|
TAD congress brings hope to impoverished
By TOM JACKSON | The Tampa Tribune, 6/13/2010
SAN ANTONIO - Times such as these could convince even the most cockeyed optimist that poverty is an equal-opportunity affliction. One such optimist, Bob Loring, locally famous for soaring work on behalf of Toys for Tots, can see the disheartening evidence from his front porch.
Lately, Knollwood Acres, an unhurried patch of solitude on the east Pasco County frontier once immune to the foreclosure epidemic, has suffered unscheduled vacancies.
"People are packing up," he says. "They're leaving empty houses behind. And this isn't an unaffluent neighborhood."
America's prolonged jobless recovery - now there's an oxymoron - finally has its hooks in old, established neighborhoods, introducing those in its grasp to a dismal condition, what David West, Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce executive director and Dade City pastor, calls "situational poverty."
"What was working for people before isn't working right now," West says.
The upside: Assuming the country's powers of self-renewal are not permanently disabled, West foresees the inevitable recovery restoring most of the "situationally" poor to fiscal security: "They know what to do and how to do it."
What worked will work again.
Collaboration, cooperation
Far more worrisome to any serious student of social science is the generational poverty that afflicts America's permanent underclass. Here the errors that comprise failure are bundled and passed along ancestral lines as mercilessly as eye color and a predisposition to baldness.
It is against this apparent inexorableness that such romantics as Loring, West and dozens of others gathering for the ninth annual Congress of The American Dream have chosen to take their stand. To witness what quiet heroism looks like, join them Wednesday at the Zephyrhills City Hall. Doors open at 8:30 a.m. Good seats are still available.
Having examined in recent years the corrosive ripple effect of bullying and illiteracy, the ninth congress turns its attention to a model of poverty relief through broad-based community cooperation.
This year's agenda focuses on the role of faith-based institutions in partnership with public and private efforts to interrupt the handoff from one generation to the next. With its 23-month-old Samaritan Project, a collaboration among city hall, the chamber of commerce and local churches, Zephyrhills has an operational template from which other communities can borrow.
Introducing life skills
The idea is to identify the chronically needy and, while easing their immediate crisis - an unpaid electric bill, overdue rent, this week's groceries - steering them into programs that teach fundamental life skills: hygiene, job interview tips, cooking on a budget and so on.
Meanwhile, Samaritan Project providers attempt to maximize scarce resources by limiting duplicative efforts. Why have half a dozen food banks, says Pastor Tim Mitchell of Chancey Road Christian Church, and no linen banks, or underwear banks? This is called strategic thinking, and more of it is required.
|
|
