February Blog Questions / Poverty
What kinds of concrete steps are being taken by your community to address poverty?
Through our Horizons work we’ve realized that poverty is not just about money. It involves issues like quality of life, finding employment that maximizes potential , our school system and a myriad of other things.
Two of our Horizons projects address those issues: the housing project and our Parents-Teachers Together (PTT) group. We are looking into building three new homes in a new subdivision in town. One outcome of the housing effort is it may provide larger homes for young, growing families … the demographic so important to a communitiy’s longevity.
Our PTT group worked with our school district to start a breakfast program for students. Good nutrition is crucial for learning. Getting this program launched in a short period of time was a quick success for our Horizons group.
How did your community make choices about the actions most likely to have an impact on poverty?
We looked at both short- and long-term projects. One of our projects that’s yet to be launched is a Round-Up Program, which would enable people to donate the change from purchases at local retailers (rounding up to the nearest dollar) to a special Horizons fund. It’s still undecided what the money would be used for, but some possibilities are to fund the local food pantry or to provide heating assistance to the elderly.
How are low income involved?
We had an excellent cross section of people involved in both our Study Circles and Leadership Plenty training … both young and old were represented from a wide range of income levels. I have to give credit to the format of the Horizons training for making everyone feel very comfortable with the meetings we attended. It was a very welcoming environment and the format of the meetings made people feel very at ease with contributing their ideas.
Horizons gets a lot of talk around town. I’m always appreciative of the wide range of citizens who are aware of our projects and don’t hesitate to share their opinions on what’s going on.
I’d welcome your comments on this topic …
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
As part of the cabin commity I was going to let every one know we started the round up fund. There a several containers around town and you can round up your purchase or just donate to it and it is listed as the cabin fund. I will keep every one informed as we go. Thanks Todd
March 4th, 2008 at 7:03 am
One Round-up idea we suggested in Tyndall was to have residents voluntarily round up the utility bill. There is software that would need to be installed for paperwork purposes. Our city office is checking into that, but has not jumped on it yet as there is some up- front costs attached. One other community has started it, and 30 % of their community is on it.
The “cabin fund” cans sounds like a good idea, but sometimes may get confused with other donation cans on the counter-top! Good luck though!