Impact Broward
a Community Conversation
From Poverty to Self-Sufficiency
October 29, 2009
"It's a forum to develop new ideas, collaborate on them, learn from each other and help the community. I was honored to be a part of it."
That's how Senator Chris Smith summed up the successful first Impact Broward: a Community Conversation. A panel of local experts explained with startling statistics, compelling stories and first-hand accounts how the economic downfall is permanently changing our community.
Poverty, homelessness and unemployment have grown dramatically in Broward County over the last year, placing huge burdens on groups dealing with these issues, a panel of nonprofit experts told a recent gathering of local leaders at the Community Foundation of Broward.
One solution, all agreed, was a more unified, strategic approach to assistance that combines long-term answers like education and job retraining with more immediate needs involving affordable housing, daycare services and healthcare.
But the need is severe in Broward County, and because of cutbacks in programs at the local and state level, more private funding and leadership is necessary. Many area nonprofits dealing with issues like homeless families have seen a doubling in their caseloads in just a year.
Entitled “From Poverty to Self-Sufficiency,” the Oct. 29th event was the latest in the Foundation’s Impact Broward Community Conversations, a series of forums designed to highlight key issues facing the community. The goal is to increase engagement among citizens in the county’s many communities and to spur innovative thinking, explained Foundation President/CEO Linda Carter.
“Our vision for a stronger community is that people feel engaged and interact with each other,” said Carter. “We want them to feel empowered to make a difference. And oftentimes it’s a matter of having the right information to make informed choices.”
Smith, who moderated the discussion, said he wanted to see greater collaboration emerge between the policy makers, academics, nonprofit heads and Foundation donors who make up the Community Conversations audience.
The panelists -- Fran Esposito, Executive Director, Broward Partnership for the Homeless; Mason Jackson, Executive Director, WorkForce One; and Dr. Brenda LaVar, Acting Assistant Director of the Broward County Division of the Family Success Administration – said that the recent recession had created a new population of poor that many agencies had never dealt with before. These are men and women from the working middle classes who had lost jobs in local businesses that weren’t coming back.
“Right now we’re seeing a whole cadre of people who are coming in who felt they did everything right,” said LaVar, of the Family Success Administration. “Then they lose a job, lose their savings and everything comes apart.”
That sets off a vicious cycle in which homes are lost in foreclosure, health care disappears, and the means to find another job are more difficult to obtain. Single-parent families are especially taxed since, without adequate childcare, they have even less time to look for a new job. Depression can set it, and suddenly unemployment becomes mental health issue, too, LaVar explained.
“What does it take to make a person whole in terms of self-sufficiency? We know that education is first,” LaVar said. “We know that on the job training makes a difference. Self-sufficiency is a whole constellation. It means your child is getting health care. You are getting health care. It means you have daycare.”
Jackson advised the audience not to view the statistical picture of poverty in Broward County as fully accurate. It’s likely a serious undercount of the true need. Unemployment statistics only count those actively seeking work, meaning that the true population of unemployed could be as much as 50 percent higher locally and nationwide.
The good news is that education works, he said, and that means better vocational education programs and retraining efforts can have a major impact.
“In December 2006, we had 23,000 unemployed people in Broward County. Now, we have 98,000,” said Jackson. “And the state just recently went over 1 million – for the first time ever."
But the 9.5 unemployment rate is not the same for all educational levels, he pointed out. Men and women with bachelor’s degrees only have a jobless rate of 4.9 percent, but that steadily increased among those with less education. The population of high school dropouts has an unemployment rate of 15 percent.
“What’s the most valuable resource, aside from funding that you can provide? The answer to that is you,” Esposito told the group. “Your time, your energy, your friends and your associates. Because poverty is about jobs, education and housing, and none of this can be provided by a community that isn’t compassionate.”
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News & Publications
November 6, 2009
New York Times
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