In his seminal 1971 book “A Theory of Justice,” the American political philosopher John Rawls proposed a thought experiment in his quest to define a fair and just society. He asks us to imagine ourselves in a situation in which we know nothing about our personal characteristics — not our gender, race, wealth or educational background. From this blind starting point, we’re tasked with laying the framework for a new, just society — the catch being, of course, that if you don’t know where you’ll land in the social hierarchy, what kind of world would you choose to live in?
Like Rawls, Thad Williamson, associate professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia, believes the key to a fair and just society is one in which capitalism works not to make as much money as possible, but to distribute wealth by offering equal employment and social opportunities. It’s a political theory usually confined to debates in lecture halls and academic journals. But two years ago, the city of Richmond offered Williamson a unique opportunity: to build a new government agency, from the ground up, that would tackle the constellation of causes that has led the city’s poverty rate to swell to 22.1 percent, triple the rest of Virginia.
That agency, the Office of Community Wealth Building, or OCWB, launched in 2014. OCWB attempts to boost the number of high-paying jobs for adults, offer more learning and development opportunities for kids and realign current housing stock to be more affordable and public-transit accessible. By 2030, Williamson hopes these efforts will cut Richmond’s child poverty rate in half, creating a more just city.
“We have a fragmentation of services. The issues that really should be discussed holistically are separated: employment, education and housing are all deeply tied together in an urban context,” Williamson tells NationSwell. “Getting separate departments and agencies to cooperate can be a challenge. That’s one of the reasons why the Office of Community Wealth Building was built: to set the strategy for the city as a whole.”
Richmond’s struggle against poverty can be traced back to more than a century ago, when the city segregated neighborhoods. In 1937, the most destitute areas were redlined, leading to “urban renewal” programs that, just a couple of decades later, razed entire neighborhoods and took blacks’ savings (which was tied up in their property). A dangerous cycle ensued. The city’s next generation found themselves lacking proper education and reliable public transit and involved in crime or child protective services. “Far too many children in Richmond have grown up, and are growing up, with the odds firmly stacked against them, as a result of growing up in poverty conditions,” Richmond’s Anti-Poverty Commission remarked in its final report in 2013, where the idea for OCWB was first suggested.
Williamson proposed that the OCWB focus on employment first, directing people to nursing and medical technician jobs at the area’s 20 hospitals, and to positions as logistics supervisors and welders for an expanded port. “We started unpacking what it takes to get to a job with a living wage, what the career path is and the practical obstacles that a family had to overcome,” says Williamson. “We came back to transportation, child care and health concerns” as issues that needed to be dealt with before parents could begin to think about work. “The thought all along was that a standard workforce program is not a bad thing, but for families in deep poverty, it wouldn’t be sufficient.”
MOVIN’ ON UP
The agency’s signature pilot program, called Building Lives to Independence and Self-Sufficiency (or BLISS, a word rarely used to describe government services) kicked off by providing 18 families living in public housing with whatever support they needed to secure jobs and move out. The participants — 24 adults and 46 kids — say the program is unlike anything they’ve ever seen in government. Only a select number are accepted (though all other workforce-innovation programs are open to everyone). Since BLISS is locally funded, with no mandates set by the state or federal government, members set their own personal goals, and the agency strategizes ways to achieve them. Caseworkers aren’t clock-punching bureaucrats either, cordoned away in an office; once BLISS gets involved in your life, you’ve practically got a new family member, participants report.
Jessica Ortiz is one such person. With two young daughters to support, Ortiz was laid off by a corporate law firm, where she had worked on foreclosure cases against homeowners. Initially, she applied for any job opening she could find: retail sales, administration assistant, hospital staff, line chef, security guard. Weeks later, if Ortiz did hear back from employers, they often said she was overqualified. After eight months of unemployment, Ortiz’s savings had evaporated, and life in her housing project was downright miserable. Her sink had been backed up for two years, the landline phone broke, and “D.C.-sized rats” infested the rooms, including the bathroom, where one rodent managed to dislodge the toilet pipes.
Within about three months of enrolling in BLISS, Ortiz’s caseworkers pointed her to a job opening at a local community-development nonprofit. Armed with her résumé and a reference letter from a BLISS caseworker, Ortiz was offered a job helping people with down payments on their first home or negotiating their debt. And the assistance didn’t stop there. In addition to hooking Ortiz up with a job, the agency called the housing authority to see that her toilet got fixed and the rat holes sealed, and it subsidized her childcare, which would have cost Ortiz about $1,250 a month. OCWB also organized regular meetings for the two dozen BLISS parents (including Ortiz) to swap advice, and it held sessions on topics like saving money via coupons, finding children’s books at the right grade level and balancing a budget. Unlike most state and federal programs, “the regulations [at OCWB] are coming from the people themselves, and they adjust to the participants,” Ortiz says. At BLISS, she adds, the staff views “you as an investment.”
