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A New Jobs Initiative Gains Converts

 

New York Times

 

May 3, 2010

A profile of Put Illinois to Work, a statewide jobs initiative administered by Heartland Alliance.

 

From New York Times:

Amid the hum of a South Side commercial laundry, two young women fed newly cleaned aprons into a machine that had eight rollers rotating slowly over a large metal plate.

At the other end were colleagues who accepted and folded the ironed linens to be delivered to hotels, restaurants and banquet halls. For the two women, Kiana Miles and Elana Williams, the machine and its unceasing routine are engines for a fresh start in life.

Ms. Miles, 19 and a single mother, and Ms. Williams, 24 and recently homeless, just finished a second week at the DeNormandie Towel and Linen Supply Company. They’re delighted to be employed, with Ms. Miles willing to rise at 5:15 a.m. and take two long bus rides to start work at 7.

They benefit from Put Illinois to Work, a program announced by Gov. Patrick J. Quinn last week amid skimpy news media coverage at odds with the state’s economic travail. The effort, which started April 1, involves $215 million in federal stimulus dollars funneled through the existing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund.

So far, it suggests efficiency and creativity by a much-maligned state administration. You can chide Governor Quinn for not getting any traction for his tax program, but you’ve got to give him credit for getting some people back to work.

The state fulfilled a 20-percent match requirement by having employers provide in-kind contributions in training. In return for the federal government’s picking up the $10-an-hour salary, employers provide oversight and instruction in “soft skills” like timeliness and collegiality.

It’s not the traditional work force training program — aimed at creating higher-skilled workers — which has an uneven history. This one deals narrowly with an economic emergency and singles out those dependent on child care; seeks to employ 20,000 people statewide by mid-June; plans active outreach, including through churches; and uses subcontractor groups to provide site visits.

The money runs out on Sept. 30. Then tax credits kick in for employers who keep the new workers full-time. Even if the workers are cut loose, the hope is that they will have gained new skills.

“I’ve been in this field for 32 years, and this is unprecedented,” said Joseph A. Antolin, vice president of the Heartland Alliance. The group is a service-based nonprofit that focuses on economic, housing, health and legal issues for the needy and is the central administrative coordinator of the program.

“There’s little bureaucracy, and this gets people back to work quickly,” Mr. Antolin said of the program.

John Dernis, co-owner of the family-run Michael’s Fresh Market, appreciates the overriding need. In February, Mr. Dernis received 2,500 applications for 80 jobs at a new store in Downers Grove. He will hire five to seven workers under the needy families program, to stock shelves and work as cashiers.

“I think this is a great idea,” he said, and praised the state’s performance so far.

Mr. Dernis raised the prospect that some of the hires could work out so well that “we’ll train them to be butchers, managers, whatever.”

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Commission Hears Residents’ Struggles to Overcome Poverty

 

Williamson County Daily Republican

 

April 9, 2010

Testimony for the Commission on the Elimination of Poverty, which hosted its final hearing to collect ideas for a plan to cut the state’s extreme poverty rate in half by 2015.

 

From Williamson County Daily Republican:

The wisdom of Madison County resident Christy Pace caught the attention of a state poverty elimination panel Thursday night.

“Those who start in poverty stay in poverty when they don’t have some kind of success to pull them out,” Pace told members of the Heartland Alliance’s Commission on the Elimination of Poverty.

Pace told her story of growing up poor and still living in poverty while fighting mental illness and caring for her children and mother.

“I’ve always worked hard, but it’s not enough,” Pace said of trying to survive on less than $12,000 annually. “For people in poverty, empowerment needs to be stressed. Get them to say, ‘hey, I can do this.'”

Pace and others shared testimony for the CEP, which hosted its final hearing to collect ideas for a plan to cut the state’s extreme poverty rate in half by 2015. According to CEP data from 2007, 667,500 live below 50 percent of the federal poverty threshold. An additional 858,600 Illinoisans live 50-100 percent of the poverty mark.

