Ideal Learning Made Real

Trust for Learning has a simple motto and a singular mission: Ideal Learning Made Real. The organization, which funds and advocates for early education, promotes innovative programs that engage small children both emotionally and intellectually. The goal is to equip all kids, no matter their socioeconomic background, with the tools necessary to become self-motivated, critical-thinking problem-solvers.
Watch the video above to see how Trust for Learning is fulfilling its mission.

How the Arts Are Saving Small Towns From Extinction, Finding Redemption Through Friendship and More

 

Can the Arts Help Save Rural America? Stateline
In nearly half of America’s rural counties, more people have moved out than in during every single decade since 1950: Young people, seeking a vibrant culture and job opportunities, have fled to big cities in droves. To avoid becoming ghost towns, small communities across the country have begun investing in music festivals, remodeling old opera houses and opening art galleries to bring young families back to their hometowns.

The White Flight of Derek Black, Washington Post
His father created Stormfront, the infamous racist web forum; his godfather was once Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. By high school, Derek Black was primed to lead America’s white nationalist movement. Yet after enrolling at New College of Florida, a Jewish classmate (who’d read Black’s neo-Nazi posts) invited him to a Shabbat dinner. As this story of redemption shows, there’s a way to defeat right-wing, racist extremism: not to attack its hate, but to overcome it with conversation and understanding.

California Restaurants Launch Nation’s First Transgender Jobs Program, NPR
Transgender individuals are twice as likely to be unemployed as the rest of the nation’s workers. To change those figures, Michaela Mendelsohn, a transgender businesswoman, hired 150 trans workers at her six El Pollo Loco restaurants, and she recently persuaded the 22,000-member California Restaurant Association to join the effort to overcome discrimination in the workplace.

Beyond Big Unions: How One Labor-Rights Advocate Envisions the Future for Workers

Carmen Rojas’s parents immigrated to the U.S. as teenagers. Her father drove trucks, and her mother filed papers at a bank. Neither had finished middle school. A generation later, their daughter had graduated with a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and traveled to Venezuela on a Fulbright scholarship. Today, Rojas heads The Workers Lab, a Bay Area accelerator that backs early-stage, labor-focused ventures. When Rojas thinks about her family’s upward mobility, she’s both pleased and disturbed: “It kills me to imagine that I might be part of the last generation  in this country to benefit from an economy and a government that saw opportunity as core to its existence,” she says.
“We have a reached a moment where we can no longer deliver on the promise of what work is,” says Rojas over lunch at a Thai restaurant in midtown Manhattan. To live in New York City, for example, even a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t cover the expenses of raising two kids: At minimum, each parent needs to earn $18.97 hourly to adequately support their family. Yet only a tenth of American workers are unionized, about half of what it was in 1983. “The 20th-century labor movement as we imagined it — the labor union, collective bargaining — is no longer in a position to protect and create opportunity for the vast majority of workers.”
Those shortcomings have led people to second-guess traditional institutions, as the rise of Donald Trump suggests. Capitalizing on the hot-button issue of income inequality highlighted by Occupy Wall Street and Fight for 15, The Workers Lab is trying to reimagine what the future could be. “That’s why we exist,” Rojas tells NationSwell, “to jump-start the next-generation workers’ movement.” She shared five current initiatives that illustrate what that future might look like.
1. CLEAN Carwash Campaign, California
Cooperatives place businesses back in the hands of workers, where they share in profits and decision-making. They can be a tool for advancement, nurturing professional skills among blue-collar laborers. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which fought legal battles on behalf of Los Angeles’s largely undocumented force of carwasheros, tested whether they could open a worker-owned car wash in South L.A. The model has prompted Rojas to start looking for opportunities elsewhere, including a farm in the Coachella Valley. If that co-op, owned by 7,500 workers, actually gets off the ground, it will be the largest in the country. No small feat for an industry that’s known for some of the worst working conditions in this country, says Rojas. “This farm conversion — and the fact that we’re even talking about cooperatives outside of Vermont or Maine — is awesome.”

