Not the Stereotype

This weekend, I had an interesting Facebook interchange with a friend from high school about the availability of jobs and what constitutes a living wage. What I found distressing about our conversation was not our disparate points of view, but rather the persistence of negative stereotypes of low-income families across the political spectrum.

Every time I think we’ve moved beyond the presumptions that the majority of low-income adults mis-spend money on lavish luxury goods, that presumption rears its head. I don’t know which families my friend has been encountering, but when I look at the Benevolent recipients and their families, I see people who are striving to reach new goals, working hard to make ends meet, and trying hard to hold on to the things that matter.

Here at Benevolent, we look at things person-by-person; moving past stereotypes to learn the stories behind the people. Al was homeless and unemployed. He’s now working as a waiter. Al’s not aspiring to luxury purchases, simply to self-sufficiency.

Christina was a low-wage worker when she worked in after-school programs. Now she’s employed as a nurse - a profession that promises a better future for her and her family. Christina's family scrimped and saved to support her as she completed nursing school and those sacrifices paid off.

Behind all the statistics, there are faces, stories, families. Some are success stories like Al and Christina and others continue to struggle to gain and maintain their footing. At Benevolent, our mission to is to help low-income adults over their hurdles along the way towards their goals. We’d also like to be a part of the growing chorus of voices countering negative stereotypes with the real stories of real people who inspire us.

Al’s not sporting $200 gym shoes and Christina’s kids won’t be heading off to school with iPhones this school year. These families are working hard, reaching for their goals, and overcoming challenges many of us can’t imagine.

So, this Labor Day, I want to honor Al, Christina, Bridgett, and all the success stories on the Benevolent site. Thank you for sharing your journeys with us and for providing us all with proof positive that those negative presumptions about low-income families are the exception, not the rule.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo

  Benevolent

  www.benevolent.net

Bugged

Ever wonder why we post needs for furniture on the Benevolent site? If you’re anything like me, when you moved into your first apartment, you made several trips to local thrift stores to find things like upholstered chairs, recliners, padded kitchen chairs, and couches. It might not have looked like a million dollars, but it served the purpose and it made our apartments feel like home.

Maria “has been sharing a two-bedroom mobile house with her two sisters, their five children, her stepfather and her mother,” says Sizzy West, Maria’s Home Visitor.  Now this young mom has succeeded in moving herself and her daughter into their own apartment and seeks our help in getting the funds she needs to buy furniture for her first-ever living room.  We might wonder why she needs to buy it new, rather than at a thrift store.

There is one simple answer: the reality of bed bugs. No, Maria does NOT have bed bugs, but they are the reason she can’t buy upholstered furniture from a thrift store.

Chicago has been one of the nation’s top cities in bed bug infestation in the last few years – not an honor we relish. Whenever we hear news stories or read articles about how to protect ourselves from bed bugs, they inevitably contain a sentence like this one from Dateline on NBC:

“Do not buy used furniture (especially bedding items or upholstered items), or at least do not bring them into your home until you, or a competent expert, have inspected them carefully for any signs of bed bugs.”

For a struggling earner, this turns the furnishing of a new apartment into a significant expense. It’s no longer a safe option for someone in a situation like Maria’s to purchase a couch from the local thrift store or to accept a contributed or hand-me-down mattress or padded chair.

Nonprofits that might once have accepted donations of furniture to help their newly-housed clients settle in have entirely stopped accepting these contributions. One news story reported: “Most agencies no longer accept donated beds or mattresses to resell or provide to clients in need.” So for Maria new furniture is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.

It would be easy for us to misunderstand someone who, like Maria, asks for help with furniture, and to quietly doubt the validity of her need without speaking up and questioning it. Things have really changed since I bought those tattered green armchairs and that well-worn brown couch back in the 1990s.

This is yet another example of the ways in which the small things can make a big difference.

- megan kashner

  founder & ceo

  Benevolent

  www.benevolent.net

Undermining Economic Segregation

A study of African- American and Caucasian households in the U.S. found that residential segregation between these two groups has decreased over the past decades. At the same time, according to a study released this summer by the Pew Research Center, segregation by income level is on the rise in the U.S.

The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income

by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor

So while we seem to be breaking through racial barriers, we’re becoming more and more economically isolated, and this has significant implications for those who are striving to rise out of low-income circumstances.

If we continued this trend towards economic isolation, we would expect to see some increasingly significant social challenges:

1)    Because neighbors help neighbors, we could see a decrease in capacity to access help in over-burdened areas.

