As a community we must work together to build a strategic plan if we are to make progress. Again, allow your imagination to go back to World War 2. The allied powers, while not always getting along and often times being in boisterous disagreement about how to conduct the war established a united strategy. However, imagine if each nation decided that they would simply head nod ideas and strategies and then did their own thing. The famous dictum of ancient Rome, “Divide and Conquer” would have become the strategy of the Axis.
Currently in most communities there is not strategy and no unity of efforts. Those in poverty and homelessness take full advantage of this division. They go from church to church to get utilities paid as an emergency though they knew the bill would come due eventually. When I first got to GRM in Muskogee we helped with utility bills. The first week of every month we would give a set amount to pay for utilities, on a first call first pay basis. The only caveat was that you could only get your utilities paid for once a year. It rarely failed that someone would call and ask if they were eligible yet. Their “emergency” had lasted over a year. In the meantime, they had hit up other churches.
Again, come back to D-Day in Normandy. While there were plenty of false landings to keep the enemy guessing there was really only one area where most of the landings would take place. All of the strategy and effectiveness of the plan hinged on all allies committing to and following through on that plan. In the same way to end the war on poverty the community needs a solid plan and then the community must be educated on that plan.
This plan will focus all of the need requests into a very few central check in points. Those check in points can be businesses or churches where folks can do an initial check in and then be directed to appropriate help.
Part of the role of these check in points is to determine if the need is one of relief (emergency), development (long term teaching) or sustaining.
Relief and emergency help needs some definition. When anyone feels the pinch they call it an emergency. However, here we mean that they had a disaster like a house fire that could not be prepared for. Not being able to pay utilities will feel like an emergency but a shut off notice is something they knew was coming and should have prepared for.
Development is the teaching phase. We might teach them how to budget, how to plan, maybe job training. Any help given in this area is done as an exchange of some kind. In the exchange you will get to know these men and women and often discover better ways to help them in the long term.
Once they are established it will be beneficial, now that you have relationship walk with them in life and together navigate the wild waters of this life.