All told, 1.5 million residents—11.9 percent—live in poverty as of 2007. Estimates for 2009 added another 405,000 to the poverty line and 257,000 to extreme poverty.

Commission member Eithne McMenamin, a senior policy analyst for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, noted poverty stretched past common conceptions of the poor population.

“It’s not necessarily a bootstraps issue—a change in work ethic,” she said. “How can we address the people who are in the shadows of society?”

Terry Solomon, executive director of the Illinois African-American Family Commission, said a combination of lost jobs and wages endangered family life. She cited Centralia as one example of lost industry hurting families and the community.

“As businesses leave, it creates a void and there are no resources,” Solomon said. “A family who doesn’t have the income to take care of basic needs is more likely to abuse children, have mental issues or self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs.”

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Commission Hopes To Eliminate Poverty

 

WSIL-TV

 

April 9, 2010

According to the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty, nearly 700 thousand people in Illinois were living in extreme poverty in 2007, that’s before the recession hit.

 

From WSIL-TV:

A family of four making less than 10 thousand dollars a year is classified as being in extreme poverty. According to the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty, nearly 700 thousand people in Illinois were living in extreme poverty in 2007, that’s before the recession hit.

The group held its third of three statewide hearings Thursday night at John A. Logan College in Carterville. The commission hears from people who have been impacted by poverty, or who have worked with those struggling to make ends meet. After hearing from the public the group will put together a plan to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

“People are eager for Illinois to invest in solutions to poverty, that is a key area of public policy concern,” said Sid Mohn, President of the Heartland Alliance and Co-Chair of the commission.

The commission was formed by the general assembly in 2008. Its goal is to have a strategic plan finished by mid-August. The commission is made up of 26 people including lawmakers, poverty advocates and people who have faced poverty themselves.

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Valpo Native Travels Across The Globe

Valpo Native Travels Across The Globe

The Chronicle

 

April 7, 2010

Profile of Shea Anderson, a Heartland Alliance mental health practitioner who volunteered in Haiti after the January 12 earthquake.

 

From The Chronicle:

 

If there was an earthquake in a country halfway across the world and we were asked to go help the victims, the majority of us would have to think for a minute before we decided if we would volunteer to go, or not. The thought of aftershocks and putting ourselves in danger would be looming in the back of our minds. That is the way most of us think, but it is not the way Shea Anderson thinks. When the agency she works for asked for staff volunteers to travel to Haiti in order to assist the survivors directly after the earthquake this year, she didn’t have to think twice. She submitted her application to go to Haiti without batting an eye.

 

Anderson said, “Since I was young, I’ve always been drawn to different cultures, experiences, and I’ve always loved to travel. Through traveling, I was drawn to international social work. I went into it to try to make a change. I feel a natural drive to do something about social issues, especially issues that are that of refugees because their need is on a different level than the need of most Americans.”

This social traveler works for Heartland Alliance (H.A.). H.A. is a non-profit service-based human rights organization that was founded in 1888. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and is the largest human rights organization in the United States of America. H.A.’s mission is to respond to human needs of vulnerable populations through the offering of comprehensive services and the promotion of permanent solutions that lead to a more just society.

Anderson is a Valparaiso-native who graduated from Valparaiso High School and ventured on to graduate from Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She then gained her master’s degree in social work from the University of Chicago and began serving on the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. All of this social work has led to her now being a mental health clinical practitioner for her current organization, a position in which she provides mental health services in the Cabrini Green housing complex in Chicago. She assists individuals and groups in her daily work to help that particular population with the barriers they face that are blocking them from attaining self-sufficiency. After the earthquake that hit Haiti’s capitol Port-au-Prince, on January 12, 2010, her job description suddenly changed.

A young woman who has dedicated her life to social justice, she jumped on a plane with a few other representatives from H.A., to aid the surviving victims of the earthquake. She said, “My role in Haiti was to provide psycho-social support in one of the camps alongside a medical team. A lot of people who were coming to the clinic were coming with earthquake-related injuries, but soon people started coming with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms such as headaches, and feelings as if the earth was shaking even when it wasn’t. We taught them coping skills and how to pool their resources with other survivors.”

