We Need You!

The holiday season brings about a myriad of emotions – thankfulness, gratitude, a bit of introspection and with it the realization that it has been a tough year.  I love my job – it feeds my soul and it is such critical work!  But there is a difficult side to working in a non-profit organization, especially one doing anti-poverty work. 

The truth is, organizations like SCCAP support the social infrastructure in a community.  But we are often invisible, operating under the radar.  We help low-wage earners afford child care so they can work (imagine if more than 50% of your $10.00 per hour job went to child care costs – how could you afford to work?)  We weatherize houses so individuals can afford to heat and cool their houses, saving energy usage positively impacting the environment.  We provide temporary housing in our shelters and case management for those families so that they can get back on their feet and support themselves and their children.  We provide hard skill job training and critical soft skill training and emotional and social supports so that individuals from generational poverty can become productive workers, breaking the cycle of poverty.  We provide nutrition classes, and one on one supports, as well as, healthy food for families to improve their health and welfare – which saves health care costs in the short and long run.  We provide small scholarships for individuals to get skill training and certification to help improve their earning potential.  We provide free trainings, poverty simulations and other assistance to the faith community, businesses, social services, the faith community and education so that they can get better outcomes from the families we serve. 

We provide a hand up and support the local economic and social infrastructure – strengthening our community.   But on a  constant basis we face with budget cuts and the need to do more with less.  Eleven years ago when I first became the Executive Director of SCCAP, we were serving about 16,000 clients with a staff of 160, today we serve more than 32,000 with a staff of 106 – and our funding is almost exactly the same.  When I started, I took over our IT support – we had roughly 26 computers to support and one server.  I still support our IT today but now we have more than 106 computers, 2 servers and 3 websites on top of my normal duties.  And I am not alone.  Most of my staff now do the work of more than one staff person.  We are incredibly administratively thin – pushing dollars to fill gaps in services to clients.  We are doing more with less and stretched so thin that I sometimes wonder how we do what we do so well (we are a top performer in every program and we have earned PANO’s Standards of Excellence Accreditation). 

Then in June we received news that Utility Assistance was being moved from community partners to a universal call center – significantly cutting our emergency services funding which keeps our food pantries open.  Then in October we found that we received 80% cuts to shelter operation funding (from a request of $176,000 reduced to $36,000).  No warning.  No control over those kind of cuts – not related to how hard you work or your outcomes – just a change in direction of a funder.  And so we find ourselves again trying to figure out how to make it work.   How to keep critical programs open.  How to do more with less.  How to keep serving 32,000 clients and keep 106 staff employed.  Poverty is not a SCCAP problem, it is a community problem.  Aging, addiction, housing, mental health, children with disabilities are not problems owned by non-profits – they are community problems.  I urge you, during this holiday season, to find organizations in your local community that impact issues you care about and support them with your time, funding and talents – we need you!  We really need you!  And I promise – the feeling you receive from making a difference in the lives of others is far greater than the feeling you get from any gift under a tree!

Sonder

Sonder, n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.)  This word, though only popular in pop culture, has so much meaning for me.  I walk alongside the lives of so many individuals.  I get an inside glimpse of people going through extreme stress and achieving amazing goals and get the privilege of traveling that journey with them, of hearing their fears, hopes, losses and aspirations. 

I remember when my mother died suddenly at 57, I wasn’t ready to let her go and I grieved for a long time, the loss was so profound.  A close co-worker asked me three months after her passing “when was I going to get back to normal.”  She had never lost someone close to her.  When her own mother died from cancer years later, she called in that grief-stricken moment and told me her mother died.  The pain in her voice was palatable, I knew it, I had felt it before.  Sonder.

We see people on TV.  We see them acting in ways that are different than how we would act in a given situation and we make judgments – we all do it.  We forget that their pain, their sorrow, their hopes, their dreams, how much they love their children, their significant others – is just as vivid as how we love our own children and significant others.  Their pain, though potentially expressed differently, is just as real, just as vivid as our own.   If we can understand that, if we can see the pain, the joy, the life in another, we can let go of some of the judgment and feel for those around us.  This broadens our capacity for compassion and caring.  Broadens our desire to see things get better for others and to look for real sustainable solutions. It helps us understand that behaviors happen for a reason and until we can reach out to understand the reason, it is hard for us to achieve real change.

