It recounted tales of projects gone wrong – unfinished toilets in Peru, stilettos and winter coats sent to post-tsunami Indonesia and waterless urinals in Chicago’s City Hall.

We see some of the same issues in Alabama – we have huge hearts, and those of us lucky enough to have extra time, energy and/or money to give want to use those resources to improve the quality of life for those in need.  And sometimes, despite the best of intentions, we see the Alabama equivalent of unfinished toilets that end up as a safety hazard.  And then it doesn’t matter if your heart is in the right place.

So what can you do?

Kent Keith, the CEO, Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, a nonprofit organization that trains and advises groups and individuals on practical and ethical ways of helping others says that “before you help people, you have to ask them, ‘What do you need? What do you want?’”

Beyond Good Intentions, an organization focused on educating about more innovative and effective approaches to service, recommends the following approaches:

• Throw away your assumptions about what you think people need.
• Ask recipients what they think might work.
• Focus on ideas that may be more effective than the obvious project.
• Be willing to be anonymous.

I often say that isn’t about fixing problems or doing things for communities in need. It is about working with communities.

What have you done to develop reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationships with the communities you serve?  Please tell us – we need to hear about these successes.

You may be surprised to learn that the official measure of poverty does not take into account these expenses and these benefits when setting the federal poverty line. Instead, the formula is based solely on the cost of food. It was established in the early 1960s on the premise that every family spends approximately one-third of their income on food. Thus, to calculate the minimum amount of money that an individual or a family would need to subsist upon, the formula multiplies a low estimate of the cost of food for a day times 3, times 365.

Here’s how it works: the current poverty estimate for Jefferson County calculates the minimum cost of food for an individual for one day as only $9.40.  So, by this estimation,

$9.40 x 3 x 365 = $10, 296: the federal poverty line for an individual living in Birmingham.

Federal and state governments have long recognized that this measurement is much to low for the average person to live on, and thus grant federal aid to individuals and families living on up to 200% of a so-called poverty income.

The new “supplemental” measure of poverty recognizes that food is no longer the largest expense for a family or individual (comprising only about one-seventh of low-income families’ expenses), and that the arbitrary calculus no longer tells us anything remotely useful about the cost of living with basic necessities. This measure will be applied to the 2010 census data to give us a more accurate picture of true poverty in the United States.

By the way: under the old measurement, 1 in 4 children and seniors in Alabama are living below the poverty line. An AP article asserts that the new measurement nearly doubles the number of seniors considered to be living below the poverty line. If that holds true for Alabama, then nearly half of our senior citizens may be living in poverty. Can we live with that measurement?

This means that low- and middle-income Alabamians have trouble accessing a college education.  Accordingly to the 2006 State of Education report, only 50.9 percent of low-income students and 61.4 percent of middle-income students enrolled in college immediately after high school.

What can we do to make college more affordable for everyone? At 4:30 PM (central), the White House is broadcasting a live Q & A chat on college affordability. (Watch it here.) Up for discussion will be the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act and the White House’s efforts to reform student lending.  We’ll be tracking this discussion closely.

How does Alabama fare in the national trend towards more educational attainment? Not so well. In the year 2005, only 23 percent of Alabama adults had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher. This is much lower than the national average and places us 43rd in a national index of college education attainment. We also ranked 45th in a national index of high school graduation rates, with just 84.1 percent of adults boasting a high school diploma.

In 2008, Alabama’s median household income was $9,443 less than the national median household income.  The Southern Education Foundation reports that 60% of Alabama’s low earnings potential is due to low educational attainment. Many studies have confirmed that lack of a college degree leads to significantly lower earnings potential over a person’s lifetime. On average, people with college degrees earn 45 percent more than those without a bachelor’s degree, and 64 percent more than those without a high school diploma.

On his blog, Powell writes

“The simple proposition is this—improving graduation rates is not just an education issue; it’s a community issue.”

We agree.

“What can you do? How can you help make us a Grad Nation?” Powell asks.  Ideas:

• Mentor youth. Students whose parents did not complete college enrolled at rates of only 56 percent, and students of parents with no high school diploma enrolled at even lower rates; these first-generation college students need the most encouragement.
• Support college access programs (such as our Blueprints College Access Initiative) in our efforts to connect students to the resources they need.
• Be the change you wish to see: urge local high schools to institute more college readiness programs, or volunteer to strengthen existing initiatives.

What’s my take away?  That many people don’t understand TANF (aka welfare) or drug addiction (which even the US Government recognizes is a disease).

These Facebook groups, coupled with South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer’s comment that when the government helps the poor, it’s like people feeding stray animals that continually “breed”, have re-opened a conversation about Americans’ lack of empathy for the poor in hard economic times.

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a comprehensive examination of this phenomenon on Monday in the article “In hard times, Americans blame the poor”

Some highlights:

In an April 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center in Washington, 72 percent agreed with the statement that “poor people have become too dependent on government assistance programs.” That’s up from 69 percent in 2007.

“The economic downturn has made the middle class less generous toward others,” said Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research Associates, a Washington firm that researches attitudes toward the poor. “People are less supportive of the government helping the poor, because they feel they’re not getting enough help themselves.

. . .

Matt Wray, a sociologist at Temple University, agreed: “Hatred of the poor is fueled by the middle class’s fear of falling during hard times.”

Americans don’t understand how the poor are victimized by a lack of jobs, inefficient schools, and unsafe neighborhoods, experts say.

“People ignore the structural issues – jobs leaving, industry becoming more mechanized,” said Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson. . . “Then they point to the poor and ask, ‘Why aren’t you making it?’ “

Alabamians are facing hard times – 1 in 6 of us and 1 in 4 children live on less than the federal poverty threshold, which is just over $21,000 for a family of four.  And unemployment has hit 11 percent, the highest it has been in 26 years.

