Reaching Out to Women and Children Living in Poverty

This presentation was given at the morning plenary of Assembly 2002 on April 27, 2002. Click here to watch the video at either 56K or Broadband speed. (17 minutes) You must have the free RealPlayer^tm plugin.

You're 23 years old, have three children, and work 40 hours a week for $6.00 an hour-- $12,480 annually. Since you're under the Federal Poverty Level, you get a little help, but not much. You'd like a better job, but you didn't finish high school. You don't have a GED. You are what is referred to as the "working poor." Stories about "your kind" appear in the paper, and there's a lot of talk about helping you and your kids.

You've heard there's a new plan to help you get affordable insurance for your children. You hope that's true. Your little one has been sick a lot lately. You'd like to get your kids into a better neighborhood-- into a real home-- so they will have more stability, better schools, and a safer neighborhood. But it takes everything you can scrape together just to get the little one's medicine and school clothes for the older children. Then there's the car. Every time you turn around, something else is wrong, so off you go to the "loan company" for emergency repair funds. You borrow $100 then pay back $139 two weeks later. This is practically robbery, but what can you do? No "real" bank will finance you. You have no assets.

This is not an exaggerated story. Fort Worth is full of stories like this: single mothers trying to get off public assistance, eighth-grade-educated parents wanting a better life for their children, honest people wanting a piece of the American dream. But they are without the education or skills to get jobs that pay living wages so they and their children can climb out of poverty and get out of neighborhoods where drug dealers and prostitutes try to lure youngsters into a life of crime for a quick buck-or a quick fix.

The three greatest issues that low income, predominantly minority women face today is poverty, discrimination, and lack of employment opportunity.

Hi, I'm Celia Esparza, President of United Community Centers in Fort Worth, Texas. Thank you for allowing me to be with you today to talk about some of the problems that are preventing poor women from becoming self-sufficient. United Community Centers operates four neighborhood centers in some of the toughest, poorest areas of Fort Worth. We work everyday with women prevented from succeeding in life because they lack education, language skills, safe and affordable childcare, and a support structure to help them. Often, because of the color of their skin and the language they speak, they do not have access to educational opportunities that most of us take for granted. Poor schools do not have the best technology centers or the best teachers.

Helping women create a better life is not a new undertaking for United Community Centers, we've been doing it since 1909 when a group of Methodist women from Fort Worth's First Methodist Church began teaching poor immigrant women in the stockyards area of our city how to read and speak English. Our Wesley Center is still located on the north side and today works with many Hispanic immigrants. Educators in our computer-learning center teach English as Second Language, prepare clients to obtain their GEDS, and help customers gain in-demand computer skills so they can get jobs that offer decent wages, benefits, and future employability.

There are millions of American women living in poverty. What does it mean to be poor in our land of plenty? It means to be surrounded by wealth, but to have no access to it. It means having to choose between paying your rent, having your electricity turned off, or buying a tire for your car so you can get to work, or doing your laundry versus buying medicine for your kids. It means not having money to buy a decent outfit to wear for a job interview or saving money for that rainy day. Sometimes meager paychecks won't last long enough to buy enough groceries to feed your children so they need some supplemental food. Children can't learn if they don't have adequate nourishment before they go to school, and sometimes the pantry at home is empty so what can they do about supper. Since many of our clients don't have a driver's license, legal documentation to obtain a social security card, or the minimum amount required open a checking account. This means that they can't even write open a checking account. The poverty these families live in means having no insurance on their car and praying that they don't get stopped for a traffic violation--and heaven forbid if they have an car accident. Poverty means living in inadequate, crowded, low income housing often in disrepair and usually in high-crime neighborhoods. It means that having even five dollars to pay for a turkey basket so your children will have thanksgiving dinner is a big deal and that you may have to give up doing laundry next week so you will have the money to pay for this program. We are not talking about women being on welfare here... the majority of these victims work for their wages, either full or part-time. Notice that I said victims because these women are victims of a system that has robbed them of the opportunity to be productive citizens.