PUSHING FORWARD
At the end of BLISS’s first year, 16 of the 18 heads of household had new jobs, and three-quarters completed financial literacy training to prepare them for homeownership. Seeing the results, the city council voted to make the OCWB a permanent fixture. Williamson says he’s particularly proud of assembling a capable and diverse staff of 14 employees during his tenure. “It’s such a huge undertaking, and the agency is trying to accomplish big things in a context where doing even little things often is very challenging and requires great persistence,” he says.
After laying the groundwork for the OCWB and leading it to its initial success, Williamson has returned full time to the classroom. Taking his spot is Reggie Gordon, a Richmond native and member of the city’s previous anti-poverty commission, who is stepping down as CEO of the American Red Cross’s Virginia chapter. Gordon says he’s got a prototype for how the agency should work, and it’s now a matter of obtaining long-term financing, growing the number of participants and rigorously documenting what’s effective.
In the hands of Gordon, and Williamson before him, what began as a thought experiment turned into something tangible, a government program that helps poor families move toward independence. Rawls would probably agree: Richmond is starting to see what a just society looks like.
MORE: Participants Claim This Program Boosts Them out of Poverty. Should Other Cities Implement It?
Tag: virginia
This User-Friendly Tool Gets You In The Know Before You Vote
With the presidential primary election looming, Chicago public school teacher Megan Augustiny introduced her high school civics students to BallotReady, an online guide to down-ballot races. (Think: state attorney, judgeships, city council — candidates that first-time voters in her class had never heard of, but would soon be electing to office). The nonpartisan site compiles essential information that voters need on little-known candidates — their job experience, positions on controversial issues and endorsements accrued — making it easy for students (and all voters) to “access information in the way they are used to,” she says, favoriting contenders as if their sample ballot were an Instagram feed.
Which is just what Alex Niemczewski and Aviva Rosman, two recent University of Chicago grads who co-founded BallotReady, had envisioned. Both are reserved, heads-down types who prefer to focus on their work, speaking softly about their high-minded ideals of involving more people at all stages of the democratic process. The two built the site in their spare time and spent just $180 on marketing to launch BallotReady. Within a few months, it irreversibly changed voter behavior across Illinois, where thousands of people logged on to the site. During this year’s bombastic election season, instead of skipping many of the contests, or worse, casting an uninformed vote, BallotReady users now have at their fingertips valuable information about local and regional candidates that are virtually unknown to most people.
For a glimpse of BallotReady’s reach, all one needs to do is log on to Twitter on Election Day.
Done. Whole-ballot voting, couldn’t have done it without @BallotReady pic.twitter.com/aLlZdGPTNk
— Tim McGovern (@herdingbats) March 15, 2016
Loved @ballotready! Never been more well informed going into an election. #illinoisprimary https://t.co/KQ8608ag8F
— Khalfani Myrick (@KhalfaniMyrick) March 15, 2016
.@BallotReady thx to you, for the first time ever, i feel informed about my vote for Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner 🙂
— Hassan S. Ali (@hassanisms) March 15, 2016
.@BallotReady Thanks for helping me be smart about this privilege. #vote #chicago #YourVoiceMatters pic.twitter.com/GrnmD3isG6
— Emily Drake (@EmKDee) March 15, 2016
In states where it’s active, BallotReady is so popular that politicians ask to add specifics to their profiles, offering new possibilities for local campaigns that are too small to attract media coverage or buy their own advertisements. If a school board member sees her opponent vows to support a charter school expansion, for instance, the incumbent may add more details to her education platform. “If a candidate says, ‘I support education,’ we don’t include that, because everybody does,” Niemczewski says. Although, “if a candidate didn’t support education, we would include that,” she adds.
BallotReady emerged from a collision of two pasts: Rosman’s as an enthusiastic electioneer and Niemczewski’s nonprofit work, as well as her knack for code. A self-avowed political junkie, Rosman started participating in the political process in middle school, driving with her dad from their native Massachusetts to New Hampshire and attempting to sway the state’s swing voters every election. In 2004, she nearly failed two high school classes when she used frequent flier miles to campaign for John Kerry in Florida. Four years later, while staffing a congressional race in Illinois, Rosman realized her knowledge was severely lacking. “I was trying to inform people about my candidate, and yet, I was unprepared to vote for all these other people on the ballot,” she remembers. Then in 2014, Rosman ran for a seat on the school council in Chicago. She asked Niemczewski, an old classmate then coaching Chicago’s unemployed into IT jobs, to vote for her. “I didn’t even know there was an election,” Niemczewski says, admitting to missing the vote. The two stayed in touch and a few months later, collaborated on the guide that developed into BallotReady.
