Budgeting For Christmas…

Though my budget/debt counseling classes will be launched winter term, Helene gave me an opportunity during the last three weeks of fall term to start one-on-one budgeting sessions. One afternoon, I met with Desiree during one of our jewelry sessions. While I offered for us to go to a room to discuss her personal financial situation, she announced that she’d rather talk about it in the jewelry studio, even though all the other FLT girls were there. This was actually great because it prompted a discussion of budget right before Christmas shopping. Several of the participants, Desiree, Norinne, Jessica, and Sammy were venturing to Manchester the following day to start their Christmas shopping. After listening to their piles of unconventional debt, I knew this was bound to be a disaster. In front of everyone, Desiree blatantly admitted to being a “shopaholic.” Prior to this, I’ve really only seen this on TV shows or joked about it with my girlfriends, but really truly just joked about it.

Apparently, most of the girls in the room already knew about Desiree’s shopping addiction. Desiree had cleverly thought out her tax payments and her husband’s checks to make sure that she had enough money for Christmas spending. Just the previous weekend, she spent over $300 on just two presents. She confessed that she wanted her “baby girls” to only have the best, and described how she’ll go to Macy’s and pick up pricey coats and jeans for her girls every couple of months. Both of her children have the latest Play Stations, and this year she wants to buy both of them Wii’s. I asked her why she can’t just purchase one for them to share. She rebutted that they would literally kill each other if they fought over a Wii, and she’d have to get one blue and one pink, and it would be a war zone in their living room. I suggested that maybe she should set up an appointment with Brenda, who runs the daycare to learn techniques to help her children share toys. Desiree responded that it’s just easier to buy a Wii. But she has no money! Desiree attempted to calm my worries that she had already called the phone company and the heating company and somehow received an extension on paying her bills. Secretly, she also admitted the pile of bills she sits on. She has thousands of dollars in cell phone bills and credit card bills that she has simply never paid. She admitted that she half-heartedly expects that they’ll just somehow disappear. When I suggested to start saving her husband’s salary to start paying back notes, she agreed that that’s what she should do, but she didn’t know how realistic it was. She noted that she was simply repulsed by the idea of going to Wal-Mart or Salvation Army to dress her children. The other girls in the room heavily relied on this for their income –saving strategies and sarcastically told her how ridiculous this was. It led to a conversation of where to buy the cheapest diapers (CVS vs. Wal-Mart vs. Kmart) and how to get discount toys at the Listen Center. While a huge project had been carved out with Desiree, the resultant conversation was very hopeful. Merry Christmas everyone!

Financial Inclusion For The New Year

The Montshire Museum is booked for the 23^rd of February for a panel on financial inclusion in the New Year.  The panel will be geared towards local service providers. It will showcase panelists from ACCION, MicroCredit NH, and others to talk about microfinance in developed countries, accessibility to credit, and helpful tips for families weathering the economic climate. SEEDS will co-sponsor the panel. More details to come soon!

Poverty Paper

In September, Merilynn Bourne, Executive Director of the Listen Center approached my Geography major advisor, Richard Wright, about a poverty economic snapshot of the Upper Valley. When he heard that about my 1982 Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, he thought that this would be a fantastic opportunity for me to attain an academic foundation for my work at the Family Place and with MicroCredit NH. I teamed up with Charlie Grant ’11 to write the piece according to guidelines received from Merilynn’s team about certain Census data that they wanted updated in order to update the Listen Center’s service and better serve its target population. The paper is sustainable piece of my project for it actively aids the Listen Center in understanding the Upper Valley’s unique labor market, poverty genealogy, and distinct poverty conditions such as the burden of amassing heating and transportation. 

Below is the papers abstract, introduction, and employment snapshot. Let me know if you'd like to see the entire paper!

Abstract

Rural poverty in America lacks visibility. Unlike its urban counterpart, rural settings exacerbate factors of poverty such as transportation and access to institutional support. The Connecticut River’s “Upper Valley” region exhibits a unique physical geography and economic landscape. This paper critically examines poverty in the Upper Valley, focusing on domestic poverty genealogy, labor market ecology, and the spatial dimensions of poorness. It aims to refresh understandings of poverty using data from the American Community Survey, a yearly estimate coordinated by the U.S. Census. With time still left before the release of next year’s Census data, the decade’s turbulent times and recent economic crisis urges a renewed understanding of the country’s poverty landscape. This report will help local service providers contextualize and measure community need in the Upper Valley.