A highly respected businessman in our community was at a meeting recently and shared “That others had not had the same opportunity as he had and he wanted to try and make that possible.”  Impressive.  In the scope of his incredibly busy, vivid life, full of his own tremendous joys and sorrows – he paused and could see that there are others struggling around him and he wants to make a difference.  He chose to see, and that choice is important.  We can, at any given time, see or turn away, and sometimes because it is too painful, sometimes because we don’t understand, sometimes because we feel guilt, or sometimes because our own life demands so much, we turn away, make judgments, or label those experiences of others as invalid.  Just as my coworker asked me when I would “return to normal” – we discount the experiences of others.  But we can choose to see, seek to understand, and allow ourselves to walk alongside others whose life experiences are different than our own. 

Sonder.  Whether in politics, riots in communities, or refugees fleeing their homes, there is a reason that people behave as they do.  Their experiences and perceptions, though potentially different than our own, are just as valid, just as colorful, just as real as our own and they drive our own perceptions, judgments and beliefs.  But if we can allow ourselves to see life through the colorful blue, green, or brown eyes of someone else – seek to understand the life they live, we can learn so much and be changed for the better! 

There's No Place Like Home!

Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t have a home to live in.  If you were facing eviction and you didn’t know where you and your children would live.  If you thought that where you were living was just too expensive but when you looked around, the cost of rentals was higher than you pay now.  Imagine if you were working, often more than one job, and you still couldn’t afford to live in your community. How would that impact your work, your sense of self, your health, your children, your future? 

I was stunned, at the recent Commissioners Forum on Housing, by the speakers’ data and viewpoints on the unaffordability of housing.  We see it on a daily basis – our shelters are full of families (most of them working) who can’t afford housing in our community.  But hearing it from a business, health, planning and educational perspective was astounding.  The impacts on our community are so vast.  Dr. Amy Dailey, from Gettysburg College, shared the data and the correlation between housing and depression, stress and other health issues.  Suzanne Christianson, a local realtor, shared the difficulties of finding housing for low wage families and seniors on a fixed income.  Rob Thaeler, Principal Planner for Adams County shared the facts about housing in our local community and how most of the housing developed here draws from those moving into our area and working outside of the county - with most houses being built costing above $250,000.

Dr. Chris Echterling from Wellspan Health (also Physician of the Year in Pennsylvania for 2016) shared stories about how housing significantly impacts a family’s ability to be healthy and the new data on addiction and recovery and their strong ties to housing, as well as, the cost of providing housing compared to providing shelter space, mental health units and health care - it was so compelling.   

Robin Fitzpatrick shared data relating to business and how local HR reps said that families earning under $50,000 per year can’t afford housing (and many earning under $80,000 can’t either) and the impact on their businesses.  When she shared that individuals working in family/social services just earn enough to cover the costs for a one-person family, that was bad enough, but she went on to share that those in the service industry - who support our tourism economy don’t earn enough to even support a family of one – I couldn’t help but think of how big this problem is.

But most of all, the stories shared by Kelly DeWees, from Gettysburg School District, about the more than 128 homeless children the district serves and the story of a family renting a U-Haul trailer by the week so that their kids could sleep in a shelter that was cheaper than housing in the community, I was heartbroken. 

This isn’t a social services problem!  And if you mistakenly think the social services world has it covered, you are so very wrong.  There are nearly no resources to help – governmental or otherwise.  And this isn’t a people making the wrong choices problem – it is a matter of numbers.  We live in a community fueled by agriculture and tourism – traditionally low wage jobs-  but we live in a college town that is a bedroom community to Baltimore and Washington.  A beautiful community in a state that offers tax advantages for those retiring here.  Those factors push up the cost of living – which wouldn’t be a problem if we had wages that enabled people who work in our community to afford to live here – but for many, that just isn’t the case.  Poverty in our community is working families who earn low wages (often from more than one job) and seniors on a fixed income.  If you work in Adams County, you may well be struggling to live in Adams County.  We have to fix this!  We, as a community, have to change this.