More than 160,000 voters in Illinois, Virginia, Kentucky and Colorado have used BallotReady to inform their choices — a 10-fold growth from its launch last fall. The site is expanding its reach, developing profiles for candidates in Maryland, New Hampshire and Florida. Scaling hasn’t been easy: “It takes a lot of phone calls and relationship-building. That’s kind of daunting,” Niemczewski says, noting that 100 volunteer curators are needed to build candidate profiles, “but it’s also exciting, because it means we can really help.” By year’s end, BallotReady hopes to reach 1 million voters, and by 2020, to be in every state.
Since BallotReady is committed to educating every American citizen, it devotes resources to eliminating digital access issues that arise. Once, Niemczewski responded to a request from an elderly woman in an assisted living center. After the woman reported being unable to load BallotReady, Niemczewski troubleshot the problem by backdating the site’s functionality, so the senior citizens could use it on their outdated computers.
Ultimately, BallotReady’s founders work to make their innovative site as user-friendly as possible — to both the older electorate and young, first-time voters alike. That mission is just one of the reasons why teachers like Augustiny thinks that its online repository of candidate profiles is a great way to get Millennials more involved in elections. “The Internet is so pervasive at this point: it informs everything that we do, especially for younger people. Not having that information readily accessible online was a real disservice to young people,” she says.
As a teacher, Augustiny always wants her kids to develop in-depth research skills. But when it comes to voting — an activity that’s made so many Americans apathetic — she’s in favor of turning to BallotReady for a digital shortcut.
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.
MORE: Investing in the Future: This Visionary Program Gets Students Hooked on STEM
Can a College That’s Notorious for Sexual Assault Reform Itself?
The night after Rolling Stone magazine’s since-retracted story “A Rape on Campus,” hit the web, bottles and cinder blocks were hurled through windows at the University of Virginia’s Phi Psi house around 2:45 a.m., and its walls were tagged “UVA Center for Rape Studies.” The following day, in a Slut Walk, angry students marched past the frats on Rugby Road to the dean’s offices in Peabody Hall, chanting, “You can’t get away with this,” and, “One in four, let’s change the score,” a reference to a survey by the Association of American Universities which found that 23.1 percent of female college students experience sexual assault or misconduct while enrolled. Even faculty members held their own Take Back the Party march, tracing a similar route. “It’s shocking that it took an article by Rolling Stone in order to get this started,” Rita Dove, an English professor and former U.S. poet laureate, said in front of the Phi Psi house.
Dove’s comment spoke to the long-simmering outrage on campus, and the fact that almost a quarter of female UVA students experience sexual assault (a self-reported 2015 survey put the university’s exact number at 23.8 percent) marked an opening for an overdue conversation about what enabled rape to occur on school grounds, what could be done to limit further victimization and the role that men should play in the discussion.
Hoos (a nickname for UVA community members) put forward new ideas for policies and programs to prevent future rapes and to shift the conversation from scandal to solutions. Several students called for a thorough review of Greek life, a more robust bystander intervention program and stricter punishments when assailants are found responsible for sexual misconduct.
Inter-Fraternity Council members offered to ban hard liquor, place sober brothers as monitors and lock all downstairs bedrooms during social events. On December 1, 2014 in a university address, President Teresa Sullivan applauded the recommendations and announced that many would be implemented. The move likely was also prompted by an announcement by the U.S. Department of Education Office Rights that UVA had been under investigation since 2011 for violating federal law in its handling of gender-based violence — putting the school under legal pressure to ensure it remained compliant with Title IX.
One year later, has the school make progress in improving its campus climate and reducing incidents of sexual assault? During four days in February, NationSwell visited the university, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 and is known as Grounds to its 15,700 undergrads, to investigate if there’s been a shift in student behavior that’s resulted in safer sexual interactions.
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In interviews with 16 students (NationSwell reached out to several members of the UVA administration, but were denied requests for comment), a complicated portrait of the aftermath emerged. Most agree that awareness and candid discussion about sexual assault increased and unified the campus. On the whole, Grounds now feels like a safer place. That’s not to say the problem’s solved: In 2014, according to federal data, Hoos reported 44 rapes to the university administration, a significant increase from 2012 (when 16 forcible sexual offenses were reported). That spike could be considered a good sign — more survivors trust the university to handle the misconduct — but it is also hard proof that rape still occurs on campus. As school policies and initiatives aim to foster a safe environment, organizations like the all-male One in Four (its name a nod to the aforementioned sexual assault statistic) educate men and empower them to establish new norms about sexual violence against women, bringing welcome change to a community in need of it.
Before Hoos even start their freshman year, they receive education about nonconsensual sex through two mandatory online modules. But as soon as this official messaging ends and students arrive at their dorms, a different sense of accepted standards on drinking and hooking up can emerge. Those who are the most vocal about their weekend exploits can dominate the conversation, even if the majority is disgusted by the behavior — allowing a sexist norm to persist, says Alan Berkowitz, an independent consultant who advises colleges, the military and public health departments on preventing substance abuse and sexual assault. “My research, which is called the social norms approach, shows that most men don’t think it’s okay, but most men don’t know that most [other] men [also] don’t think it’s okay.”