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers monitors working conditions for tomato pickers in Florida.

2. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida
With the rise of the conscious consumer — the person who reads labels and researches brands online — certification has become one of the easiest ways to push businesses into compliance. In South Florida, which produces most of the nation’s tomato supply during winter, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers created a powerful set of standards for tomato-pickers to ensure they get paid on time, have a voice in the workplace, aren’t subjugated to sexual harassment, and can safely submit complaints without retaliation. They then brought these guidelines straight to buyers like McDonald’s and Yum Brands (Taco Bell and Pizza Hut’s owner), rather than the farms’ managers. Fast-food companies and supermarkets agreed to buy tomatoes only from companies that met certifications, forcing the industry as a whole to catch up. “The coalition was so good at creating the standard,” says Rojas.
The Workers Defense Project created a certification process to ensure safe construction sites throughout Texas.

3. Worker Defense Project, Texas
With just two OSHA inspectors for the entire state, Texas’s construction sites might as well be unregulated, says Rojas. “Employers aren’t required to pay workers’ compensation, and Texas has the highest rate of mortality in construction in the whole country.” For five years, the Worker Defense Project, an immigrant workers’ rights organization, had been advocating for policy change. They won concessions from some high-profile projects, but the sector as a whole wouldn’t budge. So rather than shaming those who wouldn’t get on board, the group launched its Build It Better campaign, which offered incentives instead. “Their idea was to create a certification for developers’ construction projects,” explains Rojas. For adding on-site monitors and training, the Workers Defense Project in turn would work to fast-track permits and reduce the insurance rate. As Rojas points out, “If people aren’t dying on your projects because they’re being trained, then you don’t need as much insurance.”
4. Coworker, District of Columbia
Rojas is still trying to figure out if digital tools are simply an offshoot of old-school worker organizing or something different entirely. But she is clear about which online project is her current favorite: Coworker, which is a petitioning platform that allows disparate workers to make collective grievances about hyper-specific issues known to employers, without the huge undertaking of forming a union. “For instance, they have 25,000 Starbucks baristas who have all signed different types of petitions and that Starbucks has responded to,” Rojas says of Coworker’s impact. “Often, there is no way for you as a barista in one of hundreds of stores in Manhattan to unify your voice with other baristas around scheduling, wages or appearance. Coworker created that way.”
5. Universal Basic Income, California
While the movement toward a universal basic income has yet to be realized (aside from a small pilot project in Oakland), Rojas is intrigued by the idea. Advocating this policy, which guarantees every family a minimum wage regardless of whether they work, might have gotten you laughed out of a room as a “crazy communist” in the past, but it’s now gaining traction. “The appeal of a basic income — a kind of Social Security for everyone — is easy to understand,” The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki wrote this summer. “It’s easy to administer; it avoids the paternalism of social-welfare programs that tell people what they can and cannot buy with the money they’re given; and, if it’s truly universal, it could help destigmatize government assistance.” Adds Rojas, “I’m interested in what it means for somebody who has spent his entire life in the labor movement to imagine non-labor institution solutions for the issues facing workers.”
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.

How Dallas Became a Role Model for Community Policing, The Secret Streams That Keep Hawaii Pristine and More


A Different Beat, Texas Monthly
The sniper attack that killed five Dallas cops this summer shocked locals: “Why here?” they wondered. Unlike other racially diverse urban areas, police relations in this Texan metropolis were quite strong. Since 2010, Police Chief David Brown harped on the need for community policing — even after his own patrol cops called for his resignation — saying a team of 80 neighborhood specialists are the city’s best crime-fighting tool.

Uncovering the Potential of Honolulu’s Hidden Streams, Next City
Open a manhole cover on Oahu, and one might find a stream of crystal-clear freshwater, dotted with fish wriggling upstream — just one of the many auwai, or canals, that native Hawaiians dug, then paved over centuries later. In Honolulu, a city well known for its sandy beaches, architects are reclaiming the rest of the tropical island’s buried waterways to accent public parks, buffer against flooding and repair coral reefs damaged by impure runoff.