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Partnerships Making a Difference in Haiti

U.S. Department of State Official Blog

 

April 2, 2010

Profile of Heartland Alliance’s anti-trafficking work in Haiti.

 

From U.S. Department of State Official Blog:

This week, leaders from around the world, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, convened in New York City for the International Donors’ Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti.

With an eye toward the partnerships in New York, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking Persons would like for you to meet a key on-the-ground partner and grant recipient, Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, a non-governmental organization that took swift and efficient action in the days following the January 12 earthquake. These efforts focused on providing social service professionals to team up with the Brigade for the Protection of Minors to ensure that Haitian children are not being trafficked across the border. From Heartland Alliance’s team working on-the-ground:

“At the Ouanaminthe border crossing in the countryside of Northeast Haiti, Heartland Alliance teams have worked hard with very limited support and infrastructure to identify children at risk of being trafficked.

“On March 10, our team of Child Protection Officers found a five year-old girl walking alone on the street. Despite efforts by our team to softly ask her questions, the young girl was too nervous to speak. She only responded that her name was Bebe. Concerned for the young girl’s safety, our Child Protection Officers got her to the closest interim care facility provided by Catholic Relief Services and announced a description of her on the local radio. Fortunately, not long after the call, her mother and father found her at the center. Our teams were ecstatic that they were able to reunify Bebe with her family, and are very motivated to continue their work.”

This is truly a success story for Bebe and her family. Yet, there are still more men, women, and children in Haiti — throughout the countryside and within the temporary camps — at risk of trafficking and exploitation. Thanks to key on-the-ground partnerships, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons continues its anti-trafficking efforts throughout Haiti.

As reflected in the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, child slavery under the “restavek” system was a grave problem in Haiti even before the earthquake. This is a critical need not only for resources but also for modern statues to make labor and sex trafficking illegal. The United States stands ready to assist the Government of Haiti to “build back better” in this effort.

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Separated Children in Haiti Often Not Welcome Home

Separated Children in Haiti Often Not Welcome Home

Associated Press

 

March 31, 2010

Many challenges face aid groups like Heartland Alliance in reuniting families in Haiti.

 

From Associated Press:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Stranded since the earthquake, 9-year-old Ana toes the dusty concrete outside her orphanage and tells a social worker she wants to go back to live with her half-sister. Within hours, the aid worker hits pay dirt, finding the adult sister in a sprawling shantytown.

But there’s a problem. The sister, an impoverished woman with two children of her own, was the one who dropped the girl at the orphanage in the first place.

“This is going to be difficult,” sighed Mario Marcellus, a Haitian caseworker for World Vision — one of five international aid groups working to trace children living in orphanages or homeless camps since the earthquake and return them to their families.

The aid groups have already found 700 children they believe were separated from their families by the earthquake, and they expect the number to rise dramatically because of a new hot line set up to report cases of separated children.

The work is tedious, especially for younger children who can’t give phone numbers or details of their families in a city where hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes into makeshift camps. And too often, days of sleuthing lead not to joyful reunions but to parents and guardians too overwhelmed to take the children back.

 

The smallest aid can make a difference.

Ramsey Ben-Achour, the Haiti director for Heartland Alliance, another of the five groups under UNICEF, said he met one man who did not want to take two of his children home from a field hospital. He had two other children, his wife died in the earthquake and their house collapsed. But after the aid group gave him two mattresses, tent tarps and food rations, he agreed to take back the children.

“He thinks he’s going to be giving them a better life by leaving them there (at the hospital),” Ben-Achour said. “But what’s actually going to happen is they’re going to turn into street children, they’re going to end up trying to wash cars, they’re going to join gangs or be exploited sexually.”

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Community Food Security

 

Chicago Reader

 

March 12, 2010

Profile of Sarah Eichberger, Heartland Alliance’s refugee nutritionist, and her work with Bhutanese refugees.

