It's an Emergency

As I've talked more and more about the idea of poverty informed practice, the concept has solidified around three ideas for me: Meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and supporting people just when they need it to accelerate their progress. I've been using a "poverty-informed" triangle for a while, but I updated it for my recent presentation at Achieving the Dream. Instead of talking about belonging and belief, I've boiled it down to creating environments where people don't just feel "welcome", but rather know they are wanted. It might seem small, but I think it's an important distinction. If you are somewhere in my age range, you can remember when we used the word "tolerance" a lot talking about diversity and inclusion. When I think about that word now, it seems so patronizing to tell someone you would "tolerate" their differences from you. My prediction is we will feel the same way about the word "welcome" before too long. So, our college is shifting from saying everyone is "welcome" to making sure students know they are "wanted", especially if they have felt unwanted elsewhere. It goes beyond poverty, but it is definitely informed by poverty. Students in the crisis of poverty often feel as if they aren't really supposed to be on campus; we are going to make sure they know it is exactly where we want them to be. And it has me thinking about other well-intentioned efforts many of us get wrong.

On the right side of the triangle is the idea of accelerating progress and supporting people "just-in-time." Much of the support is academic, but for me it broadens out to emergency support and basic needs support as well. I'm pleased to say there are campuses all over my state and the country with food pantries, grab-and-go food, and emergency funds to bridge the moments that prevent students from succeeding. But I also know we live in culture which wants to make poverty a character flaw instead of a context. And because this point of view is baked in deep, we inadvertently build systems in opposition to their stated purpose. Emergency funds are a great illustration of how we can get this wrong in my opinion. My college has a number of emergency funds, most of which existed before I arrived, but I am proud to say we built one in my first semester through an internal campaign as well. My only request was that it have the lowest possible barriers to student access. In essence, I wanted to say if a student asks for help, we believe them, and they get it. My history says this will be a difficult ask.

I have had to evolve on this issue over the years. 20 years ago, I bought into the idea of teaching "financial literacy" as a primary strategy to help students in financial crisis. I reject that idea now. I often see emergency funds coming out of offices with the term "financial literacy" attached to them. Let me be exceedingly clear, financial literacy works very well for people with money, but in my opinion, it is a bankrupt concept (no pun intended) for people in the crisis of poverty. You cannot manage or be literate about that which you do not have and implying that becoming more "literate" is the solution transfers the blame to the person in crisis. You can see the hard wiring of blaming the poor for being poor. So, when I see "emergency" funds coupled with financial counseling or with literacy workshops, I get kind of irate. This sort of "help" feels like lecturing a gunshot victim on ducking faster before you stop the bleeding. it's ineffective at best and damaging at worst. I know a number of students who stopped going for help because it felt dehumanizing. The irony is the people giving out the assistance genuinely see themselves as good people and helpers. I'm angry at myself for my attitude 20 years ago, and I'm angry at so many emergency aid programs today.

So, what do you do? Well Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab built the gold standard model with her Faculty and Students Together (FAST) fund, which essentially operates on a sort of "rich uncle" model, where help comes directly to students and does not impact their financial aid. I'm hoping the faculty union at my college will explore pursuing that model, but in the meantime there are ways to run your emergency funds better, even if they aren't gold standard. Number one, stop making people ask multiple times for help. Let's set the default to if you have the courage and vulnerability to ask, we just believe you and get you what you need. If this makes you immediately think people will take advantage, I'd challenge you to examine your view of people. Do you really think people will "abuse" such a system, and if so, how many? Even if there is a percentage, is building barriers worth telling the 95% of people who just need help we think they are suspect and need to be screened. Do we really think there is a benefit to making them tell their story multiple times, and then wait to see if they "qualify?" It is an emergency! That's why we call them emergency funds. The second thing I would do is challenge us to think about how we talk about the students we serve who access these services. Do you know how often, I've heard someone referred to as a "good bet" or "bad bet"? Isn't that dehumanizing and awful? Can you imagine having the vulnerability to say you need help, and how you would feel if you knew people went in another room and decided if you were worthy of betting on...

So, as with so much poverty-informed work, it isn't particularly complicated, it is just hard. Our choice about supporting people "just-in-time" is as much about changing our mindsets, as it is about figuring out how to deliver the help. Instead of helping as many people as we can with the resources we have, we use a scarcity model to hoard resources and develop systems to decide who deserves help and who doesn't. That is corrosive and toxic in my opinion. At my last college we removed all criteria from an emergency fund for GED testing. We simply said if a staff member heard you needed help, you got it. The usage of the fund went up 500%. It strained the resources, but so what? We pursued more resources because we discovered our "criteria" were keeping people from asking. If you have similar systems, you need to ask yourself the big questions. Are you trying to help, or are you trying to pick winners and losers? Do you believe needing help is a normal part of life or do you see it as a sign of weakness and a character flaw? My point of view is obvious on this one, and even if you aren't entirely sold, think about all the energy and effort wasted to sort out who gets help and who doesn't. What if we just trusted the people we serve and redirected the time we gain to making things better. That is how we treat an emergency.