Kim Pepper

Planting Our Flag

Graphic of a single illuminated lightbulb

The Upstream Imperative, Volume 1

This is the first article in “The Upstream Imperative,” a series of articles exploring the challenges and opportunities facing the social services sector.

By Adair Mosley, President and CEO, Pillsbury United Communities

Here’s a hard truth: our systems are failing our communities. The black and brown families we see every day inhabit a society where they are in last place. Minnesota is 49th or 50th nationally for disparities in earning high school diplomas. We are 49th for racial gaps in home ownership. Mortality rates for African-American and Native residents are up to 3.5 times higher than for other racial and ethnic groups.

While these challenges disproportionately affect people of color and families living in poverty, they are a legacy of choices we’ve made as a community. So how will we respond to these shared problems as a society?

Will we focus on providing services that ease suffering in the short term, while ignoring the systemic causes that have brought us to this point? Or will we embrace deeper, more lasting solutions?

Make no mistake, traditional human services are a lifeline our communities can’t do without. Our sector improves millions of lives in thousands of communities by working to close gaps in food, housing, education and beyond. These efforts must be preserved and strengthened.

But on their own, they are not enough. Beyond delivering programs and services, it’s time to re-envision the ecosystem and impact of our work as a whole. To remove systemic barriers that hold back people’s lives, we need to embrace radical and disruptive innovation. And urgently.

Social needs: widening the scope

Agencies often say they address social determinants of health when in reality they treat symptoms. Food shelves help feed families, but they don’t solve the financial and transportation burdens that put grocery stores out of reach for many communities. Health education can save lives, but it only succeeds when supported by healthcare infrastructure that makes the knowledge actionable to people where they live.

While providing near-term services to individuals is necessary, it does little to change the systemic issues on the ground — most importantly the long-term economic disadvantages faced by families living in poverty. Until we confront that social reality, food, housing and health assistance will be a temporary salve at best.

Responding only to individual needs can give us a false sense of progress. We celebrate the number of people we’ve served through our programs while ignoring the conditions that make these programs necessary.

To move the needle on a population scale, we must take a broader view. If we are serious about addressing social determinants of health, we must dismantle the systems that perpetuate inequities and hold people back across generations.

Changing the ecosystem

Shifting the context in which people live their lives is hard work. System-wide solutions take more effort, money, and political will. They require cross-sector partnerships that can reform complicated entities like our health care and education system. They require us to ask difficult questions, demand more of ourselves and our partners, and refuse to be complacent.

The social services sector can’t be expected to move these mountains on its own. Partners in government, philanthropic community, and businesses must also step up. When money is restricted to incremental solutions, entrenched problems fester and our communities remain unstable. We need brave financial partners willing to collaborate on ambitious solutions — and allow those with proximity to the community to focus dollars and energy where it matters most.

In over a century working with and for our community, we have learned that the best solutions flow from the community itself. But only when we understand the lives behind the challenges and stay anchored in their dreams and aspirations.

This is where we plant our flag as an agency. We envision communities where people achieve greater personal health and wellbeing together. Where cultural understanding creates social connections. Where prosperity is shared by all through equitable education and employment opportunities.

This is our motivation: going upstream to reform entrenched systems that can meaningfully change people’s lives long term. As an agency, as a sector, and as a society, we must be willing to think bigger and do the hard things. Only then can we realize a healthier, happier, more prosperous future for everyone in our community, no exceptions.

meghanm@pillsburyunited.org

Buraanbur builds connections, brings healing

Buraanbur at Brian Coyle Center

Taking care of your health doesn’t necessarily equate to making routine stops at the doctor’s office. Being healthy and feeling well, safe, and secure requires looking at a bigger picture—focusing on how our everyday lives, work, environment, and choices influence our well-being.

For East African women in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, one way of fostering health and healing has been through a form of dance and poetry native to Somalia: buraanbur. From January through June of this year, about 20 women regularly attended buraanbur dance classes at the Brian Coyle Center hosted by the Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Program (IWAP). This opportunity was made possible through a special partnership with The Cedar Cultural Center and The City of Minneapolis Health Department, and was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. The classes served multiple purposes. Not only were they a way for women to improve their physical health by exercising, but they were also an opportunity to break isolation and build relationships—all while being rooted in their culture.

“We come together here twice a week. We socialize; we dance; we sweat; and we laugh. If someone doesn’t come to the session, we ask each other, ‘Where is so and so?’ and check up on them. We care for each other and have become more than just neighbors. We dance together whilst feeling connected to my culture like it was back in my home country,” one participant said.

Miski Abdulle, our Director of Immigrant Services, touched on how they were not just dance sessions, but also ‘healing sessions’ for some participants who are survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence, the population that IWAP primarily works with. This type of cultural healing “heals the soul,” she said. Participants spoke to her about feeling lighter and sleeping and eating better than before. Some said:

“I get to exercise, be active. And this is good for my mental health too because I feel happy here. It’s a place for women to be together. This is just like family to me.”

“I have become good friends with the women here and I feel a sense of community support and togetherness.”

“I have been coming to these buraanbur sessions because it is a fun place to be. I get to see the same faces, people who are my neighbors. I get to laugh with them, exercise, and enjoy my culture.”

