Mattawan Food Bank: A Partnership Between Churches, Business, and Individuals

Pat Ainsworth is diabetic and has trouble affording the kind of food she needs to stay healthy.

“Food prices are so high. How can you afford to eat?” she asked. “That sugar-free stuff is expensive. I don’t know how the government expects you to live.”

Lucky for Ainsworth, the Mattawan Community Food Bank gives away a ton of food each month — literally.

Inside a pole barn across from Mattawan Community Church, what used to be a walk-in pantry has grown to the size of a small grocery store.

On the third Saturday of each month, three Mattawan churches, Access First Credit Union and several local businesses come together to provide indigent Mattawan area families with much-needed food and supplies.

www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/02/mattawan_comes_together_at_its.html

More on Homelessness Study in Berrien County

They may not be the stereotypical scruffy, bearded men, holding signs on a street corner, but they are struggling to find shelter just the same.

This year the Homeless Resource Network, in conjunction with Emergency Shelter Services in Benton Harbor, counted 594 homeless people in Berrien County — the highest number since the network began the count several years ago.

For this study, homelessness was broadened to include not just those living on the street but also people in unsafe or temporary housing.

There were 21 homeless adults counted in the Niles and Buchanan area, while Brandywine High School and Niles High School has 35 and 23 homeless students respectively.

The count took place Jan. 26 and was done throughout the county. The statistics were then forwarded to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to be used to determine funding for area agencies.

The Emergency Shelter’s executive director, Alysia Babcock, said the total number of homeless people is significantly up from 2008 when they counted 257 and 2009 and 2010 when there were fewer than 100 counted.

www.nilesstar.com/2011/02/17/the-changing-face-of-homelessness/

Benton Harbor Soup Kitchen Loses Federal Grant

The Benton Harbor Soup Kitchen, always strapped for cash, won't get federal grant money through the city's grant program this year, the soup kitchen's director says.

The thousands of dollars slated for the soup kitchen will instead go to city recreation programs.

The city is completely within its right to take grant money promised to one program and direct it to another, said Merry Stover, executive director for the nonprofit The Soup Kitchen Inc.

But in the nonprofit world, that's just not how things are done, Stover said. As an 18-year veteran of nonprofit management, Stover said she has never seen anything like it.

heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/02/16/local_news/3502601.txt


NOTE: For full disclosure, I serve as Board Treasurer on the Benton Harbor Soup Kitchen Board.

Annual Homeless Count in Berrien County More Than Doubles, Most Are Children

The Homeless Resource Network, led by a Benton Harbor-based agency for homeless people, counted more homeless people in Berrien County this year than it has since it began doing the count in 2007 - and that's a good and bad thing.

The Emergency Shelter Services agency counted 594 homeless people. For the count, homelessness is broadly defined to include the absolutely homeless or people living in unsafe or temporary housing.

The annual count day was Jan. 26, a Wednesday. It was done during daylight hours.

The total is dramatically up from the 257 in 2008 and from fewer than 100 in 2009 and 2010, said the agency's executive director, Alysia Babcock. The agency operates a shelter for women and children in Benton Harbor and also offers outreach and housing voucher programs.

The 594 is made up of 158 homeless men, 73 homeless women and 363 children of school age.

The largest concentration of homeless men was in Benton Harbor. The largest concentration of homeless women was in Coloma and Watervliet.

For homeless children, the highest concentrations were in Buchanan Community Schools, with 60; New Buffalo Area Schools, 43; and Eau Claire Public Schools, 38.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/02/08/local_news/3420830.txt

Taxes Too High? Associated Press Says: Federal taxes Lowest Since 1950

Taxes too high?

Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way.

And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike.

Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The poor economy is largely to blame, with corporate profits down and unemployment up. But so is a tax code that grows each year with new deductions, credits and exemptions. The result is that families making as much as $50,000 can avoid paying federal income taxes, if they have at least two dependent children. Low-income families can actually make a profit from the income tax, and the wealthy can significantly cut their payments...

custom.yahoo.com/taxes/article-112061-0c8961e7-144f-45ba-920f-8df98fd4d028-by-one-measure-federal-taxes-lowest-since-1950

Kids Count: More Michigan Children In or Near Poverty

First the bad news: An annual report released today says more children in Michigan live in or near poverty at a time when many support services for kids face budget cuts.

