Poverty is a big deal!

Over the past few months, I've been increasingly sensitized to poverty and why we all need to be concerned and get involved in doing things about it.

It's amazing to me how easy it is to go about life and totally ignore that significant parts of our city, country, and world live in poverty. Part of it is that we compartmentalize ourselves. My life rarely takes me to places where poverty is obvious. We have designed our cities to make it easy to avoid. Living in the suburbs, going to church in the suburbs, shopping in the suburbs, etc. tend to keep you from seeing poverty. In fact, we regularly avoid poverty areas because we correlate them with high crime -- places to avoid.

One of the things that can happen when you retire and begin to pursue other endeavors is that you begin to become more sensitized to the world around you. At least that is what has happened to me. Becoming more aware of poverty was not something I planned, but it has happened through several things that I have been led to for one reason or another.

1. When I started blogging, I found Larry James' Urban Daily. I wasn't looking for it, but found it as a link on some other blogs, so started reading it. His parents and my wife's parents were friends, so there is some feeling of connection to him. Larry relentlessly writes about urban poverty. Over time, it's begun to sink in. If you want to develop an understanding of how big a deal poverty is in the U.S., spend some time reading this blog.

2. Since retirement and starting my second career as a life coach, I've become a voracious reader -- primarily related to religion. As a result, I've become much more aware of how much of the Bible addresses serving the poor, the disenfranchised, and those treated unjustly.

3. We attended a dinner for Second Mile Ministry -- a local outreach to those in poverty in Fort Bend County, generally considered an affluent suburban county. My main insight from the event was how many people they provide services for. They are actually one of the largest customers of the Houston Food Bank. I knew there were people living in poverty in the midst of all of our planned communities, but had no idea there were so many.

4. I became involved with a networking group called "The Get-Together." Again, it wasn't something I was looking for. I was an exhibitor at a Halftime event in Houston (for my coaching business) and Barbara Elliott, author of Street Saints was also exhibiting.

• Street Saints chronicles faith-based efforts accross the country who are effectively serving the underserved. You'll find it encouraging.
• Barbara is the founder of The Center for Renewal. The collected my business card at the Halftime event and I ended up on the mailing list for The Get-Together. Eventually I attended one of the networking lunch groups. The purpose of the group is to provide "Stuff" six inner city ministries need.
  

5. Because of being on The Get-Together mailing list, I was invited to a meeting to consider starting a ministry in Houston similar to Cincinnati Works. Dave Phillips, co-founder of Cincinnati Works, came to talk about their success. The Cincinnati Works program provides job readiness and job search efforts that results in a person who is chronically unemployed or a member of the working poor becoming employed within a month. Then extensive effort is given to helping that person stay employed and to career advancement. The goal is to move people in poverty (defined by federal poverty income guidelines) out of poverty, which they define as an income 2X poverty level. Cincinnati Works has helped 3000 people in poverty become employed, and 900 are now at the 2X poverty income level. While they only are able to help 3% of the people in poverty in Cincinnati, their results are 30% of the total for the city. Virtually all other efforts get people ready to go to work, but do not actually place them in jobs or follow up with them for the years it takes to make sure they are stable and advancing. As a result, where average industry retention is 20%, Cincinnati Works can boast of an 80% retention rate.

Dave Phillips says poverty is the cancer of our society. I'll put more information in the next post to reinforce Dave's assertion.