A sense of belonging and community. Cultural connectedness and healing. Artistic expression. These are all pieces in our vision for thriving communities. Because we don’t just want our communities to be healthy; we want them to be well. And that requires looking at the bigger picture.

meghanm@pillsburyunited.org

Gearing up for Census 2020: We all count

Census 2020: Waite House staff holding "We Count" signs

Medicaid. SNAP. Housing assistance. School meal programs. Child care assistance. Employment and transit services. Head Start. Health and unemployment insurance. The list goes on and on for programs and services that receive federal funding based off of census data. For Minnesota, it’s estimated that the state will lose $28,000 per person over a decade for not counting just one person. So, it’s no surprise that oftentimes it’s the historically undercounted communities that have been historically under-resourced as well.

The census is much more than just a count of who lives here. In addition to it serving as a significant determinant of the allocation of resources to our communities, it also impacts local, state, and national political representation. For this census coming up next year, Minnesota is at risk of losing a congressional seat. And—following the 2010 census results, North Minneapolis actually lost a councilmember. Though the population might actually stay the same (or even increase!), the impacts of not being counted have significant repercussions.

So, what all does this have to do with us? Everything. When resources are underestimated and communities are underrepresented, the opportunity to flourish and thrive diminishes. As an agency who has deep roots in these undercounted communities in Minneapolis—immigrants and refugees, those experiencing homelessness, indigenous communities, low-income households, renters, and more—we have a natural role and responsibility in taking part in census efforts to ensure a complete and accurate count.

We launched our efforts by hosting a census hiring fair at Brian Coyle Center in Cedar Riverside, with hopes to recruit census staff who represent the very communities they have a hard time reaching. As a registered Complete Count Committee with the Census Bureau, we plan to continue our efforts by engaging in culturally relevant outreach and engagement via our direct service programs, community events and info sessions, awareness through our media outlets North News and KRSM Radio, door-knocking, and more. With this being the first census where online participation is encouraged, we also plan to host open computer lab times to assist community members with this task, recognizing the very real digital divide in our community when it comes to technology access and literacy. Not only that, but with the census collecting responses in only 13 languages (none of which are Somali or Oromo), it’s imperative that our staff, who collectively speak 19 languages, are equipped to assist in these efforts.

Lastly, engaging with our communities to help participate and take leadership roles in these outreach efforts will be key. We want to provide the tools and support needed for folks to be part of the systems and solutions that impact their lives, recognizing it’s important that those who are doing much of the outreach reflect the communities they’re trying to reach. Especially with fear of government entities so prevalent, it’s trust and connection that will effectively get the message across.

Ultimately, the Census means more resources coming into our communities and fair representation, political power. But it also just means – you exist. We exist. We count. We are here and this is our home.

Want to volunteer or partner with us in our census efforts? Contact Meghan: MeghanM@pillsburyunited.org, 612-455-0388.

samd@pillsburyunited.org

Register now for Greater>Together 2019

Adair Mosley at Greater>Together 2018

Registration for our 2019 Greater>Together fundraiser is now open! Join us on October 2 to celebrate 140 years of powering people, place, and prosperity. Purchase tickets via the form below, or click here for more information.

meghanm@pillsburyunited.org

Summer K-5 program launched, despite cuts

Children in youth program

For the first time since the summer of 2017, a no-cost summer K-5 program is up and running at our Brian Coyle Center. From June through August, kids will have the opportunity to participate in a vast range of activities—literacy and geography lessons, getting hands-on with gardening, cooking, technology and organized sports, going on field trips, and engaging in projects that help foster self-expression and ignites them to think about their community in different ways. Programming like this is essential during this time of year to prevent ‘summer slide,’ otherwise known as the learning loss that happens when kids are out of school and not academically engaged as they are during the school year. In the past week, some highlights include planting peppers in the garden, learning about Brazil and the greater South American continent followed up by making some delicious Brazilian limeade, getting outdoors at the Dodge Nature Center, learning about the environment, recycling, and how to save energy from Community Action Partnership, and enhancing reading skills thanks to a partnership with the Cedar Riverside Opportunity Center.

Though this programming is happening now—unfortunately in the past two years, our K-5 youth have not had the academic and social supports needed due to funding cuts. Our agency along with many others serving this population were forced to cut both our summer and afterschool K-5 programs out entirely, which has had significant impacts on the families we serve. Older middle and high school-aged youth have often had to step up and stay home to care for their younger siblings, forcing them to no longer participate in their own summer/afterschool programming. Parents were faced with the difficult decision to change their job(s) or adjust their work schedules. And then there’s the K-5 kids themselves who are no longer receiving the academic and social supports that are critical in laying the groundwork for academic success and confidence in middle school.

This has been a real community need these past couple of years, and because of demand from our Cedar Riverside neighbors, we pulled as many strings as we could to make a summer K-5 program happen at the Brian Coyle Center. However, the future of K-5 still looks uncertain until there are more funds allocated to this population. If you are passionate about the future of our young people, we encourage you to follow both Ignite Afterschool and the Minneapolis Youth Coordinating Board, two groups who are determinedly working to secure more youth funding from the City and State. Our kids deserve better.

Do you have a story of the power of K-5 programming, or want to share your experiences with the lack of it? Contact Julie: JulieG@pillsburyunited.org, 612-455-0365. We want to help uplift these stories to ensure we get the resources needed for our young people.

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