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Items of Interest . . .

 

 

 

  • This January 2019 article in The Washington Post illustrates the work of our grantee, Healthy Babies Project (GT grantee, 2017), through the personal story of one of its residents. The nonprofit rents a one-level brick house in Northeast Washington which houses young mothers and their babies, and teaches skills to more than 300 young women and girls annually in the District, including pregnancy prevention classes for teenagers and parenting classes for baffled new mothers. The landlord now wants to sell the house, and the organization is trying to raise money to buy it.
    www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/in-northeast-washington-a-home-for-young-moms-and-their-babies-tries-to-stay-put/2019/01/01

  • This Sept 11, 2018 article from the New York Times provides a detailed and compelling account of how employment alone has no longer become the solution to poverty in the US.  The author, Matthew Desmond (winner of 2017 Pulitzer Prize for his nonfiction work, Evicted) uses one case study of a family trapped in poverty and homelessness despite the single mother's efforts at a minimum-wage job while struggling to raise teen children.  Desmond explains that the myth of the nonworking, idle poor is a persistent influence in today's "reform" of the social safety net.   www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html

  • This July 2018 graphic arts-style article provides a very informative (and visually captivating) summary of food poverty and the very modest, but critical, benefits provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps).  These benefits, which the Administration wants to further tighten, amount to only $1.86 per person per meal. 

SNAP benefits add up to $1.86 per person, per meal. Here's what that looks like.
Read More: www.citylab.com/design/2018/07/how-the-other-half-eats/566411

  • This July 2018 blog from the WRAG (Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers) explains that as foundations and corporations strive to have greater impact on social problems, their philanthropic strategies have moved from being responsive to more proactive.  No longer is it sufficient to simply support nonprofits doing good work.  Today's funders are looking to invest in solutions NOT organizations. 
    dailywrag.com/2018/07/19/todays-funders-are-looking-to-invest-in-solutions-not-organizations/

 

  • Kids are major beneficiaries of most safety-net programs for food, housing, and healthcare (e.g., 44% of food stamp recipients are children). The Administration's plans to cut spending on poverty means cutting spending on kids—a downward trend that is already happening....Children will receive just one cent of every dollar from the projected $1.6 trillion increase in federal spending authorized under the Trump administration, while children’s share of the budget will drop from 9.4 percent to 6.9 percent. See: www.citylab.com/equity/2018/07/the-war-on-poverty-isnt-over-and-kids-are-losing/564902

 

  • Poverty is moving to the suburbs. The war on poverty hasn’t followed. 

Moving out of the city used to be the American Dream. Now it can make life harder. See: 

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/poverty-is-moving-to-the-suburbs-the-war-on-poverty-isnt-keeping-up/2018/04/05/cd4bc770-3823-11e8-9c0a-85d477d9a226_story.html

 

 

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