America’s First Offshore Wind Farm May Power Up a New Industry, The New York Times
Several miles from New England’s shore, a brand-new energy project could have massive environmental ramifications. No, not oil drilling (with its hazardous spills), but the first-ever offshore wind farm. When three massive turbines near Block Island, R.I., begin twirling this October in the unobstructed Atlantic Ocean breezes (likely at faster, more consistent speeds than those on land), they could turbocharge  the already booming renewable energy sector.

MORE: 5 Ways To Strengthen Ties Between Cops and Citizens

The Unlikely Activists Putting a Stop to Sexual Trafficking, A Better Way to Harness the Power of the Sun and More

 
Truckers Take the Wheel in Effort to Halt Sex Trafficking, NPR
Rarely spoken about in America, forced prostitution is typically thought of as a crime that’s committed in other countries but not our own. A new awareness group — Truckers Against Trafficking — teaches those spending their days on interstate highways how to spot enslaved or “owned” young women.
New Concentrating Solar Tower Is Worth Its Salt with 24/7 Power, Scientific American
The sun is a fabulous source of clean, renewable energy, but it has its limitations. Until now. California’s Crescent Dunes’ solar power facility utilizes unique technology that stores enough electricity to power 75,000 homes, even when it’s dark or cloudy — overcoming a problem that’s baffled scientists for decades.
Sandra Bland, One Year Later, The Marshall Project
Bland’s jailhouse death prompted calls to reform the Texas criminal justice system. So far, jailers have been trained in de-escalation techniques, new intake forms are being used statewide and workers must complete annual suicide prevention training. Is reforming bail and how jails deal with mental health issues up next?
MORE: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power From the Sun
 

Renewable Energy’s Role Model, The Written Word Brings Life to the Homeless and More

 
Guess Which State Towers Over All the Others on Wind Energy?, onEarth
In a state known for caucuses and cornfields, renewable energy has taken root. More than 30 percent of Iowa’s in-state electricity generation already comes from wind — and it’s only going to increase, thanks to a new wind farm housing a turbine that’s taller than the Washington Monument.
Using Literature as a Force for Good Among Austin’s Homeless Population, CityLab
Barry Maxwell, a former resident of the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, is paying it forward. As founder of Street Lit, he collects donated books and provides a creative writing class (participants write short stories, poetry, blog posts) to create a sense of community among those living on the streets.
Choosing a School for my Daughter in a Segregated City, New York Times Magazine
More than 60 years after the monumental Brown vs. Board of Education court ruling, New York City public schools remain some of the most racially- and economically-divided in the country. So where does a middle-class African-American family enroll their daughter: A segregated, low-income public school or a “good” public or private one?
 

Investing in Future Innovation: This Visionary Program Gets Students Hooked on STEM

