Thursday, November 13, 2008
Effective Strategies to Reduce Poverty
What strategies should be implemented to ensure access to jobs that pay a living wage, reliable healthcare, educational opportunities, and affordable housing for the citizens of our communities?
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2 comments:
Interesting meeting. If we want to do something about poverty as a region, I think we can learn alot from Kalamazoo's efforts in the last decades. Ever since the Chamber pledged to take a leadership position against poverty in 1999 and racial inequities in 2004 and southwest michigan first has lead local economic development efforts and pri took over anti-poverty efforts, what has empirically occured (as the data in Tim Ready's presentation on the website shows) is that poverty and inequality have increased such that Kalamazoo has become one of the poorest communities of its size in the entire nation. Perhaps common sense business solutions, working closely with "the business community", and concentrating on poverty stimulations and community education are not the answer to acually resolve poverty? Perhaps community organizing to build large scale collective mobilizations fighting for systemic changes on all sorts of levels (locally, regionally, within non-profits, within state government, and nationally) are what is needed if we really want to do something about poverty rather than just be another ineffective work group. To do that, we probably need to do some organizing to get some people who are not paid to attend the meeting to be part of the effort and attend the February meeting. As one woman mentioned, we need religious communities involved. But, we also need working and middle class people (not "consumers") also intricately involved. Any ideas on how to do that? Do we welcome the input from people who might be critical of "common sense" anti-poverty efforts? Will we do the community organizing needed to build that effort? Do we have any ideas on how to actually do that?
I think a single project should be designed, targeting a sector from within our local economy (education, health care, energy, transportation, etc). This project should be designed primarily by the beneficiaries (those with incomes below the poverty line, the jobless, various types of people, etc.) We should begin to have events and festivals with federal, state, local, and private dollars that raise awareness about this project to target a sector of the local economy. This could go on for about six months. At least two events per month. At these events (those attending: churches, associations, faculty, the PUBLIC, etc.) we could broker ways to discuss and debate costs and benefits of targeting particular sectors. We could commit to a date when the sector will be chosen (within which a project will be designed). We could have the remainder of events (with live music, food, surveys, media, etc.) to decide how to choose a project template. In other words, we would then need to design a project with the beneficiaries doing as much designing as anyone else. In the end, after six months of events and various types of meetings, we will have a participatory project design to then send out to get additional funding. We will have organized, and designed as a community, a project meant to create jobs within a sector of our local economy. Whether it is an organization to repair homes, a business to make wind turbine blades, a new specialty school educating youth on some range of issues, it will have been designed by a significant portion of the community at the above mentioned cultural events, and in subsequent meetings. Then we would need to have a lottery, or xyz method to decide who will be eligible for the new jobs, how they will be hired, and we will have to decide if we want the business owned by the people or by a small group of stockholders, etc. What if we can't get much funding? Fine, the project will be small. But we will be in a position to demonstrate our experience and will be poised to repeat the process given that the project was organized well, and was monitored and evaluated professionally. Given the wealth of professional monitoring and evaluation specialists at WMU alone we should be alright on that score. The idea here is that M&E JOBS would be created so the project would be sustainable and accountable. As for the organizers, we have plenty to work with. Will people want to design their own project? If they are choosing the sector, and are choosing the type of project at well funded cultural events in their neighborhoods, as democratically as possible, I say yes. The question of who designs the details of the project is a tough one. The main point here is that this participatory project design method to organizing is not as politically charged as other forms of organizing, and would be well timed with the change in National leadership and promise of funding for infrastructure projects. Here, funders would see the institutionalized monitoring and evaluation for sustainability and accountability, and the generalizable participatory project design approach to infrastructure improvement instead of the status quo route of few contractors getting jobs and beneficiaries being passive recipients. These are my biases.
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