A New Twist To Solving An Old Problem
By TOM JACKSON
The Tampa Tribune
Published: March 20, 2008
ZEPHYRHILLS - The words that sent heads nodding and mental gears dizzily spinning Wednesday may have been uttered by Jim Pittman, financial advisor and civilian evangelist, but they originated with Bob Loring, the Toys for Tots guy ever keen on putting himself out of the Father Christmas business.
To his credit, Loring is the rare visionary unencumbered by pride of ownership. "I'm just happy to be in the room," he says.
Possibly, he also is delighted that, at last, others have laid shoulders to his Sisyphean cause in the formation of the Samaritan Project, a blend of secular, religious and governmental volunteers eager to meet poverty wherever it lives in Zephyrhills.
For six years, closely following his dismaying epiphany - yuletide after yuletide, the same parents kept signing up for free toys - Loring, accompanied by a band of volunteer colleagues, has championed an idea as old as barn-raising and as novel as YouTube.
Take something old - community self-help - and restore it to fashionability through expansive applications of marketing, networking and instantaneous information-sharing. Compare notes, evaluate strengths, identify resources, push public awareness, recruit business owners, cultivate religious and civic groups, streamline access, eliminate redundancies and patch safety-net holes.
Rinse. Repeat.
No Problems, Only Opportunities
These concepts address two stubborn truths about 43 years of Great Society-style top-down poverty fighting: Too often, well-intended Washington policies have subsidized alarming behaviors - dissolution of families, skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births, staggering school dropout rates. Such revelations, combined with shifting priorities, suggest funding for poverty programs at past levels is unsustainable.
Others may see disaster. Speaking Wednesday, Pittman, channeling Loring, saw opportunity. Plainly, left untreated - or treated ineffectively - poverty corrodes from the inside out, ruining in order individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities, cities and beyond.
Says Pittman, "Change a life and you change a community."
Keep Hurdle In Mind
Recruiting for the Samaritan Project has barely begun, but already it has attracted active interest from city officials, business owners and a variety of area pastors. Each cites encounters with residents expressing emergency needs and not knowing exactly where to turn.
Key to the effort: A password-protected database where partner services would be described, from keeping the electricity on to getting a secure place to sleep overnight. A single telephone number opens the door.
The rub? Securing help means allowing your identity to be added to the "Pathway" database maintained by Coalition for the Homeless of Pasco County.
Nothing hobbles outreach efforts more than a prevailing perception of systematic fraud, which Pathway's cross-checking function is designed to prevent.
Still, we live in prickly times. Samaritan partners must prepare, now, for the fallout when some sad soul who hoped simply to keep the water on balks at surrendering his identity, then takes his case for invasion of privacy to the newspapers.
It shouldn't happen. It almost certainly will.