In calculus class, you’d never use the phrase “star student” to describe Chris Deyo. He was slow to complete assignments about strange-sounding concepts like solids of revolution and related rates, staying behind to get extra help as his classmates jeered that the subject just “sucks.” To them, all they needed to know was enough to pass the test. After several after-school sessions, Deyo learned upper-level math well enough to tutor his peers. But instead of teaching straight out of the thick textbook like many teachers do, he showed how the lessons related other subjects. “The same kids who were saying they hate math could do it and were good at it when taught in a method that they identified with,” he noticed, causing him to wonder, “Is it really math or the way we’re teaching?”
Feeling accomplished, Deyo headed to the University of Texas at Austin with the thought, “I love [teaching and math] so much, I should try to make a living out of it.” There, he signed up for UTeach, a national program training math and science majors to become high school instructors. After graduating from UTeach last spring, Deyo began teaching math at a charter school in Austin. Frequently seen wearing a bowtie, the 23-year-old Deyo doesn’t look much older than the seniors in his calculus class. But he hopes to get them interested by teaching in ways that suit them, rather than just lecturing to teens that have tuned him out already. “From a young age, I realized those are the teachers that are making a difference,” he says.
Bored and intimidated by math and science, American teenagers are disengaged from the classes that prepare them for today’s tech-driven labor force — making UTeach needed now more than ever. The United States ranks a disappointing 35th in math and 27th in science out of 65 countries. Recruiting STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) majors who often arrive at college with no intention of teaching, these undergraduates “represent the most promising pool from which to draw future teachers,” says Kimberly Hughes, director of UTeach Institute, who expanded the UTeach model from eight Texas colleges to 35 more partner universities nationwide.
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No high schooler is eager to do math problems without end, which is why UTeach trains its teachers to create hands-on, collaborative, real-world projects (a teaching method dubbed “project-based learning”) that are exciting to both educators and pupils. Recently, instead of solving systems of equations on the whiteboard, Deyo divided his class into groups and asked them to develop the problems themselves. Groups came up with equations that involved splitting pizza, controlling the amount of money spent on clothes and even comparing Spotify, TIDAL and other music-streaming services. “We try to be a student-led program, where students are taking initiative for their own learning,” Deyo says, speaking with a fast cadence, the enthusiasm about his students emanating in quick sentences. “They are coming up with the questions they want to answer.”
In response to the shortage of STEM professionals in our country, UTeach has already certified 2,676 instructors and is certifying 6,280 more in the next four years — just one of many ways it’s placing valuable 21st-century skills at the center of today’s education.
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Case in point: Manor New Technology High School, a secondary magnet public school in Manor, Texas that employs only UTeach educators for math and science classes, is using project-based learning to instill a love of STEM in an unlikely student body. Unlike most STEM-focused magnet schools, Manor New Tech opened in 2007 to provide 21st-century-learning skills to economically disadvantaged minority students. These teenagers are statistically expected to be behind their white peers in biology (26 points for blacks, 16 for Hispanics), as well as in algebra (13 points for blacks, four for Hispanics). Yet, Manor New Tech eradicates the achievement gap to match state test scores in math and far exceed them in science, despite comparatively lower scores in the surrounding district.
Impressive? Yes. But for schools nationwide to replicate those results, a huge influx of passionate STEM educators is desperately needed. UTeach-trained instructors staff at least 1,120 schools in 34 states, but 43 states and the District of Columbia are short math or science teachers. Filling that gap will only happen as UTeach expands, Hughes believes. “Leveraging the universities in our country as places from which to prepare excellent math and science teachers is key to addressing the shortage of teachers nationwide,” she explains.
Statistics tell the numerical story of UTeach’s impact. But Deyo’s ability to convince math- and science-loving young people to be teachers is how the program truly creates a lasting impression. Problem solving ignites a passion inside Deyo, but more than that, he loves “seeing other people appreciate and fall in love with math and see the value in it. That’s what makes me want to teach.”
“Math, as a whole, to me is one big puzzle,” Deyo says. There may be one final right answer most of the time, but there are so many ways to arrive at it. UTeach may not be the only way to improve STEM education in America, but it’s clearly one of those vital pieces.
This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Forecast for These Veterans’ Career Prospects Is Sunny

In a sunlit office building in northwest Austin, Texas, former Marine Corps electro-optical technician Logan Razinski greets his boss, a one-time sailor who maintained naval nuclear reactors. The day’s work ahead between the two soldiers won’t involve military operations, however. Both are now employees for SunPower, a solar energy company.
Razinski, a lance corporal (not “one of those movie star ranks”) who was previously stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, found the job through a Department of Energy-sponsored program, Solar Ready Vets (SRV), which prepares former service members to work in the solar energy industry. Living in California, where utilities will get one-third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, Razinski saw the field “growing like wildfire” and joined SRV’s first cohort. After receiving four weeks of intensive training (since expanded to six) covering photovoltaic panel installation, electrical grids and local building codes, Razinski interviewed and landed a job with SunPower, where he now remotely controls utility-scale arrays.
“There is still an alarming mix of veterans, who, as soon as they get out, look for work or try the college thing, and, for some reason, that doesn’t work out. Next thing, you know, they’re living on the street,“ Razinski says. Nationwide, in 2014, close to 50,000 vets lacked housing, and 573,000 lacked jobs. With SRV, “I went from somebody who was in the Marine Corps to being a far cry from the poverty line,” he adds.