For more than a decade, One in Four has elevated the discussion about what men can do, either as bystanders who can prevent dangerous situations or as friends who can direct rape survivors to the appropriate professional support. UVA’s chapter was founded by John Foubert, then a dean at the school and now an Oklahoma State University professor and president of the national One in Four network. In his opinion, there were few legal consequences for rapists and only by introducing social pressures — creating a new campus ethic that rejected the objectification of women’s bodies — could UVA’s culture begin to shift. (The university came under fire from student activists for not expelling a single student found responsible for an alleged rape between 2004 and 2014; UVA has reversed course and “recently expelled students responsible for sexual misconduct,” a university spokesperson writes in an email to NationSwell.)
The core component of One in Four’s work is a 45-minute presentation clarifying expectations for how women should be treated and addressing the role of masculinity in stopping campus rape. The class is delivered more than 100 times a year to male groups, including freshman dorms, new classes of fraternity pledges and sports teams. Deviating from Foubert’s original methods, today’s group of 50 members places emphasis on dispelling the notion that false reporting of rape is a common occurrence. One in Four is sticking with the message, “which is to trust survivors,” Yash Shevde, the group’s incoming president, says. “Our job is not to be an investigator.”
One in Four stresses that empathy is the crucial emotion necessary in preventing violence against classmates. At UVA, the presentation’s first exercise generally begins with asking the men in the room to close their eyes. The speaker presents a hypothetical scenario in which a close female relation — sister, girlfriend, best friend — tells the man she has been sexually violated. When the men open their eyes, the speaker briefly refers back to the statistic in the group’s name: chances are that a young woman close to them will experience some form of sexual violence, whether she tells them or not. “But the group doesn’t dwell on the exact numbers, which vary from one survey to the next. “The debate about the statistic is useless,” Shevde says, “because it is still one too many.”
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Grounded in that imagery — thinking about how actions affect a specific woman the man knows rather than someone abstract — the conversation touches on definitions of consent and checks in on the group’s norms, which have often never been discussed explicitly. So, rather than delivering a preachy set of rules, One in Four uses indirect methods to get men talking about what is acceptable behavior. At fraternities, for example, they asked an incoming pledge class to rank actions on a continuum of acceptability, from flirting with someone you’ve just met to touching someone’s genitals without verbal consent, all the way to engaging in sex despite use of the word “no.” Next, pledges are asked to delineate which behaviors are unacceptable and which count as sexual assault. While the exercise seems simple, it gets the young men debating about their viewpoints in a new way. (“When the majority of men know that most other men share their discomfort, they are more likely to intervene,” explains Berkowitz.) From there, One in Four’s presenters give a clear explanation of affirmative consent, stressing that students should strive to hear “yes,” Shevde says, rather than “no” since social pressures, physical intimidation or intoxication can prevent someone from verbalizing an objection, while still not giving consent.
On the surface, it appears that One in Four’s ultimate goal is to make it explicitly clear to rapists that they are alone in their behavior, that the man who treats women as objects for his sexual pleasure isn’t respected by his peers. But that’s not exactly what the group is after. Knowing that only a very small number of men will commit sexual misconduct (6.4 percent are perpetrators), the organization doesn’t waste much time trying to ferret out the one potential rapist in the room with scare tactics, Shevde explains. One in Four doesn’t preach down to the audience or explicitly say, Don’t sexually assault people! “We’re definitely looking at our male audiences as allies, not someone who has to be taught anything,” says Shevde. Instead, the group trains men to be more thoughtful in all their actions, says Kevin Hare, the group’s vice president, as well as empowered to intervene when they see improper sexual advances, Shevde adds.
Shevde worries about men not engaging with the subject because they’ve heard it so many times. No matter how informative One in Four’s lessons might be, it doesn’t matter if the guy in the back of the room tunes them out, tired of hearing about sexual assault after taking the online module before getting to campus, listening to administrators’ speeches or watching his R.A. flyer the dorms with green stickers that mark those trained in bystander intervention.
It’s difficult to measure One in Four’s success. Men may offer respectful discussion while Shevde is in the room, but how do they act that night? Looking for a correlation with reducing violence is even more difficult. Rape, as a crime, is severely underreported: nearly two out of every three sexual assaults — 65 percent — went unreported, according to 2012 findings by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. So a decline in the number of cases doesn’t necessarily mean fewer women are being assaulted on campus.