Introduction

Poverty is complicated to quantify and measure. Many view poverty as a barometer of economic health, particularly attuned to employment and income. Income-based litmus tests, however, obscure other meaningful measurements of poverty. Though unemployment and low income certainly inhibit the affordability of basic needs, poverty statistics assessing those two conditions do not adequately illustrate the tangled causes and effect flows of poverty. For instance, contextual realities such as domestic violence, unaffordable housing, lack of transportation, and unavailable childcare are not always captured by summary statistics, but they significantly shape poverty’s severity, spatial extent, and timeline. A narrow focus on income also deflects from identifying poverty’s problematic roots and ripple effects.  

Since 2000, when the U.S. Census Bureau last conducted a census survey, the country has experienced turbulent economic times. In early 2000, the dot-com bubble, which defined the 1990’s economic boom times, loudly burst.  Having underestimated the evolution of the Internet, many tech companies that populated initial public offerings listings in the late ‘90’s reported huge losses through and outright folded in the first few years of the new millennium. In late 2001, Al Quaeda’s terrorist attacks relaunched the country’s economic slump. First pronounced in the airline and tourism industries, the downturn later extended into a national deficit, as the United States bore (and continues to bear) the cost of international warfare in Iraq and in Afghanistan. In 2007, the American economy witnessed another bubble burst; this time, that of commercial and residential real estate and mis-rated mortgage-backed securities. The ripple effects of this rupture crashed the stock market and begetted an international credit crisis, whose magnitude compared to that of the Great Depression.

The decade’s turbulent times and recent economic crisis urges a renewed understanding of the country’s process of wealth creation and poverty landscape. This study examines poverty and its place-specific context in the rural landscape of the Upper Connecticut River Valley to gain a fuller understanding of the years what has transpired since the last intensive round of data collection.  This report provides a mixed-methods study to help local service providers grasp pivotal causes of fluctuations in the poverty rate timeline over the past two decades. With this examination, readers will anticipate a more accurate economic snapshot captured in Census 2010 and better contextualize community poverty dynamics in the Upper Valley.

Employment Snapshot

Economic restructuring in most rural economies has meant a transition from extraction industries towards the service sector. Whereas rural places formerly had to adapt and overcome economic booms and busts in agriculture, mining, and timber industries, they now have to harmonize with technological advancement, communications systems, and economies of scale that are crucial to service sector industries. Although there has been considerable service sector growth in rural areas, many jobs are disproportionately located in low-wage consumer and personal services (Tickamyer & Duncan 1990:80). Further, many of these service occupations provide few and limited benefits and are sensitive to seasonal cycles (Churilla, 2008: 2).

             To understand the dynamics of poverty in a place, we must pay attention to how labor markets structure opportunity (Tickamyer & Duncan, 1990: 79.) The labor market “has the greatest structural effect on inequality and poverty", and contains "mechanisms [such as] labor markets, capital markets, property markets that distribute economic resources" (Kodras, 1997:69).  For rural areas, “labor markets provide the link between the economic outcomes for individuals, families, and households, and the macro-level operation of the economy described by the applications of theories of uneven development” (Tickamyer & Duncan, 1990: 80). While physical resources often shape rural poverty’s existence, so do social resources. Socio-spatial isolation excludes poor families from information networks and thus prevents them from learning about job opportunities and geographically accessible, economically affordable daycare (Lichter and Parisi, 2008: 4). Often, other basic support systems such a low-rent housing market are also essential buttresses of employment attainment and maintenance (Briggs et al, 2007: 22). 

            According to anecdotal reports conducted by service providers, as well as Census and yearly ACS data, Upper Valley incomes have increased over the past fifteen years.  The number of households earning annual incomes in excess of $75,000 has increased and fewer people earn under $30,000 (Upper Valley Report, 9). On the high income scales, the towns in the center of the Upper Valley had a disproportionate percent of households earning over $150,000 annually relative to those on the periphery (Upper Valley Report, 2008: 9). This stems from the high concentration of educated and wealthy individuals around Hanover and Lebanon, where employees at Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, as well as wealthy retirees often to take up residence. Towns with relatively high (six to seven) percent of households receiving public support include Windsor, Sharon, Vershire, Lyme, and Pomfret, many of which lie on the periphery of the Upper Valley region (Upper Valley Report, 2008: 9).

