothers, and all included at least one child of high school age. Family Rewards offered eight incentives, ranging from $40 to $500, for these families to improve their employment, education and health. A full study is forthcoming next year, but early data that the program’s organizers shared with NationSwell reveals that this new model could redefine our country’s welfare system.
In Memphis, out of the 613 families enrolled, 99 percent earned at least one of the eight rewards, according to data provided to NationSwell by the Children’s Aid Society, which is the lead agency operating Family Rewards. Nine out of every 10 families improved their health by getting an annual physical ($100 per family member) or dental care twice yearly (another $100 per visit). Ninety-six percent of the 1,097 Memphis high school students who participated received at least one cash reward for having a 95 percent attendance rate ($40 a month), taking the SAT or ACT exam (a one-time $50), getting higher grades ($30 per A, $20 per B and $10 per C) and passing their final exams ($200 each for up to seven tests). The most difficult category, by far, was entering the workforce: only half — 53 percent — earned a reward for sustaining full-time employment ($150 a month) or earning a GED certificate (a lump sum of $400).
To some, these achievements might seem laughably easy, but try passing the GED when your car won’t run, public transit is delayed and you need to get from Memphis to a test prep class across the state line. Add to that scenario the stress of doing it while also worrying about making it back in time to go to work. A monthly $150 reward goes far, especially for a family earning $17,000. But it requires an immeasurable amount of grit and determination to earn.
Family Rewards paid Griffin and her daughter to get better grades in school, go to the doctor’s office and boost working hours — all cash deposited directly to her bank account. “I get excited every time I tell people my story because of where I came from, from having no job to starting over, building myself from the ground up. I don’t think I ever have to worry again,” Griffin gushed as she ran out of the library, where she was studying, to speak to NationSwell by phone. “I don’t know how [Family Rewards] ever got my name, but it was the best thing that ever could have happened to me at that time in my life.”
Critics of the program say that its effectiveness at changing behaviors may be overstated. But anecdotally, participants say they aren’t working for the rewards; it’s the rewards that help them work. Echoing Griffin’s story, one participant tells Politico, “Motivate me? I was already motivated,” says Sheena Lyons, a school cafeteria worker. “I did most of this stuff anyway. My problem is money, not work. I always work.”
Tonya Melton, director of education and employment for youth empowerment programs at Children’s Aid Society, recalled another case of a family struggling with homelessness. Case workers could barely keep track of them as they moved from couches and floors to shelters to apartments. But once the family fully participated in the rewards program, the high schooler earned $530 one year and started community college this fall.
“With welfare, food stamps, [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], I think there’s constant exploration of the question, ‘How can we maximize the use of funds to motivate people to move out of poverty?’” Melton says. “Does that create long-term change?”
In its current form, the American social safety net is an all-or-nothing system. Unemployment insurance only covers someone until they’re back to work, even if it’s a dead-end, minimum-wage job; there’s little public aid for someone, like Griffin, who wants to rise to middle-class status but needs a second chance at schooling to attain it. The amount of aid ranges from state to state, from a high of $49,175 for a Hawaiian family participating in more than 90 federal anti-poverty programs to a low of $16,984 for the same family in Mississippi, according to a 2013 report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. A family like Griffin’s in Tennessee is eligible for $17,413 in benefits — about $8.37 an hour if you divide the total over 260 work days, which is higher than the $7.25 minimum wage in the Volunteer State. (Tennessee’s legislature has not adopted a minimum wage, so the federal rate applies.)
Why, some ask, would a person get a job when traditional welfare programs offer significant cash benefits? Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, on The View last year, said, ”You rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves.” Contrast that with a small group on the left, like the Food Research & Action Center, who claim our system doesn’t provide enough financial assistance to propel a family out of poverty.
Across the globe, however, conditional cash transfers are becoming the preferred social safety net. After witnessing the inefficiency of distributing staples like milk and tortillas, Mexico rolled out the world’s first conditional cash transfer program in 1997, offering steady payments to roughly 6 million households on the condition that families meet certain requirements, like keeping their children in school and visiting health clinics for regular checkups. Our southern neighbor’s model has since been replicated in 52 countries, including Colombia, Brazil and the Philippines.