Anecdotally, several female first-years told NationSwell that campus generally feels safe. “After being put under such a spotlight, I figured [UVA] would be better than other places because [the school was] so heavily scrutinized,” says Elizabeth Fadl. And a fourth-year student, Mark Lundy, said he could think of multiple times when he’s grabbed his buddies to separate a girl from a “sketchy” guy. He described the interventions as “a moral duty.” Maybe the situation just looked bad and nothing would have happened anyway, but at the same time, one wonders if Lundy’s small interaction might have prevented another rape on campus.
The problem with activism at the collegiate level is that students only have four years to make a difference before their work resets with a whole new crop of faces. After such a turbulent year, One in Four learned that one-time responses aren’t effective and that the norms it is helping to establish can quickly be unmade. Which is why an ongoing effort — spearheaded by men themselves — is clearly so essential for UVA to triumph at reforming its campus ethos.
Homepage photo by Wenhao Wu/PittNews
The Resurgence of the 1950s Dinner
Nobody wants to think about how an animal goes from roaming in a pasture to meat on a plate, let alone talk about the actual process. But for small-scale farmers (not to mention those that want to know where their food comes from), access to slaughterhouses and how meat is processed is crucial. Local meat isn’t local, after all, if livestock have to be driven miles away, or even to another state, for processing.
In Lynchburg, Va., Seven Hills Food has turned a century-old slaughterhouse into a $3 million, state-of-the-art, humane processing facility for Virginia-grown beef, hogs, lamb and goats. The 40,000-square-feet of brick, concrete and steel is a USDA-inspected facility capable of processing 75 to 100 cows or 300 to 400 hogs each day — filling a gap in the Chesapeake foodshed infrastructure and making local beef and pork more accessible to consumers and growers in the state. Intertwining the age-old art of butchery with modern software, Seven Hills can trace a carcass all the way down to a finished primal cut back to original lot it came from.
Owner and native Virginian Ryan Ford tells NationSwell that the idea behind Seven Hills Food started over a dinner table conversation about the difficultly of sourcing local meat. Turning a cow from a farm into a steak served at a restaurant can be a challenge. While the state’s abundant forage resources and topography is ideal for beef production, livestock farmers still have a hard time getting their product onto local places. That’s because, for food safety reasons, federal and state regulations require that red meat be cut in a USDA-inspected facility — something that Virginia has a real shortage of.
“We’re still trying to solve the same problem that existed for years,” Ford says about the lack of regional processing. “There’s a real bottleneck in that regard.”
Food that’s directly farm-to-table not only supports local farmers and processors, but it also cuts down on transportation and fuel usage, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the environment. A shorter distribution chain also means fresher food since it spends less time in a warehouse or in transit.
But in general, the days of mom-and-pop butcher shops have been replaced by the Big Four — Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef — that slaughter roughly 80 percent of the country’s cattle and can process 300 to 400 beef cows per hour. This consolidation of slaughterhouses meant that local butchering, like many other skilled-labor jobs in the U.S., became a dying trade. As Dr. Jonathan Campbell, associate professor and meat extension specialist at Penn State in University Park, explains, family-owned shops are going out of business because “they don’t have the labor force to keep up with changing demand and specialized markets.” The industry funnels a staggering $894 billion to country’s economy (about 6 percent of the GDP), and there’s even more growth potential in this market as emerging economies, such as China and India, demand more meat.
“The U.S. and other industrialized nations have been charged with the task of feeding the growing global population. And so it’s very difficult to do that with small, niche markets,” says Campbell, who helps advise Pennsylvanian meat companies on processing, food safety and cost-efficiency. Despite this, it is possible for an independent slaughterhouse to stay competitive in the meat market: by carving out specialized demand since they’re not driven by volume.
Seven Hills Food has been officially open for a month and currently has 15 employees. When asked about the challenges of running an independent slaughterhouse, Ford laughs, asking, “Do you have all day?”
“Every day is a challenge,” he says. “We’re starting from scratch. There are very few models to follow.”
Yet Ford remains ambitious about his goal of getting Virginians much closer to their food. “There’s an eighth generation family cattle business in the state of Virginia,” he says, referencing one of his clients. “As a consumer, wouldn’t you like to know that story?”
If you’re someone that cares about where your food comes from, it’s a tale worth hearing.
Stories of Redemption in America’s Coal Country
How much money must pour into Central Appalachia before locals will see any substantial change? The Promise Zone has already lined up $189 million, but insiders say that’s a drop in the bucket.
“Before the downturn of the coal industry, in which we lost nearly 8,000 mining jobs in the region, we were already a distressed area,” says Jeff Whitehead, executive director of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, a workforce development agency. “It’s more than just reviving an economy, it’s trying to diversify an economy that was in tough shape before this crisis.”
Not all of the hard-hit counties in Central Appalachia are part of the Promise Zone, so those that are excluded have to pursue their own economic diversification and mine restoration strategies. But as with the rest of the Promise Zone’s work, economic diversification must clear additional hurdles inherent to rural areas. And since these areas may not have the cash (or cachet) of being part of a federally recognized program, these counties must shoulder the burden of their own redevelopment.