Alabama has poor as long as we have been a state.  And I for one don’t think that’s because Alabamians are lazy or drug addicts.  I think it is because we all face some major structural hurdles in achieving the prosperity I know we are capable of.

Want to learn the facts about welfare in Alabama?  Check out our fact sheet here.

And want to learn about the larger structural issues?  Wayne Flynt’s Alabama in the 20th Century is a terrific resource, and I highly recommend reading the first four chapters.

Posted by Kristina Scott

In Alabama, the Food Bank of North Alabama and the Food Bank of the Chattahoochee Valley participated in the study.

Here are some highlights from the North Alabama food bank:

• 31% of the members of households served by The Food Bank of North Alabama are children under 18 years old
• 24% of households include at least one employed adult
• Among households with children, 77% are food insecure and 37% are food insecure with very low food security

And from the Chattahoochee Valley:

• 45% of the members of households served by The Second Harvest Food Bank of the Chattahoochee Valley are children under 18 years old
• 28% of households include at least one employed adult
• Among households with children, 68% are food insecure and 32% are food insecure with very low food security

Read the full report here.

Want to know more about what you can do here in Alabama? Well, save the date for APP’s Give Us This Day our Daily Bread Hunger Workshop, which will be held on Thursday, March 18, in Montgomery.  Details will follow soon. . .

Leonard Pitts: Public silence greets poor’s powerlessness

If he’d said it of Jews, he would still be apologizing.

If he’d said it of blacks, he’d be on BET, begging absolution.

If he’d said it of women, the National Organization for Women would have his carcass turning slowly on a spit over an open flame.

But he said it of the poor, so he got away with it.

“He” is South Carolina Lt. Gov. André Bauer, running for governor on the GOP ticket. Speaking of those who receive public assistance, he recently told an audience, “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

Read the rest here.

I am interested in your reflections – please leave them in the comments.

Posted by Kristina Scott

We have met twice, and I have left both meetings impressed by my colleagues and overwhelmed by our mission.

So, what’s our plan to move forward? Rep. Todd filed our progress report today, which you can read it for yourself here.

I value your feedback as we find our way forward – so please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Posted by Kristina Scott

As the Bible says, we will always have the poor. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a moral obligation to help the poor and minimize poverty wherever and whenever we can.

That was part of the message a national poverty reduction expert gave the Alabama Commission to Reduce Poverty at its second meeting in Montgomery this past week.

‘We should refuse to accept the perception that Alabama is always going to be poor,’ said Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy based in Washington, D.C. ‘I believe the over-arching work of this commission is to not make it acceptable that Alabama is going to be at the bottom when it comes to poverty.’

Read the full text here.

Posted by: Kristina Scott

Here’s the article from today’s Montgomery Advertiser:

Poverty reduction expert challenges Alabama

A national poverty reduction expert gave the state kudos for its success in taking steps to help Alabama’s impoverished, but she also issued the new Alabama Commission to Reduce Poverty a big challenge: change how the state thinks about poverty.

“We should refuse to accept the perception that Alabama is always going to be poor,” said Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Law and Social Policy. “I believe the over-arching work of this commission is to not make it acceptable that Alabama is going to be at the bottom when it comes to poverty.”

Levin-Epstein praised Alabama for being a leader in providing health insurance to children and its successes in pre-kindergarten programs and raising the threshold for which the state taxes income. But she said the state has to dig deeper if it wants to do more than just ameliorate poverty, and it has to get more people on board to address the issue.

“Alabama’s gap between the richest people and the poorest people is the second largest in the country,” she said. “The household incomes of the top 1 percent is 13 and a half times as large as the poorest 20 percent.”

Levin-Epstein suggested that it’s time to pick a target in poverty and set a timeline for meeting a goal such as reducing the number of children in poverty. She also said it is time to invite the business community into the discussion of poverty and how to eradicate it in Alabama.

“The business community must be a part of this solution,” she said. “They need to know that if we allow poverty to continue in the nation — in this state — it has an economic consequence.”

Lukata Mjumbe, executive director of the Community Action Association of Alabama, said that he liked the idea of having a targeted approach that people could support and where they could possibly see real victories.

“We need victories,” he said. “If we set some attainable goals people could start to have those ‘aha moments’ and know that this is something that we can do.”

Levin-Epstein encouraged the commission to see itself as a watchdog for protecting the wages and jobs of the working poor, which she said, makes up the majority of poor people in Alabama.

She also said the commission should make sure Alabama is drawing down all available assistance to the state and testing state leaders when they reject policies designed to help the impoverished.

“Alabama is one of six states that has income tax on working families that are in severe poverty,” she said. “That’s just taking people who are already poor and making them poorer.”

Levin-Epstein said that it is time for the state to revisit the taxable income threshold and finally get the state sales tax on food removed.

“Nobody should assume that we’ve always got to be poor,” she said. “People have to understand that we are all in this together.”

State Rep. Patricia Todd, chairwoman of the commission, said Levin-Epstein gave the commission a lot to think about and a way to move forward. But she said it’s going to be tough. Only a handful of people turned out for the commission’s meeting, and she was the only legislator appointed to the 22-member commission that showed up and stayed for the entire meeting.

Kristina Scott, executive director of the Alabama Poverty Project, said she believes that doing a better job of telling the stories of the state’s poor and broadening the coalition of people who work on poverty issues could help change some minds at the State House.

“This is a multifaceted issue,” she said. “Poverty affects each one of us.”

Alabama is one of 20 states that has established a commission on poverty. The state Legislature passed a bill making what was then a temporary task force into a permanent commission during the 2009 legislative session. The commission will submit its first report to lawmakers next Thursday.

Posted by Kristina Scott