#RealCollege lessons learned and a call to action. Emmie's story.

This weekend I attended the #Real College convening with two of my most trusted allies at work. To say that the conference was great would be a gross understatement. It is rare at this stage of my career to not only learn new information, but to hear a clear call to action you feel compelled to follow immediately. I was moved by Dr. DeRionne Pollard's challenge to show "raw courage" and be willing to experience "good trouble" in the name of making sure basic needs issues don't prevent us unleashing the talent of ALL our students. I met several of my heroes from Amarillo College and made many connections I hope will lead to future work together. In addition, I spent some time in a breakout session with Mark Horvath of Invisible People and even got to talk with him personally later (I might have followed him out of the bathroom, glad he didn't mind), and that conversation led me back to a story from campus last week.

Emmie and the author

I've shared before about our snacks in the lobby (Food for Thought), which our students now affectionately refer to as "The Bowl." The Bowl has taught us so much about community and connection, and false perceptions of scarcity, but those lessons can be shared another time. Last week, The Bowl taught me about homelessness and heroism. Emmie (pictured with me to the right) is a full-time student at Western. She is working her way back from incarceration and participates in our Project PROVEN, a poverty-informed initiative that will get its own story here some day. I have noticed Emmie at The Bowl pretty regularly and even got a chance to have a brief conversation with her last week over some snacks. But I didn't know the whole story... Emmie's Case Manager, Jessica from PROVEN, pulled me into her office one day saying she had a story I needed to hear. Emmie had come into her office and asked "are those snacks really just for anyone?" Jessica assured her they were, and they are a simple act of hospitality. Emmie shared she was afraid she was taking too much, and Jessica assured her we have no limits or rules on guests eating food. Emmie's next response stopped me in my tracks. She said, "Good, because I stop there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (her class days). Before those snacks, I was only eating on Tuesdays..." I didn't know, but Emmie is homeless and going to school full-time. Our trail mix and granola bars are helping her make it through every week of school. What an audacious act of courage (credit to Dr. Pollard) it is to choose education in that situation.

Fast Forward to #RealCollege in Philadelphia a week later, a week I had spent much of thinking about Emmie and people like her. I had not been to Philadelphia before and at least the part of downtown I stayed in was a sea of homelessness compared to the relatively bucolic city of La Crosse where I live. Each night as my team and I walked back to our hotel, we saw countless people living on the streets, and it was deeply affecting. We each reacted in our own way, but it's hard to know what to do. Saturday night was the worst as we watched people (including us) walk past people asleep on sidewalks we couldn't be sure were alive, dead, or in need of medical attention. In fact, it was so overwhelming my Associate Dean was in angry tears by the time we returned. She was angry, and frustrated, and sad at the world, at herself, and at all of us that could be doing more to help. She said if we saw people lying unresponsive on sidewalks in any other situation, we would call 911, but we and all the others, just kept walking. No one knew what to do, and I couldn't stop thinking of Emmie and other students like her.

And then on Sunday, I met Mark Horvath and listened to his stories of engaging the homeless. It made me think of an earlier presentation by Dr. Karen Stout of Achieving the Dream, who told us we needed to establish Collective Impact models with our colleges at the center. She and the folks from Amarillo reinforced the role of the Community College has changed and whether we choose to be or not, we are in the social service business now, especially if we want to honor our open access promise and change the economic future of people, their families, our businesses, and our communities. When you combined our Saturday night experience with all this learning, I knew I needed to ask Mark what any of us could be doing, right now. Well as I mentioned, we managed to cross paths exiting the restroom, and he was incredibly generous in sharing what he knew, which was as simple as engaging people and asking what they need. He said he often starts those conversations by just having new socks (aka Freshies) to give to someone who might need them. And now I had an idea...

"Our inability to relate to homelessness is our biggest barrier to ending it." That's what Mark said at his presentation, and it made me think of Emmie, but it also made me think about the park across from our administrative center. There are a number of people there on any given day who are living there. No one on campus seems to know how to react, but I don't think anyone has gone the engagement route. So on behalf of heroes like Emmie, when I get home today I'm going to buy a bunch of socks and put them in my work bag. And tomorrow, I'm going to stop in the park and start the conversation. A poverty-informed approach doesn't throw people away and believes EVERYONE has the right to a future. It's time to put my money where my keyboard is. Stay tuned!