Management And Leadership Program

I’ve been accepted to the Rockefeller Center’s NEW Management and Leadership Program for the winter term. The project should be phenomenal training for the 1982 Social Entrepreneur fellowship and beyond. It meet once a week and provides seminars on systems thinking, communicating ideas, and invigorating people towards ideas. It should help me better manage my project’s goals in a time-effective, realistic, and sustainable manner. Most importantly, it will be a special cut-out time slot a week (Dartmouth kids rarely have time for this!) which will help me reflect on my leadership and the effectiveness of my project.

Art Show @ KDE!

On November 16^th, Kappa Delta Epsilon hosted its termly Art Show. In an event open to the campus, Sue Schmitz ’10 and Julia Zak ’10 joined together to collect artwork from artists from around campus. Brian Bozzello ’10 and his jazz band played music as students, administrators and faculty browsed through paintings, sprayed painted hats, and photographs. Sue and Julia also provided an arts and craft booth where visitors could paint their own picture frames with crafts glue and magazine bits.

KDE’s Art Show notably hosted jewelry from the Family Place’s JewleryO’s. Helene Mechoche and Julia Dickenson came in on Sunday to help me set up the jewelry stand. We had just sold $2,000 over the past weeks at the Christmas fair at the Tyn Church in Hanover, a holiday fair at the Hopkins Center, and another one at Kendall. For weeks, the jewelry studio at the Family Place was bustling as participants in the Families Learning Together (FLT) program scurried to prepare enough necklaces for the upcoming holiday events. They learned the value of deadlines, turning a profit, and overtime. Many women took beads and thread home to work on necklaces after their children went to sleep. At KDE, we raised $350 for the Family Place in only two hours! All the profits supported the FLT program which houses the budget/debt counseling classes that are launched this winter term.

This art show was important to my project for several reasons. Not only was it one of my first tangible deliverables, but it connected my Dartmouth world with my greater Upper Valley world. FLT participants know that I’m a Dartmouth student. Had it not been for my personal history as an immigrant whose parents too received welfare payments and paid for groceries with food stamps, they would not believe me that I knew how they felt, and that I genuinely wanted to help them. For many of my participants, Dartmouth remains a remote island of privilege. Though the bridge connected Hanover to Norwich and ultimately, Hartford and White River Junction (where the majority of my FLT participants reside), Dartmouth and Hanover remain inaccessible with the exception of the Children’s Hospital at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. CHAD has saved many of the participants’ children, whether it had been via social work intervention where the state of Vermont has taken temporary custody or actual medical healing. Doctors at the DHMC are one of the few authorities these women listen to, and are a pivotal avenue of help.

Making jewelry for the KDE art show connected the girls to Dartmouth in a novel way. They weren’t making something for the school, but they were selling these necklaces to some sorority girls, whose lives were worlds different from their own. KDE means a lot to me, and it seemed that because of that, the FLT participants were excited to incorporate new designs. More importantly, they felt connected to the other world. Sadly, none of the participants could make it to the art show because they couldn’t find babysitting for their children, nor transportation to Hanover, but I’ve talked to Helene about car-pooling to KDE in the winter term.

The art show was also a medium for Dartmouth students to connect my stories about my Tuesday and Thursday afternoon in Norwich with a tangible image: a uniquely, beaded necklace with a silver covered cheerio. The event was advertised via blitz and Tucker. All night long, friends (even best friends) said, “Oh, so this is what you’ve been working on.” They see the pictures of young moms, that are our age, in the kitchen learning about nutrition or in the jewelry studio, learning about a business and profit strategy. While purchasing a necklace as a holiday present, the girls would take note of a yellow notecard that explains the JewelryO’s business. People started believing in the cause. It gave me hope that our budgeting/debt classes had some momentum behind them.

The Family Forum

This past Tuesday, October 26th, the Family Place hosted it's 8th annual Family Forum, an opportunity where community members and leaders can learn about the Family Place's latest ventures and opportunity for program accessibility in the Upper Valley.

Parents that had personally worked with the Family Place were invited to share their stories about how the Family Place has impacted their parenting skills and reshaped their families. The event had two guest speakers: Bill Boyle, MD, Boyle Community Pediatrics Program at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and Carl Pratt, General Manager at the Hanover Inn.

Dr. Boyle has worked with medical students and DHMC residents to provide community outreach sessions where they spent time at organizations such as the Family Place or the Haven to interact with community members and learn about the invisible triggers of illness that may not be apparent within a fifteen minute check up. Dr. Boyle spoke about chronic illnesses that children may battle, whether its asthma, chronic fibrosis, or development delays, and noted that when you combined that with a chronic state of poverty - you have a serious problem.

