Project PROVEN

One of the guiding lights of our growth to poverty informed practice is Dr. Donna Beegle. I was fortunate to attend a training Dr. Beegle put on in June and left with her book See Poverty... be The Difference.

We also have a trained Beegle Poverty Coach on campus, but more on her later. In fact, I started writing these articles right after returning from that training because I wanted to document our transformation and the concrete action that Dr. Beegle helped inspire. One of the best things about Dr. Beegle's book is the practical list of recommendations for leaders, teachers, and others. Her guidance to make sure we understand leadership for serving people in the crisis of poverty requires flexible, comprehensive approaches, and a long-term commitment to daily focus on the vision of helping people succeed made me think of the best and most poverty informed project at Western; Project PROVEN.

PROVEN is a re-entry from incarceration project we started with a Department of Education grant in 2013, one of three in the nation (and the only one in a county jail). It started as a demonstration project to implement a new reentry model with education at the center (shown to the right),

but it has grown into a comprehensive anti-poverty program that has taught us a lot about becoming poverty informed. PROVEN is a program that partners with multiple entities in our community to provide a comprehensive and holistic support network for participants/students. PROVEN provides meaningful coursework both in the jail and on campus that can be taken seamlessly between the two classrooms and along with strong case management, propels people toward a stable life and their dreams. Not only does this meet Dr. Beegle's guideline on using community partners, it honors our premise that we do not throw people away in our community. To quote Dr. Beegle "People living in poverty are not deficient and have tremendous potential when given adequate support." That statement might define our evolution. That statement also begins our fight to show people what "adequate" is. But more about PROVEN...

Case management is an essential feature of PROVEN. We believe that relationships are critical for working with individuals afflicted by poverty and having a case manager that you meet in the jail and see on campus or vice versa is part of that. Help is normal and available where you are, not where we expect you to be. We have exceptional staff leading this project and my role as Project Director has gotten more tangential over time. However I stated regularly in 2013, one of our markers for success would be when we discussed class locations for the college and "the jail" just rolled off the tongue as one of them. I think we have achieved that goal. A poverty informed program doesn't care where you start, it only cares about helping you start. So, while in the last year our division has adopted the mantra "every barrier that CAN BE removed, SHOULD BE removed", we have been practicing that in PROVEN for years. The case manager(s) have also been our eyes into how our policies align for people in poverty. PROVEN is a constant lens into how we unintentionally erect obstacles that don't need to be there or accidentally put us in a mode of deciding who "deserves" help. Those moments are red flags that we are getting it wrong.

Dr. Beegle challenges us to reflect regularly on what we are doing and does it work or not work for people in poverty conditions. PROVEN has a weekly staffing that includes project leaders, case managers, and instructors to answer exactly those questions and to make sure we are doing everything we can for participants. It is a group that embodies my ideal of adult education: "Optimism and Amnesia." For many years, I have told our staff across our coursework and programs that we must unconditionally believe in our students' ability to succeed and when they don't succeed, forget about it and believe again. That is optimism and amnesia, and it's not completely poverty informed, but it's a heck of a place to start. So PROVEN is a beautiful microcosm of a comprehensive poverty-informed program. That means figuring out where it fits on campus can be a challenge. College campuses tend to have isolated "silos" and PROVEN is clearly "unsiloed", as is poverty informed practice in my opinion. Is PROVEN an educational program, or an adult education transition program, or a retention effort, or a community vitalization program, or maybe the beginning of a non-profit agency? The answer to those question is "yes" with the possible exception of the last one since we believe being at the college is part of the "secret sauce" that makes PROVEN go. We direct students to many of the same services and partners that a Human Services agency would, but we do it by stealth as part of going to college. The stigma is reduced. A poverty informed practice suspends judgment and we do that relentlessly.

So, I'm not just a do-gooder. Programs like PROVEN are a great investment and the resources allocated to it pay off with a huge multiplier effect. Students in the County Jail will be released, and they will be our friends and neighbors. It is in everyone's best interest to help them succeed emotionally, socially, and economically. Investments made in these students (who are motivated and in college) reduce recidivism and give choices that move people from the crisis of poverty. That benefits everyone. I'll leave you with the story of Jordan. Jordan had struggled with addiction and had been incarcerated multiple times. He was ready to make a change, but he also met Tonya (project coordinator and Beegle certified poverty coach) and the staff from PROVEN. They approached him with a strengths based approach and unconditional belief. If you have time please watch the 4 minute video of Jordan winning a 2016 Job Honor Award. You can see the cross-functional approach, the respect for Jordan's strengths and motivation, and the belief and love (yes love) PROVEN staff brought to his life. Jordan says one minute into the video that Project PROVEN "saved (his) life", but in reality he showed us the way to do what we needed to do. Jordan's video