Engaging the Poor and People of Color in Organized Service: Challenges and Opportunities
Abstract of Findings: During the 2008 National Conference on Volunteering and Service sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Points of Light Institute/HandsOn Network an Immersion Learning Session on Engaging the Poor and People of Color in Organized Service: Challenges and Opportunities was held. The highlights below represent major points of presentation and discussion.
Highlights
Amos: “We enter these communities with the preconceived notion that help is needed – that service projects can help create a better life for these residents – but not once do we ever stop to understand or educate ourselves about these communities.”
Jackson: “The question is how do we give AmeriCorps “streetcred” or as we say in a scholarly way, how do we build the cultural capital of AmeriCorps in the communities we want to serve?”
Yates: “Poor people and people of color volunteer because, beyond getting something done, they want to change things.”
Stoneman: “The young people are looking for something but it has to have – the power of love coupled with the power of opportunity in a safe and caring environment that gives them a chance to believe in something.”
Carmona: “AmeriCorps NCCC has definitely shown me a brighter future. I’ve been up and down many times probably more down than up but now I am able to look past what’s next to a future. AmeriCorps has broadened my horizons.”
Mazyck: “We want to encourage communities of color to promote these opportunities as important and necessary personal and professional development experiences that will help prepare young people for future leadership and community involvement, as well as personally enrich their lives.”
The exchange between our panelists and conferees was far ranging and exhaustive of many of the issues thought to be important to the challenge of engaging these populations.
In this writing, we organized our recap into three major overarching themes that were woven throughout our discussions: (1) the need for sober assessments before going into poor and minority communities; (2) the importance of entering these communities with sensitivity and respect; and (3) the necessity of being aggressive and personal in our recruitment strategies. From within these broad themes we can extract several recommendations:
- Recognize who we, the sponsors, are.
- Get to know the people we wish to engage.
- Be careful about the application of best practices research.
- Allow communities to take ownership of change strategies.
- Consider principles of engagement like authenticity, innovation, readiness and collaboration.
- Recruit participants by crafting/sending an empowering message of community change and/or personal development.
- Build relationships and trust
Four core concepts for engaging the poor and people of color. Panelist Armando Rayo shared his experience working with the poor, Latino and African-American neighborhoods of Austin, TX. From his remarks we extract four principles that may be useful to engaging these communities. Each offers us an opportunity to demonstrate respect for and sensitivity to communities and their residents.
The first principle is authenticity. Residents need to feel that it is they and their interests that are being served and that the sponsors are driven more by the prospects of the community’s success than their program’s success.
Panelist Armando Rayo remarked:
“This means engaging with and listening to neighborhood residents –building real relationships that can propel and sustain the work. It’s not about bringing a bunch of volunteers into the neighborhood from outside. It’s about bringing the community itself together around its concerns and mobilizing them to address them”.
Authenticity also means being there for the long haul. Not every initiative will meet with immediate success. And it is likely that some efforts will result in frustration for sponsors and members alike. Residents need to know that our commitment is not conditioned on immediate success but on long term results.
A second principle is innovation. Rayo suggests that we have to be innovative in our approaches – that best practice literature can be helpful but we need to be deliberate about adopting only those practices and lessons that can be adapted to our communities. Programs that are effective in the Bronx are not guaranteed to work in Austin.
An example of adaptation came from Byron Amos’ work in the Vine City community in Atlanta. “In 2005, along with help from the Mayor’s Office of Weed and Seed, we started the Vine City Parent Patrol. We placed ten residents on the streets to watch our children go to and from school. We created safety routes for our youth. We gave them radios and reflective vests so they could be readily identified. To this day, the Vine City Parent Patrol is a group that we can call upon for any service project as well as for neighborhood advocacy.
The secret to the success of this program is that the parents who participated were the ones who were already walking their kids to and from school. The only thing we had to do was to organize them on their level so they could continue to do the things that they had done daily .And now, they have been featured in several magazines and web cast specials and they have been recognized by the federal office of Weed and Seed as, that’s right, you guessed it, a 'best practice'”
Still a third principle is one of readiness. Rayo suggests that we have to be sensitive to where each community is if we hope to have an impact. Our enthusiasm for working for change in poor and minority communities must not overreach their capacity for action.
