Live United, By Ann Austin

Leaders Partnering to End Poverty officially ended this past spring — it was a wonderful 10 months of training, education and interaction with our own community members under the leadership of the Blandin Foundation.

They did a follow-up visit this week to determine how things are going with our community’s transition to a local effort we call Lift One, Lift All: Freeborn County Beyond Poverty. Lift One, Lift All is governed by a board and has several different focus groups working on issues like transitional housing, mental health support groups and the local Community Resource Center.

The Blandin facilitators who visited (Mary Jo and Sara) were very impressed with what our community has accomplished — and so are we! But there is more work to be done.

We did several activities and broke out into discussion groups to determine our ability to create stronger leadership, greater awareness of the various forms of poverty, as well as engaging people in having a greater voice.

I was reading a paper titled “What Do the Poor Need? Try Asking Them” by David L. Kirp. He says that in order to improve neighborhoods and our community, “the people who live there must have a hand in deciding their own fate. That approach works well in Houston, where one program has enabled hundreds of thousands of poor residents … to move up the ladder of economic and educational opportunity each year.”

Engaging people in having a voice has been the greatest challenge and will continue to be something we focus on through the many efforts Lift One, Lift All members are involved in.

We were reminded of the eight critical resources needed to help move people out of poverty: Financial, emotional resilience, problem-solving skills, spiritual, physical, support systems, relationships/role models and knowing how to get things done.

There are so many variables and so many different stories. Rather than place people in boxes and expect them to be able to navigate the challenges, we need to come together to take a look at how we can create better systems of response in our community. As Kirp wrote, “The people are the asset, the source of potential solutions, not the problem.”

Lift One, Lift All is an excellent opportunity for people in our community to get more involved in the deeper issues people are struggling with. If you’re interested in getting involved, please feel free to contact the Lift One, Lift All board chairwoman, Gloria Olson, at our local Workforce Development Inc. site or call our United Way office at 373-8670.

 

Ann Austin is the executive director of the United Way of Freeborn County.