In addition, the state saw a 25 percent jump in confirmed victims of abuse and neglect between 2000 and 2009 - most due to neglect made worse by poverty.

The Kids Count in Michigan Project found that about one in every five children in Michigan live in poverty. The rate is nearly one out of every two black kids, and more than one out of three Hispanic children.

www.mlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/02/report_child_poverty_neglect_r.html

New Film Tells the History of West Michigan African Americans' Relocation from the Deep South

Distinguished and Emmy-Award winning actress, Cicely Tyson, narrates a new West Michigan produced documentary which tells of the history of African American families who moved from the deep South to West Michigan. From the Herald Palladium:

Brothers Jim and Rod Schaub grew up in Muskegon with no knowledge of the role African Americans played in the growth of the industrial Michigan town.

"We grew up here, went to school here, but I never heard about our own rich history," Rod Schaub says by telephone from his home in Muskegon, "particularly when it came to the African American community."

After learning that a local physician, Dr. James Jackson, who is also the board chairman at the Muskegon County Museum of African American History, had been tape recording the stories of his elderly black patients, the Schaubs began to do some research of their own.

What they discovered is documented in their film, "Up From the Bottoms: The Search for the American Dream," which will be shown Friday at the Box Factory for the Arts (1101 Broad Street in St. Joseph, Friday night at 7:30 p.m.)

The 58-minute documentary centers on Muskegon's role in the massive migration of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North as farming jobs in cotton and other crops began to disappear. When they journeyed north to find work in the booming manufacturing industry, their lives changed - and so did the communities to which they migrated.

Narrated by Emmy Award-winning actress Cicely Tyson, "Up From the Bottoms" uses interviews from 15 Muskegon residents, old photographs and reenactments to explore the differences in culture between North and South, the racial tensions in Muskegon at the time and the individual stories of those who helped shape the community.

"When you're making a documentary you just shoot and shoot and shoot and try to make a story out of it," says Jim Schaub, who directed the film. "Our goal was to let people tell their story. So we asked a lot of open-ended questions and let them be open and honest. By letting people say what they wanted, we got a lot more emotional stories and some of the tiny details that I think make this film."

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/02/03/features/3391537.txt

The Luxury of Literacy

Can you read the following sentence? ||

If you’re like me, you can’t. It looks like a string of random symbols and spaces. (It is just a string of random symbols and spaces.) But pretend you’ve just gone in for a job interview and this is at the top of a form that you are required to complete. You ask the receptionist what language it is and she says it’s English. Quite a challenge! You no longer know how to read.

In this situation, however smart you are, whatever level of education you have, however highly respected in your field, you become as ignorant as a young child. This is what it’s like for many of the 44 million Americans, including 31,000 Kalamazoo County residents who cannot read well enough to complete an application. (Statistics are provided by the Kalamazoo Literacy Council and obtained from the National Institute for Literacy and the National Adult Literacy Survey.)

This is similar to how Laubach method literacy tutor training begins. Tutors become ‘ignorant’ students again and learn what it’s like to be taking those very first steps toward reading and writing with ease.

Since I began working at the Poverty Reduction Initiative in Kalamazoo County in late 2010, I have been busy learning many new languages — the language of the non-profit community, the language of my workplace, the language of our online database; and relearning ones I already knew – HTML, marketing, press release writing, film-making. I also recently completed literacy tutor training to learn how to help others learn to read and write in (American) English.

For several weeks, with all of this learning, I have not had time to write for this blog or my own personal projects, except for short bursts on twitter. Writing for pleasure is a luxury. So is reading for fun. It takes time to write and time to edit. I’m a fast thinker and slow writer. That means I make a lot of revisions. Most of us who work full time don’t have much time during the day to read or write except as required by our jobs. In the evenings we’re busy with our lives, our families, our friends, away from our computers (but not our phones!). I’m lucky that writing is part of my job description. I made the choice to be in a profession where it is. You’re fortunate to have the time, resources, and ability to read this today.