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“We’re not in a metropolitan area where we can identify other sectors and other kinds of employment that are growing as the economy rebounds, where you can transfer over to this profession or that profession,” Whitehead adds. “This isn’t a real quick fix. There’s a level of frustration in the region because we see the dire straits that so many people are in.”
Here are three counties just outside of Southeastern Kentucky who aren’t waiting for the federal government’s assistance to create economic diversity.
For years, Knott County, Ky. — adjacent to the Promise Zone — tried to capitalize on its isolated, “backwoods” qualities to appeal to tourists wanting a rustic getaway. Its county seat, Hindman, a coal town with a population of 777, had the folksy feel, but it lacked the necessary infrastructure. As a result, an $11.8 million, state-funded plan launched by Gov. Paul Patton in 1997 aimed at generating “arts and smarts” in Hindman never resulted in the exhibitions, classes and shopping that bureaucrats envisioned — even after the investment doubled to more than $25.2 million by 2003.
“I got a call last week from a woman who asked me, ‘How do I get to you from Interstate 75?’” Corbett Mullins, former mayor of Hindman and director of the Appalachian Arts Center, told the Lexington Herald-Leader two years ago. “I paused and I said, ‘Are you sure you want to come here? To the Appalachian Artisan Center? In Hindman? Because we’re a couple of hours away from the interstate.’ And she said, ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, I meant the Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea.’ ‘That’s what I thought,’ I told her.”
Now, though, a public-private partnership is thinking regionally. Beyond a center for the arts downtown, it’s defining how to create a culture of artists that will attract visitors, part of which involves creating demand. Recreation is an early part of it, with hundreds of miles of trails in the reclaimed hillsides through the Mine Made Paradise Park, a draw that will boost sales at local shops and could even bring a hotel to town.
With hope renewed in Hindman, the initial $5 million that built the Kentucky School of Craft may prove worth the expense. The facility nearly closed down in 2012 when two instructors resigned, unwilling to spend another year in Knott County. A sculptor, Michael Flynn, has taken over and promises to expand offerings in digital media. “We are in the heart of Appalachia. When you look out our windows or walk around our campus, you are surrounded by nature, the foothills, the flow of Troublesome Creek, and wildlife right at our doorstep. The Kentucky School of Craft is iconic Eastern Kentucky, and I believe our success lies in a grassroots movement that starts with those native to the region that treasure the uniqueness of Appalachia,” Flynn says. It’s why as it “expand[s] to become a nationally recognized art organization,” Flynn won’t just be promoting their arts, he’ll be hooking artists on the unique mountain culture as well.
Upshur County, W. Va., also realized that businesses couldn’t thrive without demand, so community leaders focused on finding active buyers. Within the county, taking the word “grassroots” literally, they generated a self-sustaining local food system centered around a farmer’s market in Buckhannon. State officials point to statistics showing the boom in West Virginia agriculture: Last year, there were nearly 180 farmers markets, up from 16 in 2002. Sales at the stands accounted for nearly $4 million in 2012; that number more than doubled last year to $9 million, according to the farmers market association’s figures.
Additionally, businesses in the same industry also collaborated on marketing to generate more buyers, as the Hardwood Alliance Zone did for value-added timber products. Today, forestry and logging only accounts for 49 jobs in the county (at an average weekly wage of $568), while wood product manufacturing accounts for 483 jobs (at a higher average salary of $745).
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The city of Bristol in Washington County, Va., is located on prime real estate between two interstate exchanges. While counties deeper into rugged Appalachia concentrate on drawing tourists, this area is drafting a business plan to sell retail to those passing through, the centerpieces of which are the Believe in Bristol program to revive Main Street and construction of The Falls, a huge retail destination that could generate up to 2,000 jobs. Construction began in January on Cabela’s Outfitters, the 80,000-square-foot anchor tenant. Up next? Lowe’s Home Improvement, Smoky Mountain Brewery, Calhoun’s, Zaxby’s and Sheetz. “It’s really exciting to see walls going up and know that this fall we’ll see…more job opportunities and revenues for our city,” Mayor Catherine Brillhart tells the Bristol Herald Courier. Downtown, more retail shops, a planned hotel and the recently opened Birthplace of Country Music Museum have generated so much business that the city’s now looking at places to build a parking garage to control the overflow.
Retail development and investment in infrastructure brings hope, but it can’t fully erase the struggles that Appalachia’s citizens have endured. “It’s about solutions. [But] That doesn’t preclude me from knowing I have a sister and brother who are suffering, that I have the shortest life expectancy in the United States because I happen to be a woman in Perry County,” says Gerry Roll, executive director of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, a local community foundation in Perry County, Ky. “I am going to fight my way out of it so that it’s not a reality when my grandchildren are my age.”