 

From Chicago Reader:

Between 2007 and 2009, after 17 years of negotiations in which 100,000 Bhutanese lived as refugees in camps in Nepal, the UNHCR resettled more than 25,000 to third-party countries—including the U.S. So far about 600 have landed in Chicago—mostly concentrated in Albany Park, Edgewater, and Rogers Park.

I’m not going to detail the range of problems they, and other new refugees, are facing here (*you sigh with relief*). But let’s just say that, in the hierarchy of issues underfunded, understaffed resettlement agencies like the Heartland Alliance are dealing with, community food security—the access to affordable, nutritious, culturally appropriate food—isn’t high on the list.

That’s where Sarah Eichberger comes in. One of the only dieticians in the U.S. working specifically with refugee communities, her job is to assess the nutritional needs and risk factors of refugees like the three Bhutanese pictured above (who are, from left to right, Damber Pokhrel, Menuka Kafley, and Kushma Pokhrel). After 17 years in a refugee camp, living on fixed rations of beans, lentils, oil, salt, and grain, new arrivals to the U.S. are often anemic, with depressed immune systems and compound health problems. When they arrive stateside they can quickly develop hypertension and diabetes from an unfamiliar Western diet, and gain weight from a suddenly sedentary lifestyle.

Why are refugees at greater risk at being food insecure? For one, the language barrier makes it hard to get a job; many refugees are also unaware of additional food benefits they may be eligible for. They may not know they can use a Link card at the farmers’ market, for example, and—after years in the camps—they may have no idea how to budget. Thanks to years of harassment in Bhutan, refugees are likely to be mistrustful of government. “It was not a democratic country, so we could not speak freely out of fear of the government,” said Kushma Pokhrel, through interpreter Uma Devi Mishra (herself a Bhutanese refugee and now a community health worker with Heartland Alliance Health), at this morning’s Chicago Food Policy Summit panel on community food security, adding that there was widespread fear among Bhutanese in Chicago that the DHS office is really the police station, and that if they go in and ask for help they will get arrested.

Factor in a general lack of familiarity with common Western, industrialized foods, and things can get blackly comic. In one instance, said Eichberger, she discoverd a refugee client was using the cans she received from a food pantry to decorate her apartment—she didn’t realize they actually contained food.

To address all these needs, and foster connections between the Bhutanese community and their new neighbors, Eichberger started two community gardens, Ruby Garden in Rogers Park’s Schreiber Park and another in Chase Park, in Edgewater. And I have to say that while community gardening stories by definition tend to the warm and fuzzy, hearing the gardeners talk about the joy they’ve gotten from being able to grow fresh fruits and vegetables as they did years ago, before they fled Bhutan, was pretty heartwarming.

“It was so nice that we had the food grown by our own hands,” said Menuka Kafley. “I learn from my parents that everything we have we need to share with the family and the community, so in that way we share everything we grow in the garden. The old people in our community were so happy to see the fresh fruit and vegetables that we grew. The old people wanted to come join us and grow food.”

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Michigan Program Aims to Cut Budget by Putting Prisoners Back in Workforce

WNDU-TV

 

February 9, 2010

 

 

From WNDU-TV:

It’s no secret Michigan has some serious issues with money and crime.

That’s why the Wolverine State has launched a program that aims to address both of those problems in a way that might surprise you.

The Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative (MPRI) is a program designed to put prisoners back in the workforce.

For years, Michigan’s jails were filled to the brim.

“We went through that whole period of being tough on crime and we locked people up so Michigan ended up with one of the largest prison populations in the nation,” said Marvin Austin, Regional Director of the Heartland Alliance at the Opportunity Center in Benton Harbor.

That large prison population was often a burden budget-wise. Michigan’s cost of housing a prisoner is well above the national average of about $23,000, closer to $29,000 a year per prisoner.