He commented:
“We have learned this approach from The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation which is a national organization that helps people imagine and act for the public good. Their work looks at community rhythms – where communities are in relation to social organization and social cohesion and how they move forward together around issues. And if your community is not in a place where it can move this needle forward, then it’s not going to happen no matter what model you use or how hard you try.”
The last principle is collaboration. Community work needs partnerships not only with government and mainstream nonprofits but also with the faith community. Rayo reminds us, for instance, that churches have constituencies and in poor communities these are usually the neighborhood folks. If we attend church fundraisers, for example, we can engage neighborhood people who have already demonstrated their willingness to volunteer by being there every Sunday working at the lunch tables. Rayo suggests that, if we don’t get into the community to engage these kinds of people in these
settings, we will miss important opportunities to connect with them.
John Jackson reminds us that churches are also a major financial asset base:
“Another part of our key community resource is the faith community. People of color, and particularly African-Americans, give. In fact, they (African-Americans) tend to give at higher rates largely for two reasons: because they have higher rates of church attendance than other groups; and because collection plates in church are the most prevalent vehicles of individual philanthropy in the U.S. The challenge is tapping into those churches to create community service opportunities. If we attempt to go into poor neighborhoods without connecting with the faith communities that serve them, we’ll be neglecting important resources.”
Presenters
Six panelists, who have extensive experience working with service organizations and with residents of poor and minority communities, were invited to share their observations about: how service and volunteering actually manifest themselves in these communities; and about the challenges and opportunities involved in recruiting and sustaining poor and minority residents in service.
- Merlene Mazyck has served with the Corporation for National & Community Service AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) program since 1994 and in 2004 became the director of the program. Merlene has worked in the youth development and service fields most of her professional career in various positions in both the non-profit and public sectors.
- Michael Carmona is a 22 year old New York City native and a member of AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. He graduated from high school in 2004 and studied briefly at Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida. During his tenure with the NCCC, Mike has served: with the St. Bernard Project in Louisiana coordinating the work of other volunteers on housebuilds; with the Crown King Fire Department in Arizona removing hazardous wildfire fuels and constructing defensible space around homes; and with the Bay‐Waveland Area Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi building homes.
- Byron D. Amos is the CEO of Capacity Builders, Inc., a community‐based advocacy organization in the Vine City neighborhood of Atlanta, GA. He has been involved in community organizing for over 20 years – building strong collaborations with elected officials, educational institutions, businesses and the philanthropic community – and has several awards for his community service and leadership.
- Armando Rayo is the Director of Hands On Central Texas, a program of United Way Capital Area where he is responsible for a project called Culture Connections, an engagement initiative that focuses on communities of color and low‐income communities around Austin, TX. Armando is a member of the Greater Austin Forum for Diversity and Inclusion. He serves as the board president for the Texas Association of Volunteer Centers and has been involved in the national Study Circles training, Facing Racism. Armando is a contributing writer for GoodCause Magazine and Austin American‐Statesman. He has been featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy and NPR’s MarketPlace.
- Dorothy Stoneman is the President and Founder of YouthBuild USA, the national nonprofit intermediary and support center for more than 225 YouthBuild programs, and she is a leader in advocating for youth engagement in civil society. She is chairman of the National YouthBuild Coalition, with more than 1,000 member organizations in 43 states, Washington D.C., and the Virgin Islands. She has served on many prestigious boards and panels and is the author or editor of numerous practical handbooks regarding how to run independent community schools, parentcontrolled day care centers, leadership development programs for youth, and YouthBuild programs.
- Garland Yates is Senior Fellow at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. Formerly, as a Senior Associate, Garland was responsible for managing the Rebuilding Communities Initiative (RCI), a comprehensive community initiative, and related grants. Garland was later responsible for managing several Making Connections sites, a successor comprehensive community initiative to RCI. As a Senior Fellow, Garland is exploring techniques and strategies that build the capacity of low income communities to develop and guide indigenous comprehensive community rebuilding initiatives.
- John Jackson is President of the Schott Foundation for Public Education where he leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a high quality public education for all young people regardless of race or gender. Dr. Jackson previously served as the NAACP Chief Policy Officer and as the NAACP's National Director of Education where he worked with NAACP affiliates in several states including Florida, California, New York, and Maryland on a variety of initiatives to further opportunities for children of color. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Race, Gender, and Public Policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education.
Written by by James B. Hyman, Ph.D.