READ MORE:
Part 1: Poverty Is a Way of Life in Appalachia. But This State Proves That It Doesn’t Have to Be
Part 2: Inside The Big Plan to Get One Appalachian Community Back on Track
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3 Top Educators Share Their Secrets to Successful School Reform
For education reform to succeed, there’s one thing it must have: buy-in from teachers. No matter how visionary the school overhaul is, it will never reach students without employees’ consent. In light of a recent Gallup survey finding that 70 percent of K-12 teachers aren’t actively engaged, how can the most promising changes build wider support? NationSwell asked three high-profile educators to weigh in. Here’s what they had to say.
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HAVE ADVOCATES OUTSIDE THE SUPERINTENDENT’S OFFICE
Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, said her goal from day one was doing “the job right for the city’s children,” even if it meant she “would upset the status quo.” Which is exactly what she did. Rhee, now chairman of the St. Hope public charter school system, “quickly” (her word) decided to shutter two dozen schools, cut the administrative district office in half, instituted new evaluations, bargained with the union to undo tenure and rewrote the math and reading curriculum. These changes “provoked community outrage” and “caused turmoil in the district” (again, her words), but she says the improved test scores and higher enrollment made the changes worth it.
Today, Rhee (who left the D.C. district five years ago) reflects on how she could have acted differently; she wants the most engaged teachers to be on her side. “Anytime you are working on something that will impact classrooms, reformers need to go to stakeholders,” Rhee tells NationSwell. “Parents will want to understand what the changes mean.… Principals and administrators need to understand the role they will play in managing the instructional program. The community will want to understand how the modifications will result in better schooling for the next generation. But it will always be teachers who will be asked to actually implement the change, making them the most important group,” Rhee says. Engaged teachers will not only incorporate their experience into a program’s development, they will also bring fellow colleagues onboard, which will “ultimately determine the success — or failure — of any initiative,” she adds.
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LISTEN, THEN ADAPT
As superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), Karen Garza oversees a network of 196 schools in the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington, D.C. One of her biggest issues ahead is managing the budget. “When meeting and talking with employees around the country, and when embarking on my listening tours, I have heard repeatedly how important it is for FCPS to stay competitive in the region with employee salaries,” she says. “Organizations change and evolve, and it was apparent that our needs had changed.” In other words, listening also must translate into meaningful modifications. In January, Garza compiled all she’d heard into a comprehensive $70 million plan to boost employee salaries, while making up the difference in cuts to health insurance, utility costs and employee turnover.
“I understand there is always a little trepidation when a new leader arrives and I am mindful of the tremendous history of excellence that exists in Fairfax,” Garza adds. “However, even with greatest systems, it is necessary to embrace the notion of continuous improvement.”
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NEVER STOP COMMUNICATING
Mike Miles, the superintendent of Dallas Independent School District who’s a fast-rising figure in the education reform movement, sums up his advice succinctly: The “best way to build consensus and buy-in” is to “communicate clearly and often,” he says. “This means you avoid placing an artificial cap on your communication efforts and continually seek avenues to convey your message in a focused and clear manner.” In Dallas, they’ve been doing just that as they roll out the Teacher Excellence Initiative (TEI), a new system of merit compensation that’s replacing the decades-old pay ladders that dole out salaries based on seniority. “Obviously, this major shift takes teachers out of their familiar comfort zone, so communication has been key to creating an understanding of the process,” he says. Miles held staff meetings at every campus, convened a teachers’ task force and shared details with all employees through a website, one-sheet handouts and email newsletter — all before the school board even took a vote to approve the initiative.
Now that the program is underway, Miles continues to ask a panel of expert teachers for their advice on continual improvements, and he’s continuing to share success stories on a news website, The HUB. He believes these two measures “have reduced fears of the program and allowed our teachers to view the initiative favorably,” he says. Overall, “by not placing artificial limits on our communication, we are making TEI a successful project our teachers and community can support.”
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In These 8 States, Students Are Going to Be Served Healthier School Lunches
A new pilot program aimed at encouraging states to purchase locally-sourced food will bring more fresh produce to school meals across eight states.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced California, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin will be able to use some of their USDA Foods allocation toward unprocessed fruits and vegetables from local farms rather than going through the USDA Foods program.
The Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables, which falls under the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill), was created to not only promote farm-to-table meals, but also help schools strengthen relationships with vendors, growers, wholesalers and distributors, according to the USDA.
USDA Foods comprises about 20 percent of foods served in schools, with schools using their allocation from a list of 180 items including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, low fat cheese, beans, pasta, flour and other whole grain products. Under the new program, schools will be able to substitute those allocations for fresher, local options.
“Providing pilot states with more flexibility in the use of their USDA Foods’ dollars offers states another opportunity to provide schoolchildren with additional fruits and vegetables from within their own communities,” says Kevin Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. “When schools invest food dollars into local communities, all of agriculture benefits, including local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, food processors and manufacturers.”