Transitioning veterans at Fort Carson in Colorado receive hands-on experience working with solar panels as members of the base’s first Solar Ready Vets cohort.

So far, Solar Ready Vets has trained nearly 200 soldiers at five pilot bases: Camp Pendleton, Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Fort Carson in Colorado, Fort Drum in New York and Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
While the connection between military service and solar power might seem tenuous, Razinski says it’s about transitioning workers with proven leadership skills into industries that need talent now. As the solar industry adds new jobs 12 times faster than the overall economy, America’s veterans are a natural fit for various positions. “In an industry that’s growing as rapidly as the solar industry, you need somebody to actually be promotable. You need somebody who’s going to understand the magnitude of the situation and say, ‘Holy cow, this is growing faster than anybody anticipated,’” he says.
“This is definitely a path that I believe in,” Razinski adds. “I see it going nowhere but up.”
MORE: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power from the Sun

As Extreme Poverty Increases Nationwide, This Texas County Finds the Secret to Drastically Reduce It

It’s rarely quiet in the Indian Hills colonia in Hidalgo County, Texas. Cars speed through on shoddily paved roads, blasting reggaeton, a type of music rooted in Latin and Caribbean culture; children kick rubber balls in pickup soccer games, while their parents — home from mowing lawns in McAllen, constructing houses in Pharr or picking tomatoes and onions in Edinburg — hang on the fences, gossiping. From rundown vans, men peddle popsicles, bread, corn, chiles, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — anything, really, says Lourdes Salinas, a community organizer who has lived in the colonias (a term used for the spontaneous settlements on the U.S.-Mexico border that often lack basic infrastructure) for 22 years. “If you live in a colonia, the families are very low-income. Their houses need repairs…and most of the colonias, they need streets and lights. Around mine, they get inundated with water” that floods homes when it rains, she explains.
In southern Texas, where nearly 2,300 colonias dot the arid landscape surrounding the Rio Grande River before it spills into the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 400,000 residents — largely Hispanic — call these barrios home. About two-thirds are American-born citizens that subside on low-wage work. (Nationally, 34.8 percent of residents live in poverty.) Others are undocumented immigrants, who, having successfully crossed one border, don’t risk their chances driving north past dozens of interior checkpoints. Lacking money or papers, colonia residents build their own homes themselves (often without electricity or plumbing), raising a roof where their family first arrived in this country.

A typical Texas colonia.

Outside of city limits, these areas of concentrated poverty resemble neighborhoods in a developing country. Paul Jargowsky, a public policy professor at Rutgers, refers to them as the “architecture of segregation,” a trend he’s seen explode nationally in American suburbs and among racial minorities. “After the dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000, there was a sense that cities were ‘back,’ and that the era of urban decay — marked by riots, violent crime, and abandonment — was drawing to a close. Unfortunately, despite the relative lack of public notice or awareness, poverty has re-concentrated, he says. Families living in these slums must cope not only with their own financial hardship, but with all the social problems destitution brings: poor health, crime and limited educational and employment opportunities.
In 2000, McAllen, Texas, the largest city in Hidalgo County, had the highest concentration of Hispanic poverty in the country, with 61.4 percent of Latinos living in squalor. But through ambitious affordable housing programs, led by municipal government and a local nonprofit, the community has been able to break up these dense, distressed areas by reducing the number of Hispanics living in them by 10 percent, while the rest of the country saw a sharp increase. (Detroit’s rates, for example, jumped from 8.8 percent of Hispanics living in ghettoes to 51.1 percent over the same period; Milwaukee, too, skyrocketed from 5.3 percent to 43.2 percent.)
“To me, we have one of the most successful low-income housing programs in the country,” Mayor Jim Darling tells NationSwell. “It is a testament to the great American Dream of home ownership and how much that means to them.”
Surrounded by veterans, Mayor Jim Darling addresses the audience during his 2016 State of the City Address in McAllen, Texas.