Without essential reading and writing skills, you must rely on spoken communications to make your way in the world. You must take at their word those people who interpret the strange written symbology for you, whether or not they understand what they have read. When you can read and write for yourself, you can gain knowledge from everywhere, make your own interpretation, develop your own understanding. It’s empowering.

As a society we need to ensure our children grow up as literate as possible, in as many languages as possible — including mathematics, finances, foreign languages, and computer code — to be able to read, write, and reason for themselves. Childhood education needs your support.

(On February 8 the Kids Count in Michigan 2010 Data Book is being released, which will highlight how our community supports — and can better support — kids’ academic success. PRI will be posting information on our website and social media networks.)

It’s also never too late to learn to read. If you’d like to empower someone with the gift of literacy, you can find a literacy tutor training program through America's Literacy Directory.

Michigan Catholic Conference Calls for Maintaining the Michigan Earned Income Credit for Working Poor

With the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit received by thousands of lower-income families apparently on chopping block, groups are launching an effort to save it.

Gov. Rick Snyder today unveils his “Citizens Guide to Michigan’s Financial Health,” and its release will serve as a launching pad for months of negotiations over how to close a $1.8 billion budget deficit and finance on top of that a business tax cut in the range of $1.5 billion.

Michigan’s EITC, approved in the Granholm administration with bipartisan support, provides a refundable credit equal to 20 percent of the federal credit EITC qualifying families receive. But it’s also expensive, costing some $354 million in fiscal 2011.

House Republicans say they want to repeal the credit that the Michigan League for Human Services say benefits 700,000 working parents and their children and keeps 25,000 families out of poverty.

Paul Long, president and CEO of the Michigan Catholic Conference said saving the credit is one of the group’s top legislative priorities.

“The expense of the Michigan EITC is mitigated by the amount that is spent in the local economy by those who receive the credit; therefore, the EITC has a dual purpose: to act as a barrier to poverty and an incentive to work, and as an economic boost for local communities,” said Long.

“At a time when Michigan’s unemployment rate continues to hover above 11 percent, we are urging those who craft state policy to seriously evaluate how any reform of state government will impact the elderly and frail, the poor and disadvantaged,” he added.

www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/01/michigan_catholic_group_vows_t.html

Now, let's hope some Baptists, Christian Reformed, Episcopals, Jews, Lutherans, Methodists, Muslims, and all other manner of denominations get on board.

Tougher Bankruptcy Laws: Have They Hurt More than Helped?

When tougher bankruptcy laws took effect more than five years ago, Congress wanted to raise the bar against perceived abuse of the system by ne’er-do-well debtors.

But since then?

Lawyers’ fees have more than doubled, online “credit counseling” is the norm, and the pace of personal bankruptcies is growing, nearing 2004 pre-reform levels.

“The impact was not much — other than to make it more costly and make more hoops to jump through for anyone filing bankruptcy,” local attorney David Andersen said.

... Many families have been wedged between job loss and mortgage.

“I was let go while my husband was still in the hospital with a brain aneurysm,” said Lynnette Tilton, who now works as a legal assistant in attorney David Andersen’s law office. “It was devastating.”

Before disaster struck, life was smooth-sailing, Tilton said.

“We had everything — good-paying jobs, 800-plus credit scores, a mortgage,” she said. “We were able to live comfortably.”

About four years ago, after they were laid off, the Tiltons sought help to save their Southeast Grand Rapids ranch home.

“The mortgage company granted us a couple of forbearance agreements, but they wouldn’t restate our mortgage,” Tilton said.

She and her husband lost the house, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy and took a series of part-time jobs, waiting for the local economy to recover. Today, they both work full time and are renting a home they love.

www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2011/01/5-year-old_federal_bankruptcy.html