“But the reality is most of the people that go to prison are going to come home sometime. So if you’re just locking people up you just wait until their sentence is done, you send them home, what you find is the cycle back into prison,” Austin said.

That’s why the state created the MPRI, which helps place ex-convicts who have served their time.

MPRI is administered through local sites like the Opportunity Center.

The Michigan Department of Corrections says that when MPRI started on a limited basis in 2005, 5 out of 10 prisoners returned to jail for new crimes within 3 years of being released.

Since then, that’s decreased to less than 4 out of 10.

So, the one-time cost of less than $2,000 Michigan spends on the re-entry program per prisoner at places like the Opportunity Center can help offset nearly $29,000 dollars annually; if it’s the difference between making a successful life outside of jail and recidivism.

“So literally everyone wins,” Austin said.

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Jobs Funding Is Set to Expire Before It Has Chance to Work

McClatchy News

 

February 2, 2010

 

 

From McClatchy News:

 

After a slow start, states struggling with record unemployment are scrambling to create and expand subsidized jobs programs that could employ thousands of poor adults, teens and even disabled people.

They’re running out of time, however, because nearly $4 billion in unspent stimulus money that would finance the efforts is set to expire on Sept. 30. As a result, many are pushing Congress to make the remaining funds available for another year.

Unless that happens, many states and local governments won’t have enough time to push new jobs programs through, and others will face cutbacks. In California, job programs in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties already have imposed cutoff dates for new job placements because of the Sept. 30 deadline.

“That’s been a concern from the start,” said Amy Rynell, the director of the Chicago-based National Transitional Jobs Network. “States are worried about ramping up, getting an infrastructure in place to launch a program and then, essentially, having the rug pulled out from under them in September.”

Without the extension, some of the most hard-to-employ, job-needy Americans will miss out on valuable work experience.

“It would just be unfortunate if we had the ability to use these funds for subsidized jobs and we just ran out of time, mostly for reasons beyond the states’ control. To lose that opportunity would really be tragic,” said Sheri Steisel, federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures. She’s lobbying Congress to include the funding extension in a jobs bill being crafted in the Senate.

The subsidized employment program pays most of a worker’s salary with state or federal funds for a specified length of time. This makes the worker less expensive and more attractive to prospective employers. Maryland’s program, which now employs 87 people statewide, placed Baltimore residents Jessica Distance and Eugene Laster in jobs with the state human resources department through June 2011.

The idea is to provide much-needed income now and work experience that could help them land permanent jobs later.

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Leading the Way

Affordable Housing Finance

 

February 1, 2010

Supportive housing arrives in Milwaukee

 

From Affordable Housing Finance :

 

MILWAUKEE–Prairie Apartments signals a new way of providing housing in the city.

The 24-unit development is one of the first permanent supportive-housing projects in Milwaukee.

Developed by Heartland Housing, Inc., of Chicago and The Guest House of Milwaukee, the project was completed in 2009, with 10 apartments reserved for individuals receiving support from the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division and five units for individuals coming out of homelessness. The remaining nine units are conventional affordable apartments for residents earning no more than 40 percent of the area median income.

While Milwaukee has had some housing linked with services, the programs were usually off-site. There were few, if any, projects that would be considered permanent supportive housing. That is permanent, independent housing with a full range of on-site programs for formerly homeless or other special-needs residents.

Prairie Apartments is helping change all that. It, along with United House Apartments by Cardinal Capital Management, Inc., and United Christian Church, which opened in 2008, is leading the way for supportive housing in Milwaukee.

The development of Prairie Apartments comes at a time when political support for this type of housing is rising. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative report exposed the troubling conditions for the mentally ill in the area and led to calls for change about two years ago.

Local city and county officials established the Special Needs Housing Action Team. One of the group’s recommendations was to establish a Supportive Housing Commission to encourage supportive- housing projects.

“Prairie Apartments has illustrated to the whole community how supportive housing can work and be successful,” says Leo Ries, executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC)- Milwaukee, who served on the Special Needs Housing Action Team.

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