States were selected on criteria including a commitment to farm-to-school efforts, previous promotion initiatives, the variety and abundance of fruit and vegetable growers in the state on a per capita basis, as well as how diverse the state’s educational agencies are in size and geography.
For states like Connecticut, the program not only promotes the local economy, but also helps children form more nutritional habits of buying fresh, local produce.
“Connecticut’s participation in this federal pilot is great news for our farmers, our economy and our children,” says Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “Our state is home to thousands of farming operations responsible for billions in economic activity. By increasing the amount locally-sourced healthy food options for our students, we help lay a foundation for lifelong successful habits.”
MORE: The District Where Healthy School Lunches Are Actually Succeeding
The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2014
In a year where our country witnessed a widening gap between rich and poor, a toxic chemical leak, long delays for veterans at hospitals and clinics, botched lethal injections, racially-charged protests, record low voter turnout and stunning Congressional dysfunction, we at NationSwell turned to these ten books for stories of hope. Confronted by complex issues, these authors never flinched. Instead, they brought us creative solutions and unwavering heroics. Read on for our top ten books of 2014 (alphabetized by author):
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Are there any inspiring books we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
This Building Is Made From Trash. Yes, Really
What’s the best way to build a green building? Well, for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), the answer is dumpster diving.
Yes, you read that right. For the past year and a half, members of the foundation have been turning garbage bins inside out in search of materials to construct the Brock Environmental Center building in Virginia Beach, Va.
Why are they digging through the garbage? Because the CBF is hoping to earn the highest standard in green construction with LEED Platinum status and a Living Building Challenge Certification.
In order to meet green building standards like LEED, Green Globes or the Living Building Challenge, recycled materials have to be used. And with about 160 million tons of unwanted used materials from home renovations being tossed in landfills every year (according to the Environmental Protection Agency), there are plenty of options in trash bins.
Among the finds? Sinks, doors, mirrors, counters and cabinets. Additionally, the doors and windows of the Brock Environmental Center will be trimmed with old wooden school bleachers, while the floor will be a resurfaced maple floor of an elementary school gymnasium. Old champagne corks will double as knobs and drawer pools, student art tables are counters and the center’s cabinets will be made from old wooden paneling, according to the Huffington Post.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the building, though, will be the exterior siding. At the bottom of the rivers and bayous of the Deep South are what’s referred to as “old sinker cypress logs.” The Foundation dug up those logs, which will now serve as the center’s siding. The best part? The wood acts as a natural, chemical-free weather proofing material.
While working on the project, Christy Everett, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Hampton Roads Director, has noticed the scalability of dumpster diving to create sustainable buildings.
“The biggest lesson I’ve learned from all of this work is that you don’t need new materials to build a new building,” Everett writes in her article for the Huffington Post. “The Brock Environmental Center not only raises the bar on smart buildings; it can serve as a replicable model for raising community awareness in localities around the country and the world.”
And with that, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is finding that all you need is something old to make something green.
MORE: The Giant Seawall That Will Protect New York City
This Nonprofit Makes Sure Transportation Troubles Don’t Stand in Between Low-Income People and Employment
One of the main barriers to consistent employment for low-income people: Unreliable transportation. If the bus is late or doesn’t serve the area where people live or work, say, or a child’s school or daycare is at a distance from a parent’s workplace, it can lead to missed shifts and a lost job — leaving the family worse off than ever.
This is where Wheels to Work steps in. The nonprofit, which serves a variety of locations throughout the U.S., including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California and South Dakota, accepts donated vehicles, fixes them up and provides them to struggling families — either for free or for a low price.
Before receiving the keys to a dependable car, participants in the Wheels to Work program sponsored by the Wisconsin Automotive & Truck Education Association (WATEA) must take a course called Money Smart, which teaches them about money management, vehicle maintenance and budgeting. Meanwhile, WATEA enlists the help of students overseen by mechanic mentors to repair the vehicles, teaching them automotive skills that might lead to a career.
Participants in the WATEA program must earn no more than twice the salary of the federal poverty level, possess a driver’s license and a good driving record and either have a job or be actively looking for work.
The program has shown such promise that more communities are introducing it every year. The city of Charlottesville and the Monticello Area Community Action Agency hope to introduce Wheels to Work in Virginia early next year, but first, according to WVIR, they’re seeking help from the community to launch it by looking for partners who will help them repair donated cars.
One recipient of a Wheels to Work vehicle named Charles from Virginia, used to be a drug addict but has turned his life around. He now works as a limousine driver and relishes the freedom that the Wheels to Work car has brought him. “I am able to give people rides now,” he tells Jennifer M. Drummond of CARITAS. “I can visit my grandchildren and it gives me an opportunity to enjoy life more.”
MORE: Are Cars the Key to Single Mothers Achieving Self-Sufficiency?