Study Circles Orientation Invitation

VISIONS will be sponsoring a round of Study Circles this fall to encourage a diverse community dialogue on ways to reduce poverty in the Northern Neck. Study Circles have been used all over the United States in large and small communities to successfully address the issue of poverty. To learn more about what Study Circles are, please read the blogpost Study Circles Q&A from July 17th. We hope to have as many people as possible involved in those Study Circles, which will run from October through mid-November. We want the whole community to be part of the solution to a problem that impacts the whole community.

To get ready to begin that process, Gwen Whiting will be providing the VISIONS team and any interested parties with an orientation to Study Circles. The orientation will take place on Tuesday, August 18th and Wednesday, August 19th from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. at the Northumberland County Community Center on Browns Store Road. A light supper will be provided both nights.

We are inviting all our June conference attendees and any other people who are interested in learning more to attend these orientation meetings. We hope that our conference attendees will pass on this invitation to anyone they think might like to attend.

If you would like to attend, please respond to me at visions@lancasterlibrary.org with confirmation.

Richmond Times-Dispatch article and editorial

The following article appeared in the Richmond paper on July 19th, following the Conversation on Poverty that took place there in Richmond.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/state_regional/article/POVE19_20090718-222406/280857/

Apparently, one of the participants said that the problem with poverty is that "people don't care." In this opinion piece, the editors of the paper disagreed. Their description of all the people and agencies who do care could easily describe our area. In this editorial they write, "Indeed, the biggest problem facing efforts to reduce poverty is not a lack of concern, but a lack of consensus."

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/opinion/editorials/article/ED-POVER21_20090720-180003/281079/

Both of these articles are worth reading. It's interesting to note that whether the area was urban or rural, lifelong education was identified as a way out of poverty.

Conversations on Poverty, Saturday, July 18, 2009

I thought it might be worthwhile to share Kathleen Watson's summary of the comments made at the Conversation on Poverty held at Rappahannock Community College in Warsaw on Saturday, July 18th.

Kathleen emails "I am very pleased to report that we had a total of 23 attendees for the Conversations on Poverty event that took place at the Warsaw Campus of Rappahannock Community College this past Saturday, July 18. When I heard that the city of Richmond had about 50 attendees, I thought that 23 was a very nice showing from the Northern Neck, especially on a Saturday morning!"

"Many of the participants were concerned citizens who represented non-profits, state agencies or other local organizations. The theme that kept recurring was that of the importance of EDUCATION (not limited to the classroom, but across the lifespan). Financial literacy education for youth and others came up, as did the importance of job training skills, education about work ethics, and education to help break the cycle of generational poverty. One attendee made a wonderful statement that really spoke volumes about the problem of generational poverty: 'Poverty is not just a lack of funds, it is also a lack of dreams.' "

"The importance of involving parents in the educational system was also cited as a source of improving education, since education is so vital when discussing poverty."

"Other themes that surfaced during the event were:

• The need for well paying jobs, and industry to provide such jobs.
• The need for better wages
• A hungry child cannot learn properly. Therefore, addressing hunger is a priority.
• The system should STOP enabling single parents who continue to have babies. The system should START enabling more people to get jobs.
• Safe housing and indoor plumbing programs should continue
• Conversations on poverty should continue
• Discrimination against those with disabilities should stop
• Reliable public transportation would get people to work, to school, and to the store.
• Lower taxes, and increase charitable giving
• We must teach self sufficiency
• Better coordination of services
• Better health care options

"This is a quote that was left behind, and I thought it was very powerful:

'Until a person believes that they, personally, don’t belong where they are, no lasting change in their position will take place.'

"Thanks again, to all who came out on Saturday!"

Kathleen did a great job summarizing the contributions of the participants. For those who couldn't be there, it started with two video presentations. One was a message from Governor Tim Kaine with his invitation to provide input to his taskforce on reducing poverty. The other was a data overview from Mike Cassidy, Executive Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis in Richmond. You can view both the "Act on Poverty Governor's Message" video and the "Poverty in Virginia Presentation" on the Virginia Department of Social Service website at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/virginiadss/

Both are worth viewing, but the data presentation was a particularly clear overview of poverty in Virginia.

Study Circles Q & A

Since some of you were unable to come to the meeting on Tuesday and some of you who did had questions about Study Circles, Lindsy and Paula put together a great explanation of the hows and whys.