2)    Because diversity begets empathy, we might well see an increased divide between those with and without resources, particularly among young people who grow up in increasingly economically homogenous communities.

3)    Families who experience a drastic shift in income (up or down) could experience heightened isolation and alienation from their communities.

4)    Low-income youth may increasingly lack access to and familiarity with the educational and professional norms, opportunities and possibilities prevalent in upper-income communities.

5)    Sentiments of xenophobia and class hatred might find a more fertile breeding ground on both sides of the fence.

Dire, eh? Yes, but that’s not the whole story. It’s true that we’re living more segregatedly than in previous decades, but we’re also living more connected. Some of the biggest changes to residential segregation along income lines have come in the Southwestern U.S. which posted an over 60% increase in income segregation between 1980 and 2010. Houston posted the biggest change.

In Houston, though, just this week, a woman from Chicago picketed and protested on behalf of striking Houston Janitors. She said:

"I know the fear that so many have to live with, the fear that you could lose your job for speaking up. Janitors in Houston can't risk arrest without risking their jobs too. I can, so I will."

Across the internet -- across states -- the Chicago woman connected with her community, reached out, stepped up and supported people she felt could use her help. This doesn’t change residential economic segregation, of course, but it does speak to the fact that community is no longer constrained by where we live.

Using technology and human connection, we’re creating a different kind of neighborhood, beyond geographic limits. We can build community and empathy, and extend help to neighbors across boundaries that were once impassable. Benevolent is one tool for this, driving from Chicago to Houston to support those you can relate to is another.

If we took each challenge I listed above one by one, and considered them through the lens of our new-fangled communities and networks using media, technology, and human connection, the outlook might look at least a little bit brighter.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo

  Benevolent

  www.benevolent.net 

Through Al's Eyes

What do you see when you open the door to your place? When your hand extends to the lock with your key at the ready? If you’re like me, you take the fact that you have a key, a lock, and a door to your own place mostly for granted. Walking into your place seems like no big thing.

When I read an update that one of our recipients, Al, sent in this month, I started seeing my own front door differently. Here’s what he said abou the support he received from Benevolent and all the work that the nonprofit Inspiration Corporation did with and for him:

“I can’t believe that with the help of Benevolent and Inspiration I was able to turn my life completely around. I have a great job and a place to live where I pay my own rent. What a feeling. It’s nice to see that there are still people and programs out there that still care and don’t think that homeless people aren’t worth helping. For those people who donated thank you so much. For those who are still out on the street don’t give up - don’t ever give up.”

Reading that message, I suddenly saw things through Al’s eyes. Pictured him coming home from his job as a waiter in a restaurant, wearing the work clothes that Benevolent donors helped provide, pulling keys out of his pocket, turning the lock, and stepping into his own place. The image and the feelings that went with it were overpowering.  Picturing this new reality through Al’s eyes – the transition from jobless and homeless to employed and housed – made it all powerfully real.

Try it. Imagine that you’re Amaya and you’re getting ready to pack up for college – packing yourself and your daughter. Imagine that you’ve just heard that 25 people contributed the funds to pay for your security deposit for your college housing.

Imagine that you’re Toya, the oldest of a family of refugees from Bhutan, trying to acclimate to life in the U.S. and to help your parents and siblings navigate a new country, new language, city life, and more. Imagine the relief of receiving the computer that will help you all to establish yourselves here and then the sheer sensory overload once you start to take it all in.

It’s a cool and mind-expanding exercise, this seeing things through other people’s eyes.  I hope you’ll try it.

- megan kashner

  founder & ceo

  benevolent

  www.benevolent.net

We are the Donors, my friends

We, who give less than $200 a pop make up over 87% of all those individuals who give to charitable organizations each year. We’re the ones who make an impact, fuel services and supports and make things happen.

No one names a building or a brick after us. Our gifts don’t buy us influence in a political campaign – not as individuals, anyway. We’re certainly not the ones who give big in order to cover over a public gaffe. 

"I promise I will be the 

best  waiter this city has 

ever  seen. I will never 

forget what  you have done 

for me." - Al 

We give what we can, whenever we can, because we want to help someone. As it happens, we 87% are fueling the bulk of the change that happens for people across our country and beyond.

Where’s our ribbon-cutting ceremony, then? The newspaper piece about the incredible gift we just gave? Well, I guess our props come differently.

“I want to express my appreciation 

for your generosity in supporting 

me with the certifications.” 

