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by Rachel Simon

Western Fairfax Christian Ministries

(May 30, 2018) Host Catherine read sits down with Rebecca Kolowe, Executive Director of Western Fairfax Christian Ministries (WFCM). Formed in 1987, WFCM is a coalition of 12 area churches from Centerville and Chantilly that provide life-essential services to reduce hunger and the risk of homelessness amongst the most vulnerable residents of western Fairfax County. For the past 29 years, WFCM has been a critical safety net for those struggling to make ends meet.

WFCM hosts the largest client choice food pantry in the community.   This means that residents can come and “shop” at the pantry for items that meet their needs. For example, instead of clients being given a bag of food when they show up, they can actually browse the pantry to find what would best meet the needs for their family. This helps reduce waste, and can accommodate for food allergies. Additionally, during the holidays the organization supports a holiday food program to ensure that everyone enjoys food during the Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have also put together a wonderful turn-key “do it yourself kit” for food drives, so individual organizations like schools, scouts or swim clubs could put together a food drive to help support the pantry. This is especially helpful for the summer months, when children are not in school and families need extra support to help cover meals.

Emergency financial assistance is another key aspect of the WFCM program.   If a family finds themselves unable to meet a utility bill or make a mortgage payment, there are resources that can be used to help them meet their obligations. The organization also runs the “Pathways to Success” program, where they work individually with 12-15 families at a time to provide a class in financial counseling, along with individual meetings, to help clients learn the skills they need to become financially independent. Upon graduation from the program, each family receives a $5,000 scholarship to be used to pay off debts and/or be put into a savings account. This helps to put families on a path to a brighter future. The goal is to equip each family with the skills needed to sustain their success.

Rebecca Kolowe WFCMIn the second segment of the show, Kolowe speaks about how poverty in the western part of Fairfax County is often hidden, and many people quietly struggle to put enough food on the table and pay their bills on time. In the further out suburbs, there are not many low-income housing projects or the type of impoverished neighborhoods that are seen in the inner city. Often times, there are many families living together under one roof. They face challenges with transportation, with fewer direct bus routes and options for people who rely on public transportation. Kolowe notes that it can be a real struggle for a family who has no car to travel to their facility. It might take all afternoon for a client to reach them, because the bus route might take them from Centerville first to Vienna, where they would have to switch buses to get a connection to go to Chantilly. In recent years, Kolowe has been an advocate for updating the transportation routes in order to better serve their clients, a role she was not aware she was going to have to play as Executive Director of WFCM. Her point is that all of these things are interconnected, and it is important to advocate all across the spectrum to help lift the burden for their clients, who often do not have a voice of their own in the public policy arena.

This past spring WFCM had the joy of welcoming an intern to their organization, and with the extra help and energy they were able to launch two new programs for their clients. In partnership with Computer Core, they established a resume-writing seminar, which was well attended and received positive feedback. They are also partnering with the Centerville Presbyterian Church to support the community garden program called “Seeds of Hope”. Pantry clients are encouraged to use the plots at the church to grow their own food, which they can then take home. In conjunction with the community garden program, WFCM encourages community members to donate their excess vegetables from their own gardens to the pantry, or to simply “add a row” of extra vegetables that they could then donate. Looking towards the horizon, Kolowe hopes to bring more new and creative programs to life that will help lift up her clients, as WFCM continues to grow and evolve.

Filed Under: Blogging, Poverty, TV Shows, Virginia, Your Need to Know Tagged With: Centerville Presbyterian Church, Computer CORE, food drive, Food Pantry, Pathways to Success, Poverty, Seeds of Hope Community Garden, Western Fairfax Christian Ministries, WFCM

by Rachel Simon

Five Talents – Dale Stanton-Hoyle

(Jan 22, 2018) Catherine Read interviews Dale Stanton-Hoyle, Executive Director of Five Talents. Five Talents is a micro-enterprise development organization (MED) aimed at eradicating extreme global poverty by restoring human dignity and creating strong, sustainable communities. Their mission is to transform lives through economic empowerment.

The Anglican and Episcopal Churches came together 20 years ago to found the organization, with the goal of helping to reduce poverty in the poorest places on Earth. Micro-enterprise development organizations do not give out loans to people in these countries, however they do train facilitators. A facilitator helps to form a group of 20 interested citizens who decide that they want to come together to help strengthen their community. They form their own constitution, determine interest rates and lending criteria, and save as much as they can over a set period of time.   Once they pool their resources, the group invites community members in to make a business “pitch”, then together they determine who will receive loans and how much money will be lent.

These loans are very small, but can have an immediate and extraordinary impact. A larger loan might be given for the purchase of an animal, like a cow, where the owner could sell the milk for profit. On a much smaller scale, the loan could be for something as simple as a tea service, so a woman could make and sell tea at the market in her town. Stanton-Hoyle shares that both of these examples give the individual the opportunity for financial independence and helps lift them out of dependence and poverty. Many times, the facilitators will help others in their community think about how they can leverage local resources and tap into their individual talents – weather it be cooking, driving, sewing, etc. The unique nature of Five Talents is that they train local citizens who understand the culture and the communities in which they live. This helps them to cultivate talent and empower community members.

Women receive approximately 90% of the loans that are given by lending groups working under the Five Talents umbrella. Many women in the poorest countries are unemployed, and lack the confidence and schooling needed to start their own business. Having mentors to help understand how to both run and grow a business is instrumental in their success. Many women tend to re-invest money back in their families and their communities, making them ideal recipients of micro-loans. The loans also help lift up families, and provide strong role models for young girls.