I could stand here and cite statistics from the labor department about how all women work for less than men and why, according to the experts, that happens. I think we know that; we've been listening to it for years. We know that women's work is undervalued. We know that women, all too often, have to work twice as hard to prove they can do a job. We know that women have to give up jobs to care for family. We know, because it has been this way for years. But today, the problem is complicated by a number of factors. As society has moved apart, families have become splintered 'and' scattered. There is not a grandma to keep a sick child because that grandma that used o be at home, if she lives in the same city, is probably working trying to keep a roof over her head and maybe that of a grandchild or two. That problem is complicated by the fact that there are so many single females raising children by themselves. Many are divorced, and many have never been married. But these girls aren't unwed mothers by choice. Everyday we see young women come into our centers who are raising babies. Often these girls are victims of low self-esteem; as soon as they got pregnant because they wanted someone to Jove them. But as soon as they got pregnant, they were on their own- with a baby to care for, most often with no high school diploma and no job- and no skills to get a job.

For too many years, it was easier for the government to give a "hand-out" and hope this "problem" would take care of itself than fix it. What happened is that generations of welfare recipients were created who became entrapped in a system called the "cycle of poverty." In our Polytechnic Center, we have families with as many as four generations of welfare recipients. But the picture has changed again, because now the government has decided that all these people have to get jobs and "give up" their welfare payments. They will be pulling the plug. As of April, next year. these welfare recipients had better be productive, wage-earning citizens. Their meager benefits are going away.

Wow! What next? Well, that's where the important work that you are helping fund comes in. Over 40% of the customers who come into United Community Centers' Wesley Center have less than an eighth-grade education. How can these women go out and get jobs when they can barely read and write? The state of Texas has one of the highest rates of illiterate welfare recipients in the nation. And, these welfare recipients read at the lowest level of literacy.

Mission institutions across the United States, which you support, like United Community Centers, are immersed in this race against the clock to help these women become literate by offering Adult Basic Education, English lessons, workplace literacy, job skills training, and life skills training. Life skills training is necessary because, remember, many of these women did not grow up in a household where people got up and went to work every day. They don't know how to allow enough time to get up, feed the kids, get themselves and the children ready for work and school, then get to work and school if the car doesnit won't run what do they do. They need to be taught time management. These women have to be provided with safe, affordable childcare with people they can trust to love and nurture their children. They need  someone to take their children to school in the morning and be assured that they will be there in the afternoon to pick them up. They need someone to talk to the teacher if there is a problem and be the liaison between the parent and teacher. These children need tutoring because they didn't learn their ABC's before they started school. They don't have parents who can help with homework. They don't have access to computers at home. Most of these women cannot take time off from work for meetings at schools; if they take time off from work, their paychecks would be docked, or they could lose their jobs. Many employers still think "it's easy to find a replacement" for a person at that skill level.

Helping these women become independent means giving them access to banks, teaching them how to open and maintain a checking account, giving them financial literacy. At United Community Centers, with the help of the General Board of Global Ministries, women can become an IDA account holder. This is an Individual Development Account, and in addition to offering financial literacy classes and workshops, clients who deposit $30 of earned income every month for 3 years qualify for a 2-for-l match. For every $30 the account holder deposits, United Community Centers deposits $60. So, in three years, a woman can accum1iate as much as $3,500. She can watch her savings grow, she can see how interest accrues, and she can develop good savings habits that can really change her life. The money can be used for down payment on a home, purchase of a reliable automobile, advanced education, or to start a small business. Homes create stable families. Cars mean transportation to work. Education means finding a better job and being a better parent. New businesses grow the economy. To qualify to withdraw the savings, the account holder must take specialized classes for her designated purchase. If she wants to buy a house, she has to have a class on homeownership so she will know how to maintain her home, how to pay taxes, and how much insurance she will need. All these things are possible because she has learned how to establish credit and has gained access to the traditional financial institutions that the rest of us rely upon.

For more than 92 years, United Community Centers, Inc. has dedicated itself to providing comprehensive social services to economically disadvantaged children, at-risk youth, unemployed and underemployed men and women, families in crisis, and the elderly. UCC offers a package of services unlike any other provider in Fort Worth. Children come into the agency's facilities as early as four years of age for before and-after school care and assets-development. Next, the child moves into the pre-Awareness Changes Tomorrow (ACT III) group where self-esteem and self-confidence are encouraged along with basic skills training and tutoring. Next ACT III youth are engaged in basic skills reinforcement, academic and job-skills training, leadership development, and character building. Services are extended to adults of all ages, even to the elderly, and include emergency assistance, groceries, clothing, Adult Basic Education, computer skills training, Individual Development Accounts, and prescription assistance. All programs emphasize enabling individuals and families to become self-sufficient. It is only through this focus on strengthening the entire family that women can achieve a life free of welfare dependency. And because of UMW you all have helped to make this possible. Thank you. Muchas Gracias.

E-mail Contact: kmartini@gbgm-umc.org