"Study circles will help us talk about the kind of community we want to live in. No community is doing well where there is poverty. If we work on reducing poverty, we can have a better community. And, by working on making our community better, we can help reduce poverty. These two important tasks go hand in hand.

Study circles will work for us because:

• People care. They want to make things better.
• Problems like poverty call for many solutions.
• It takes people from all parts of the community to solve our problem.
• When we all join in, we all win.
• When we talk face to face, we get to know each other. Trust builds. We can come up with new ideas and plans.

What are Study Circles?

• Many circles will
  meet at the same time.
• 8 to 12 people will be in each circle. They will represent the diversity of our community.
• Circles will meet together for five two-hour sessions. The first three sessions focus on getting to know each other and getting to know the problem. The last two sessions focus on finding solutions and developing an action plan to reduce poverty.
• After the fifth meeting, all of the circles will gather together for an action forum. Each circle will present its action plan to reduce poverty in our community.
• Each circle will use a guide book. Two facilitators will lead each group circle.

Why is VISIONS sponsoring study circles?

• This approach has been used all over the United States in communities large and small to successfully address the issue of poverty.
• We want the whole community to be a part of the solution to a problem that impacts the whole community.
• We want realistic actionable
  community-driven strategies for our future work to reduce poverty.
  
• In order to help ensure change, we need community investment in the strategies (identified during the action forum) that will be presented in a written proposal to the duPont Fund for implementation and funding."

I've added two videos available on YouTube to give you some idea of what people in Montana who used this process thought about it. After you listen to them, you'll have a better idea of the value of getting a wide diversity of input in this planning process.

Horizons Across Montana, Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6MkBJaWHic

Horizons Across Montana, Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBWhKkB4-Co&feature=related

Summer Jobs Network article

There's a wonderful article on the Summer Jobs Network grant in the Rappahannock Record this week. Click on this link to read it:

http://www.rrecord.com/news2a.asp

The Summer Jobs Network is another duPont Fund grant to help local students find and keep summer jobs and to help them learn more about work ethics and professionalism. Lindsy Gardner, director of the Lancaster Community Library and a key member of the VISIONS team, helped Jack Russell write and obtain this grant. It is coordinated through the Rappahannock Community College.

Another great article of interest to the VISIONS team is one featured on the Everyday Democracy website. Everyday Democracy is the organization that has developed the study circle process we'll be using this fall. This website is full of great information, the link on the issue of poverty is well worth exploring. The article of local interest is the one on the Virginia Extension Agency efforts in Gov. Kaine's initiative to reduce poverty.

To see this article and explore the Everyday Democracy website, click on:

http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/index.aspx

As Paula Fisher reminds us in this postcard, it's been nearly a month since VISIONS sponsored the Conference to Build Community Assets to Reduce Poverty in the Northern Neck.

During those 30 days, school got out for the summer.  That's good news for teachers and students who needed a break. But nearly half the students in both Lancaster and Northumberland Counties were eligible for free and reduced lunches through the school.  What are they doing and how are they coping?  

What about you?  What have you been doing? We all left that conference energized and committed to finding ways to reduce poverty in the Northern Neck.  Share your news with VISIONS by adding a comment to this post.  With the new poverty email list on connectRappahannock, I can get the word out to all who participated or were interested in the conference.  Cindy Balderson and I hope to sponsor a monthly open house or forum in which we can do some active resource sharing.  I'll use your news to help me generate a list of "stars" for each of those.

Read through the blogposts to get an idea of what VISIONS has been doing. The VISIONS committee will be meeting next week on July 14th at 8:30 at the Lancaster Community Library. We'll be calling our participants and interested people to ask them to commit to some subcommittees. Those subcommittees will be working toward our next big step.

We are excited to announce that we are launching an ambitious program called Study Circles to continue our efforts to gather ideas and energy from as many people as we can.  We need diversity and numbers and, as we all realized at the conference, we need to hear from the people who live in poverty.  We hope to get that  going in the fall.  Want to know more about it?  Keep your eye on this blog.  Want to help?  Save these dates: August 18 & 19.  We'll be having two evening programs then to orient us all.

Gwen Whiting will be showing us the ropes, guiding us through the process and getting us ready to go.  Plan to join us as we continue our efforts, we need you all.  At the end of this exciting endeavor, we'll have a dynamic strategy for reducing poverty that all of us can embrace.

Working together, we can make a difference, we can build assets and community and reduce poverty in the Northern Neck.