Hidalgo County’s colonias began to pop up in the 1950s, when farmers sold barren land to developers. Many quickly subdivided the unincorporated land into small lots and offered them to recent immigrants. (Often, they were sold through a “contract for deed” where developers offered comparatively low monthly rates, but would only turn over the deed when it had been paid in full. If a family fell behind, they lost the property and had no paperwork to show for it.) Frequently, homes were built piecemeal, adding rooms whenever a resident had some extra cash on hand.
For a time, McAllen focused on renovating the existing homes. Starting in 1976, a group of businessmen got together to eliminate outhouses in the area and hook up homes to sewers. By the mid-1980s, however, one mayor got fed up. “We don’t have to be repairing houses that are going to be falling down in two years,” Darling, the former city attorney who once provided legal advice for the housing program, recalls his predecessor saying.
The city’s affordable housing program looks different than the ones you’d find in urban areas where demand for prime lots is so high that policymakers can attach requirements (such as designating units for low-income residents) to large developments. In McAllen, low demand creates the opposite market dynamic: land is so cheap that the city can buy up undeveloped lots, hold the mortgages and offer them to residents most in need. So far, the plan has built more than 2,700 homes in the area, primarily available to those who had lived or worked in McAllen for two years; leveraging public capital with private banks has generated nearly $40 million in home loans. (A voucher program provides a rent subsidy for 150 apartment units is also available to residents.)
Program recipients are unique: The ideal customer is the person that “nobody else will lend to,” Darling says. Unlike a bank representative who’s following a given formula to determine whether or not an applicant should receive a loan, the city offers extra leeway to poor immigrant families, knowing their income isn’t consistent. It adds food stamps and other welfare to income calculations, for instance, and it knows that families may disappear for two or three months, picking crops up north, before returning to catch up on their loan responsibilities.
This same population is the main beneficiary of Proyecto Azteca, a nonprofit based in San Juan (a couple miles east of McAllen) that builds new, wood-framed homes for residents of the colonias. Residents are given 40-year mortgages at zero interest, as long as they contribute 150 towards the building of their own home (to learn valuable construction skills) or in community service. Since 1991, only a handful of Proyecto homes have been foreclosed on. The high success rate explains why 4,000 families are on its waiting list.
Amber Arriaga, director of public relations for Proyecto Azteca, stands inside one of the homes currently under construction.

Both the City of McAllen and Proyecto Azteca have thought carefully about where to place this new construction. There’s an argument that slums must be broken up by redistributing the population, moving poor families into middle-class neighborhoods to add diversity. But there’s also something to be said for building a model three-bedroom home in the middle of the colonias, uplifting the community. So new housing is constructed in both locations.
While the situation is improving, McAllen has experienced its share of recent crises: drought (which set back Hidalgo County farmers and migrant laborers), rain (that flooded the colonias and displaced residents) and the child migrant crisis of 2014, where tens of thousands of youngsters fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, waded across the Rio Grande, seeking asylum. Add those occurrences to the region’s persistent poverty and Mayor Darling has a full plate of work. “They’re all opportunities,” is how he puts it, a chance to show off his hometown and find ways to improve it. “I don’t worry about legacies or anything else. What I would like to see is that, instead of working apart and against each other, we worked a lot more with each other for the betterment of our communities. If anything, I’ve tried to do that. That’s been a challenge,” he says, but challenges haven’t stopped him before.