Tying progressives’ concern for the poor with conservatives’ emphasis on rejoining the workforce, the model interested Michael Bloomberg, then-mayor of New York City. His thinking: that conditional cash transfers weren’t so different from the Earned Income Tax Credit for working families, and that $40 in the bank each month might prove a more tangible incentive than a distant $1,250 credit next April. Bloomberg decided to test the idea, and in 2007, the Big Apple launched three demonstration projects in six hard-hit neighborhoods.
“The worst thing that can happen is it won’t work and we’ll have to try something else,” Bloomberg reportedly told advisors, wagering millions of dollars from his own foundation and soliciting private funding from big-name groups like the Rockefeller Foundation, insurance giant AIG, Robin Hood Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute and more to back $40 million in potential conditional cash transfers.
The initial program distributed only $20.6 million to families. While it achieved had modest gains, particularly in healthcare, opponents said they didn’t justify the cost. “A welfare mother in Central Harlem is not poor for the same reasons that a subsistence corn farmer in Mexico is poor,” Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research wrote in a scathing takedown, entitled “Bribery Strikes Out.”
Family Rewards, the most comprehensive of the three pilots, was picked for a second iteration in 2011, in which Griffin was a participant. To focus on achievable results, the number of rewards was pared down from 22. Funded by a Social Innovation Fund grant, the program underwent a rigorous, three-year randomized control trial in which half of the participants received no aid. In Memphis, those receiving rewards had their incomes boosted by $5,442, on average.
Griffin says she’s “furious” the project ended so abruptly last year. She still refers people she meets to Family Rewards, telling them to call any of the caseworkers because she’s sure they would offer some help, like they did when she was at her “breaking point.” While the program may not be a cure-all for poverty’s grip on American cities, it’s a start, especially for motivated mothers like Griffin. “I’m gonna make it. I could make my rent up. I could pay my tuition,” Griffin thought with relief, when she signed up. “I’m going to be okay.”
This Urban School District Is Promising Free Meals For Every Child
A bologna sandwich: That’s what students of Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tenn., received for lunch if they forgot to bring the $2 or so to pay for their food.
Nothing: That’s what some impoverished students (80 percent qualify for free lunch) would rather sit with in the cafeteria than be revealed as the “poor kid” to their classmates.
“We see kids every day that don’t go through the lunch line because they don’t want to be identified as that kid who gets a free meal. That stigma is huge,” Tony Geraci, the executive director of Shelby County Schools’ nutrition program, tells The Commercial Appeal.
But come this school year, that will all change. The school system will be serving three meals to every single student in the district — breakfast, lunch and dinner — all for free, regardless of how wealthy their family may be.
It’s due to a federal program that’s changing the way cash reimbursements for school lunches are distributed. Rather than judging individual families in relation to the poverty line, the government is now looking at the economic well-being of entire cities. Known as the “community eligibility provision,” the program kicks in once 40 percent of the school district’s population is considered low-income (largely based on signups for food stamps). Reimbursements in Memphis will now doled out based on how many meals are served in a cafeteria rather than how many poor kids attend a school, creating an incentive to serve additional meals.
Nutritious meals had been (and continue to be) correlated with academic performance. One 2002 study undertaken by a Harvard Medical School professor found that students “at nutritional risk” missed more days of school and expressed more anxiety and aggression — areas that all showed improvement six months later when a free breakfast program was implemented. It may sound simplistic, but a plate of chicken or lasagna could the difference between kids who pay attention to their teacher and the ones who focus on their empty stomach, a divide that largely falls on economic lines.
America’s subsidized school lunch programs date back to World War II, when many young men were rejected from the draft due to the lingering physical consequences of childhood malnutrition. The National School Lunch Act, passed in 1946 as a “measure of national security,” got a major update in 1998 when Congress agreed to start paying for snacks for youngsters in certain after-school extracurriculars. Launched experimentally in 2010, the latest expansion goes even farther, ensuring there’s food on every child’s plate at every meal. It’s part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s signature “Let’s Move!” campaign to end childhood obesity.