Julia Dickenson told me about a resident within Dr. Boyle's program that met a child at the Haven, who had just weeks ago been at a check-up at the DHMC. At the home visit (which is the beautiful thing about this program, residential and case managers visit the patient at their own home, where the child is comfortable and where the home environment can provide vital indicators of mental and medical health), the parent didn't recognize the resident, since he wasn't in his medical garb. The resident told Julia, that just a few weeks ago, they seemed completely fine. He had no idea that the family was "about to go homeless."

Elaine Guanet, the Executive Director at the Family Place, opened up the event with a short speech about what the Family Place does and its special place in the Upper Valley service community. The Family Place strives to create a better future for children by supporting families. Elaine noted that "parenting creates human potential; brains are built from bottom to up, skills beget skills and motivation begets motivation." Poverty is the largest single threat to a child’s well being as a result of severed social networks, access to civic involvement, and the built up of human/social capital. The Family Place is a designated family child center in Windsor County; it serves 36 towns, on both sides of the river.

The Family Place has many layers of programming. One of them is FIT (Families, Infants, and Toddlers). It is connected to a federal program that provides service to poverty-stricken families with children that are battling developmental delays. Doctors from the DHMC and other medical facilities visit children at the actual home and help children overcome barriers in cognitive development. As Dr. Boyle, from the DHMC, noted: when you combine chronic medical conditions with a chronic state of poverty, you have a real problem.

Another program is the FLT (Families Learning Together) program. The program enlists young mothers, aged 17 – 28. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 8:30 to 3:30 PM, these mothers come to the Family Place to learn a set of life skills. This includes four work sites, parenting (at the day care, run by Brenda), nutritional eating (includes cooking lunch daily at the kitchen, with Havah from King Arthur’s Flour), education (completing GED or high school diploma, computer class), and jewelry (making jewelry from the JewelryO’s business with Julia at the jewelry studio). Katy, an FLT participant, became pregnant at 17 and had her first child a week after her 18^th birthday. FLT helped her finish her GED and enabled her to take a college course at Simmons College. She noted that the most important part of this program is that really made you feel part of a larger community.

My budget/debt counseling class fuses the education and the jewelry worksites by providing participants an opportunity to take what they’ve learned about profit, stock, deadlines, and skills in beading, crocheting, and selling jewelry at weekly jewelry fairs and funnel that education into something that directly helps them help themselves.

My project is about these women discovering fiscal accountability and entrepreneurship as a bridge out of poverty.

About the Project

Liya Shuster, a member of the Class of 2010, will be working throughout the next year to establish microcredit networks in the Upper Valley. Liya will start work in Summer 2009 to link Microcredit NH and Mascoma Bank with low-income populations in the Upper Valley who could benefit from microlending. Microcredit NH is a microfinance organization that works with entrepreneurs leading small businesses (which comprise 87% of all businesses in New Hampshire) to provide loans, business and entrepreneurial training. In her project proposal, Liya described the many agencies and non-profits in the Upper Valley that provide support to prospective entrepreneurs, but noted that there is no existing network that links these services together or expands microcredit's reach to the Upper Valley.


Through the course of her fellowship, Liya will network with Microcredit NH and several microfinance organization in the Vermont region to pilot a microcredit program at the Family Place in Norwich, VT. After undergoing training from Microcredit NH, Liya will work with single mothers, participating in the Family Place's Jewelrio's Program, to develop financial literacy, create business plans, and build up credit scores and savings. Liya will collaborate with Microcredit NH to create community educational microfinance panels and distribute pamphlets to enhance understanding of microcredit's opportunities for financial inclusion and weathering the current economic downturn.


Liya is currently collaborating with MicroCredit NH to better understand poverty demographics in the Upper Valley and help map geographies of need for microfinance in the region. Working at the Family Place, a non-profit based in Norwich, VT that works to build the community by supporting families, She has installed a financial literacy and budget-counseling component to in the JewelryO’s business worksite program. JewelryO's is a sustainable business that provides young mothers with jewelry making skills, business acumen, and entrepreneurship training. Liya hopes for participants to realize entrepreneurship and self-employment as a bridge out of poverty. Upon the project’s culmination, participants will have the chance to take out a loan from MicroCredit NH. Future goals in the project includes showcasing JewelryO’s products at termly campus arts shows at Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority, a financial inclusion panel held for local community organizers at Montshire Museum in February, and a microfinance bazaar cosponsored by SEEDS, the Tuck School, Women in Business, and Women in Leadership held in March.