- Christina

Not only are we – with our small gifts -- the major driver behind social impact in this country, but we’re also in it for a great reason: We want to transform someone’s life. The reward we want for our good work comes to us in the form of a note from Al telling us that he’s gotten the job he wanted as a banquet waiter and that thanks to us, he’s got the uniform he needs to start work.

We get excited when we see the photo of Christina with her nursing certification certificate or the video Bridgett sent us thanking us for her winter clothes for her commute to school and letting us know that she’s graduated. 

I’m pleased and proud to stand with you as a regular ol’ donor and to step up to claim our place at the head of social change in our country.

- megan kashner

  founder & ceo

  Benevolent

 www.benevolent.net

Only 2% Make It - We Can Help

Amayah is a teen mom
headed off to college this fall

She came to the US five years ago, when she was about 12. She made her way through a new country, culture, school system, and more. Now she's headed off to Southern Illinois University in the fall, full of promise and expectations.

The American Dream: believing in yourself; overcoming expectations and obstacles; succeeding through hard work. Amayah is all that, and more.

Amayah is also a teen mom. She's nothing like the flashy and combative young moms we see on reality TV. She’s the real deal - the young woman who had a child at 16, kept on going to school, is graduating and is heading to college without missing a beat. She's got her future in clear focus, and she's got her baby's future in mind as well - a balancing act that many parents decades older than Amayah have not mastered.

Right now, though -- this is when it gets hard. Amayah has challenges to face as she heads off to college that the other young students won't be burdened by. She'll need to find housing suitable to a small family, child care, and time to cook for, read to, play with, and care for her child. She'll have to plan her course schedule and her study groups around her child's timetable and then there will be other things that crop up - a babysitter bailing, her child getting a fever, or the stroller refusing to open.

Amayah is asking the Benevolent community for help with one singular challenge: for help paying her housing deposit and getting her apartment set up for herself and her child. I hope we'll meet this challenge and step up for Amayah. More importantly, I hope we'll be able to jump back in future years if another big challenge pops up. Maybe create a community of support just for Amayah. 

On average, about half of all teen moms finish high school. Another 15% will get their GED by the time they're 22. Only two percent - 2% - of teen moms complete college by the time they're 30. Those are ridiculously long odds. 

Let's step up, step in and become a part of Amayah's story, and let's hang out there for a while to keep an eye on her success and be there when she needs us.

Who's in?

- megan kashner, founder & CEO

Paying Forward for Dad this Father's Day

A Father’s Day Card for my Dad

Dad,

I stink at these holidays. I generally fail to send a card, so I wind up calling you on the phone late in the day. I’m a failure at holiday-invoked expressions of feeling. So this year, I’m taking a different tack and amplifying my Father’s Day message out into the public domain. You’ll either love it or be mortified.

Thank you. There is no way to effectively repay or adequately honor all that you’ve done for me over the course of time. From before I was born, you were planning for my security and my future. All my life  you’ve believed in me, supported my dreams, picked me up when I fell, stood up for me, run interference, and never flagged in your ardent belief in me. You haven’t always understood my choices or even the specifics of my career, but you’ve been in my corner, always.

I know I’m not the only one with a dad as great as you, but you’re mine and I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world. You’re the one I argue with most in the world and you’re the one whose opinion I value. We often disagree, coming at things from opposite sides of the equation and opposite sides of the brain. Let’s never stop that.

I know too well that not everyone has the benefit of a dad like you, so this Father’s Day, I’m going to honor you by paying forward the fierce belief you have in your children.  I’m going to help someone else who needs to know that someone’s in her corner and supporting her dreams. 

As a tribute to you, I’m going to contribute to help meet Jean’s need. I feel compelled to help Jean because as a single mom she’s striving to be a nurse, and what’s holding her back is so basic – she needs special contacts to manage her eye condition just so she can see to study. I was a medical mess when I was young – glasses, braces, a back brace for scoliosis – and you shelled out a bunch for all those things and never, never made me feel that  it was difficult or an imposition. Now that I’m a parent and paying for braces and sports and supplies, I see how difficult it really is.

So, this Father’s Day, your parenting extends beyond me, through me, and on to Jean. She can use some of your brand of belief and support right now, and we’ll help her together.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo, daughter of howard kashner

To pay it forward in honor of your Dad this Father's Day:

1) Contribute to any need on the Benevolent.net site 

2) Send us a quick email to dad@benevolent.net and let us know:

  - your dad's name, 

  - his email address (or snail mail address if you'd rather we send a card), and 

  - a note you'd like us to include to your Dad with the note he receives from us letting him know you've made a gift in his name.