The Five Talents model also helps to build resiliency in impoverished communities. Stanton-Hoyle recounted a story about a lending group that worked in South Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world. As civil war erupted, and citizens were displaced to refugee camps, the graduates of the Five Talents program took their lending circle skills with them.   These mentors helped refugees understand their assets and talents, which enabled them to organize and start small enterprises for basic services like babysitting, tailoring, shoe repair, etc. The education that the mentors received from Five Talents is something that they took with them, and in turn enabled them to improve their own lives and the lives of those in their communities.

Filed Under: Inside Scoop, TV Shows Tagged With: Dale Stanton-Hoyle, Five Talents, global poverty, mentors, micro loans, Micro-Enterprise Development, Poverty

by Catherine Read

Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

Becoming Ms. Burton(Sept 2017) This book is extraordinary – as is the woman who wrote it. One of the great strengths of the book is how it weaves staggering facts and statistics about mass incarceration into Susan Burton’s deeply personal story. Each chapter begins with facts about different aspects of our criminal justice system, and the sprawling prison-industrial-complex, that are impacting generations of American families.

Sixty-five million Americans with a criminal record face a total of 45,000 collateral consequences that restrict everything from employment, professional licensing, child custody rights, housing, student aid, voting and even the ability to visit an incarcerated loved one. Many of these restrictions are permanent, forever preventing those who’ve already served their time from reaching their potential in the workforce, as parents, and as productive citizens.

“The result is that these collateral consequences become a life sentence harsher than whatever sentence a court actually imposed upon conviction.” American Bar Association president William C. Hubbard

While factual information like that sets up the framework for each chapter of this book, it is Susan’s narrative that breathes life into what this means for the people who are caught up in this revolving door of poverty, trauma and incarceration.

Knowing that 90% of incarcerated women have suffered some form of sexual abuse or physical violence isn’t the same as hearing what that means when it is described from the point of view of a 3 year old, a ten year and a 14 year old rape victim now a mother. This is how Susan Burton’s life began. A teenaged prostitute, she was befriended by a bail bondsman name George who would be with her for 30 years – encouraging her to be the person he knew she could be. He was there from the lowest points of her life – working the streets, drug addiction, losing her son to a police van hitting him in the streets, forgery and theft to feed her drug habit – to the point at which she decided to get sober, get clean and start over. When she was named a Top Ten CNN Hero in 2010, she called him out by name at the awards event.

In 2012, she was named Encore’s Purpose Prize winner. In 2014, she received the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award, and in 2015 the Los Angeles Times named her one of the nation’s 18 New Civil Rights Leaders.

Susan’s journey is remarkable for her ability to re-invent her life as an “ex-con” at the age of 46. It was a series of happenstance and circumstance that created opportunities for her to finally divert into a drug rehab program instead of back to prison. When she finally found the program CLARE in Santa Monica that got her into AA’s 12 Step Program, she was on her way to a new life.

There were many remarkable people that helped her along the journey to what would become “A New Way of Life,” a re-entry program for formerly incarcerated women in the Watts area of Los Angeles. This part of the book resonates with me because of my work with a re-entry program for women here in Alexandria, Virginia, called Friends of Guest House. Susan forged ahead with her vision of providing other women the help they needed to start their lives over after stepping off the prison bus. She did it herself, and she was determined to do it for others.

The impact of our broken criminal justice system on generations of families is a cycle that seems to have no end. The poverty, the trauma, the lack of educational and economic opportunities, is just compounded when millions of people are saddled with a lifetime of restrictions because of a criminal record. The impact on our country cannot be overstated – it’s tearing at the fabric of our culture and our economy. Something must be done and it will only be done when more people are motivated by the injustice of our criminal justice system.

I would highly recommend this book to every reader, and it would be a particularly excellent book club choice. These are issues more people need to be talking about. Individually, we can be the voice advocating for change, and together we can move the needle on taking back our country from a broken system of justice that feeds mass incarceration and dooms future generations.

Filed Under: Good Books, Political, Women Tagged With: A New Way of Life, Addiction, Friends of Guest House, Incarcerated Women, Mass Incarceration, Poverty, Prison, Re-entry, Susan Burton, Trauma

by Catherine Read

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

Short Tragic Life of Robert PeaceSo I’m not black, I did not grow up in inner city poverty, my father was not incarcerated for murder and I did not attend Yale. That is Rob Peace’s world in East Orange, NJ. I cannot know that world except through the story of his life told by his Yale roommate of 4 years, author Jeff Hobbs.

I loved this book. I was drawn into Rob/Shawn’s story and wanted so much for him to realize the mythological “American Dream” that says it’s about sacrifice, hard work and a good education. But the title told me it would not be a happy ending. I’m glad the author tells us that up front. It allows us to suspend our judgments of his choices and just wait for events to unfold. By the end of the book, I cared so much about this smart, dedicated, hardworking young man who wanted so much to do right by his family and his friends. He got dealt a set of cards the day he was born. Some things he could control and some things he couldn’t – that is the story of every human life.

He made bad decisions and bad choices. We all have a personal responsibility to live with the choices we make. But it needs to be put into the context of the worlds he lived in. And there were two worlds he was straddling: the dangerous poor neighborhoods of East Orange where he grew up, where his mother lived and where he returned after Yale. Then there was his four years at Yale where he excelled academically and received a degree in molecular biophysics and bio chemistry, the tuition funded entirely by a benefactor. He also sold marijuana to fund his additional expenses at Yale and to stockpile money he would use to help support his mother Jackie and launch his future in Rio. I’m not going to delve into the sad history of marijuana in this country and how it has ruined lives for no discernible reason that makes any sense. It’s just one of the factors that played out in this tragedy.Read More

Filed Under: Blogging, Good Books Tagged With: East Orange, Inner City Crime, Jeff Hobbs, Mass Incarceration, Poverty, Racial Justice, Robert Peace, Yale

Catherine S. Read
I believe in the power of community and the ability of one person to make a difference.

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