Supporters say the latest plan is essential to preventing hunger in classrooms in Memphis and across the country — Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, parts of New York City and elsewhere. Not only does “community eligibility” eliminate stigma for children who’d otherwise qualify for free or reduced lunch, it also ensures that other students — the ones who didn’t file their annual paperwork, others who may be just above the poverty cutoff or some of the growing number of homeless youth — don’t fall through the gap. For several kids, not eating a healthy meal at school means not eating at all.
“Kids won’t be going home and saying, ‘I’m hungry,’ and their mother just says, ‘I don’t have anything for you to eat,’ and not enough money to go to the market maybe,” one student in Baltimore, Adria Johnson, told the local news station when her district qualified. All together, nearly 6.4 million students across 13,800 districts are now being fed by the expanded criteria. In Memphis alone, parents will save $1.8 million they previously forked over for lunch.
“Stigma really overshadows a lot of the great things we do,” Geraci says. “For once, we’ll be able to have a program where we can say, now it’s time to learn, now it’s time to eat, now it’s time to play. That’s huge for this district.”
How Can One Nonprofit Solve Two Big Problems Facing Both Veterans and Low-Income Kids?
Bob Kincaid, co-founder of the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Get Veterans Involved (GVI), has found that it’s possible to kill two birds with one stone. His nonprofit helps two groups — veterans who struggle when they return from service, and elementary school kids in need of mentors — at the same time.
How is that possible?
While veterans train for new jobs or attend college, the organization pays them to visit local elementary schools each week.
“They’ve got no mission. No purpose. The hope is to give them purpose,” Kincaid tells the Times Free Press. “If we can have these service members recognize these kids need them, we have a mission for them.”
Kincaid believes the program, which kicked off in five elementary schools this year, will help veterans feel connected to their community as they work to make a smooth transition into civilian life. Additionally, the work will help low-income kids in innumerable ways. “We mentor the kids, who then mentor the vets,” he adds.
Instead of having the vets come to the schools with a lesson to teach or a talk to give, GVI instructs them to simply help out in whatever way the classroom teachers need them to. One basic task the veterans assist with at Calvin Donaldson Elementary, for example, is helping kindergartners learn their ABCs.
Principal Cherrye Robertson says, “Right now all of my kindergartners know all of their letters, which is phenomenal. We’ve never had all the kindergartners in the whole building know all their letters at this time of year.”
With early successes, GVI is aiming to expand through funding and donations. GVI co-founder Ron White says, “The vision is for this one day to be in school districts around the country.”
MORE: For Female Veterans Experiencing Employment Woes, This Organization Offers Strong Advice
Why Is This 92-Year-Old World War II Veteran Kicking Field Goals?
Elderly veterans are working up a sweat as they kick field goals and ski under obstacles at the Ben Atchley State Veterans Home in Knoxville, Tenn., but they’re not having to hit the field or the slopes to do so.
These vets are competing in virtual sports — but the health benefits they receive are real.
Therapists are hooking up veterans to a virtual gaming system that involves their entire bodies in sports-themed movements. When Lori Tucker of ABC 6 visited the nursing home, 92-year-old World War II Army veteran Richard Gallaher scored all of the field goals he attempted.
“It’s a wonderful game because you get all the exercise you can do and it helps you with your balance and thinking and analyzing,” says Gallaher.
Each veteran plays a different game that build specific physical skills they need to work on, and it’s a little more exciting than the average therapy session, with onlookers cheering as the vets score.
Functional Pathways designed the gaming system, which president and CEO Dan Knorr describes as “almost like a Nintendo on steroids.” The veterans home is the first place they’ve introduced the therapeutic gaming system, but the company plans to roll it out at 140 facilities soon.
Greg Channell, one of the Veterans Home’s physical and occupational therapists, tells Tucker, “It’s fun to give back to someone whose given so much to us, and I think that’s a big part of being here.”
MORE: Meet the Marine-Turned-Doctor Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD