Blog

It is hard to believe 2020 is almost over. In some ways, it seems like just yesterday that we were making decisions about closing our offices, postponing meetings, and figuring out what we had to do to pivot as an organization to best support our staff and families given the changing world.

We quickly saw that this pivot was not going to be for a few weeks or even a few months. We are in this for the long-haul, and our world has fundamentally shifted into a new reality. We can no longer pretend that the development of a vaccine or effective treatment will allow us to just flip a switch and return back to “normal.” All of our lives and realities have fundamentally shifted and that requires a fundamental shift in how we operate as an organization and as a staff.

One of those fundamental shifts is the recognition of the importance of caregiving and caregivers in our world. Many of our residents are professional caregivers, home health aids, daycare workers, and certified nursing assistants. Our staff works as caregivers for family, providing supportive assistance and services. Both our residents and staff care for their own children, family members, and neighbors. Without the traditional support structures, like school systems or healthcare facilities, we are recognizing that the title of caregiver belongs to all of us.

Our partners at The Holding Co just released their Care 100 list, highlighting those working to re-imagine and re-humanize our care system. I am honored that Springboard’s work and The Magnolia Mother’s Trust are recognized on this list, highlighting the important role cash can play in caregiving. But what I particularly love about this list is the wide variety of leaders and sectors that are represented. It reminds us that we need a bigger definition of caregiving that goes beyond the traditional categories. And it reminds us that not only are we all caregivers, but we are also all the recipients of care, as well.

As an organization, we are doing our best to find ways to support our families in both of these roles. Many of our Magnolia Mother’s Trust recipients have been participating in a new Leaders in Community Fellowship program, an opportunity for them to learn leadership development and community building skills. Over the past few months, they have built relationships and  developed strategies for self and community care. But they are also being equipped with these skills so that they can share them with other members in their community, including new Magnolia Mother’s Trust recipients, in the future, and step into the caregiver role themselves.

This is just one small way that our thinking and responses have shifted in recognition of our new reality. While there is so much that has been hard in the past 7 months, I am grateful to have had the space and time to think about the different roles we play and what it means to be a healthy and responsive caregiving organization. It is my hope that each of us will spend more time recognizing our own roles as caregivers and giving thanks to those from whom we receive care.

We have been talking a lot lately about cash. Between the launch and expansion of the new cohort of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust, our Emergency Cash Disbursement Campaign, and the newfound energy policymakers and other community leaders have had around conversations concerning cash disbursements, it is no surprise that this is what we have been talking about.

And while we’re grateful and excited for this new energy around cash, we also know that at our heart, Springboard To Opportunities is a resident service provider trying to reimagine what resident services can look like for families living in low-income housing through a radically resident-driven lens. But what does it look like to provide services to families when we must be six feet apart? What does it mean to be radially resident-driven when hosting community conversations and listening sessions is no longer an option? How do we respond to needs like education support and finding jobs when traditional after school programs and career services are no longer safe to implement? 

While these questions are on their surface daunting and overwhelming, we are also excited for the opportunity to be answering them. It is easy to just try to do more of the same – try to offer our normal slate of programming virtually, try to maintain some normalcy until this is all past us – but what if our job right now is not to just maintain until all of this goes away? What if our job is to do the hard work of really looking at our organizations to understand how our work and mission fits into the new reality that we are all living in?

This summer, we have delivered over 5,000 boxes of food to families in need and brought 9,000 meals on site through feeding partners to children in need in our communities. We have been helping those who have lost work or hours apply for unemployment benefits and identify local resources to help with rent and utility payments. We have utilized social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to share our summer camp videos for families to watch and participate in activities through. We’re checking in with families as they make decisions about the upcoming school year and are asking them directly how we can be supportive in terms of virtual learning and finding support from other parents in their community. We are researching and trying out new programs around mental health and self-care, particularly to support single mothers in this time. 

It is very different than what a normal summer with Springboard To Opportunities looks like and there are still a lot of new things we are learning and figuring out, but we knew it was our job as an organization to adjust to the needs to families, not the other way around.

The truth is none of us know when the pandemic is going to end and even when it does, there will be no returning to what we once understood as normal. All of us will be continue to feel the trauma and anxiety of this time, and for our families, who in many ways have been hit the hardest by all the consequences of COVID-19, the effects will be serious and long-lasting. We have to be asking hard questions about what we need to be doing to shift in order to maintain our mission as an organization. The needs of vulnerable families are shifting rapidly and it is our job as organizations and policymakers to be innovative and creative and shift accordingly to best serve those who need it most. It should not be our expectation that families just trying to survive will shift to accommodate us. 

As the world continues to change, we will keep exploring these questions and continue to be as creative and innovative as possible. We are trying new things, some that work well and some that need adjusting, but our commitment is to be an organization helping residents reach their goals in life, work, and school, even in the midst of a pandemic.

It can be hard right now to find the right words to say. As we’ve watched protests break out around the country regarding racial injustices of all kinds while continuing to grapple with the reality of a global pandemic that disproportionately affects African Americans, there is so much that could be said. As an organization both the residents we serve and our staff are majority African American, and the severity of these issues is not lost on us.

However, we also know that these issues are not new. Disparities in healthcare, police violence, inequities in education, the failures of our social service system are all long-term consequences of racist structures and systems that have been codified into our laws and policies since the founding of our country. Racism affects our families, our staff, and our organization on a regular basis. The truth is if you really want to be anti-racist, you will be outraged all the time.

Which is why right now, we are not talking about our anger. We are talking about joy. Because in the midst of so much pain and oppression and anger, joy is a revolutionary act. Joy does not mean that we ignore the pain of the world around us, but it does mean we are grounded in a deeper understanding of who we are and our inherent worth. While systems and policies may devalue black lives and experiences, grounding in joy and care reminds us that our lives are worthy and important and should be celebrated. Taking care of ourselves and honoring our bodies is its own form of rebellion in a world that tells us our lives are expendable.

Starting Monday, we are kicking off our Virtual Summer Programming series (You can follow along, too, on Instagram (@STOProgramming) and Facebook (facebook.com/STOProgramming)). Continued social distancing measures mean that we cannot have our normal crowded community rooms filled with excited kids for Super Summer Camp. Instead, our staff quickly pivoted, creating a Virtual Super Summer Camp series that will go out each weekday on Instagram Live and be shared on multiple social media platforms. Each day will follow a different theme, helping our kids ground themselves in mindfulness practices, creating art projects as a family, taking nature walks or performing science experiments around their homes, and participating in dance fitness classes, just to name a few things. As families continue to grapple with the long-terms effects of all that is going on in the world, we hope these daily activities will provide important moments of joy and connection.

In addition, our partners at The Holding Co. reached out to us about creating a self-care series, specifically designed for our residents, that we could release on social media. While many self-care practices are grounded in consumerism and try to convince individuals that they need to buy a lot of products to care for themselves, we wanted to help our residents create self-care habits that didn’t require additional money or items by providing small daily exercises to help participants connect to themselves, their families, and their communities for strength and care. Most importantly, we want to remind them that they deserve to carve out time for their own care, joy, and gratitude.  

Finally, we are ensuring that our staff also has opportunities to build their self-care habits. We have transformed our weekly staff meetings to make sure we have opportunities to connect with each other at the beginning of the meeting about how we are feeling and what we are experiencing and spend the second half in a virtual yoga session, allowing us to connect to our bodies and our breath, both as a means of grounding ourselves and releasing anxiety after what are often long weeks of caring for others. As an organization, we know we are in this fight for the long-haul, and we can only sustain the needed energy if we are taking care of ourselves.

There is so much in our world right now that should make us angry and sad, and I hope that we never stop decrying injustices that we see and challenging systems that perpetuate inequality and harm. But, I also hope we are taking care of our bodies, our minds, and our spirits – especially in the midst of chaos – and ensuring that we are sustained and prepared for the long journey toward justice and equality. This fight is not for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years, and committing to joy and care is not only a way to sustain us in the fight but is also a reminder that we are worth fighting for.

I am sure many of you, like me, are feeling overwhelmed by the constant news cycles and information overload of our current moment. Each day we hear how many more people have been infected with COVID-19, the most recent death tolls, new symptoms and side effects we had no idea existed before, and the information surrounding guidelines and best practices seem to change daily as we learn more and more about how this mystifying virus behaves.

But those aren’t the only stories that we are hearing. Lines at food banks are getting longer as families try to figure out how to have enough food with kids not receiving meals at school and little to no income. The digital divide is continuing to exacerbate educational inequalities as families without technology and Internet access struggle to participate in distance learning. Minimum wage workers, who have been living paycheck to paycheck with no opportunity to build savings, are either being laid off or forced to choose between their own health and safety and being able to put food on the table.  Even stimulus checks that were supposed to go to families have been getting sent to the predatory tax institutions instead of the families that need them.

But the difference with these stories is we should’ve seen them all coming. While many are seeing this as a wake-up call for America as many of the inequities and weaknesses in our systems and policies are being exposed, the reality is low-income families have already been telling us for years that this was going to happen. 

Families have said over and over again that they were one emergency away from the brink of disaster. Their jobs did not allow them to build savings, the benefits cliff made it impossible for them to get ahead or look for better paying jobs with paid leave or health insurance, and restrictive vouchers and benefits made it difficult for families to spend money on school supplies or reliable transportation that are now essential for distance learning and accessing meal programs or learning at home packets for kids. The truth is that instead of trusting families to know for themselves what they actually need, we decided for them. And in doing so, we created policies and systems that have left families devastated in a time of disaster. 

But what if we had listened sooner? What is instead of patronizing and dismissing the stories of low-income families as irrelevant or misinformed, we allowed them to be the guiding force that continues to shape and mold the new reality that we are pivoting into? Most of you know that as an organization it has always been a part of our mission to lift up the voices of families and share their stories as widely as we can, and we are excited to let you know that we are going to get to do that in a really big way. While I can’t share all the details with you yet, I hope you will stay tuned for a big announcement coming in a couple weeks. If you’re not yet following us on social media, you can on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to make sure you don’t miss it!

In the meantime, I hope we all take the opportunity to listen more to the stories that are around us. And I hope when the next disaster hits, these stories will have shaped our world in such new and innovative ways that we will not be reading news stories about how many people we have failed, but rather all that we have already done to ensure everyone is going to be OK. 

As I am sure all of you are aware, we are currently in unprecedented times. In the midst of a lot of chaos and unknowns, we are doing our best to plan for the future and be a support system for families residing in affordable housing. Our first priority right now is ensuring that our residents and staff are safe and have access to the resources that they need in a time where the majority of our residents do not have access to paid leave, childcare, medical care, or adequate food supplies while children are out of school.

As we have been saying for years, our social welfare system and policies surrounding low-income families have always been inadequate and problematic to say the least, and in this time of crisis, those problems are only being exasperated. Families who have been working for low wages had no opportunity to build up savings are also the ones without any access to paid leave or the ability to work at home wondering. SNAP benefits that already do not provide an adequate amount of money for monthly food bills will be even less helpful as children will now need to eat 10 more meals at home that used to be provided by school systems. Not to mention, workers who did not have the luxury of having this past weekend off will also be looking at empty grocery store shelves as they try to get what they can for their families. 

This past Friday, 80 of our mothers in Jackson received a check for $1,000 from Springboard To Opportunities as their first payment in the second iteration of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust. It is a relief to know that there are 80 mothers here who can be a little less worried about how they are going to provide for their families’ basic needs in the coming weeks and months. However, we also know that this is not enough. There are thousands of other Springboard families and millions of others nationwide in the same situation, and we cannot ignore the failings of our social policies and systems in this time to keep them safe. It is our deepest hope that when we come through to the other side of this, that we do not just return to “business as usual,” but actually take real, tangible steps to make sure all families always have access to the supports they need.

For now, as an organization, we are choosing to follow CDC guidelines and have all staff work at home until the end of March. All Community Specialists have distributed local resource guides for their communities with food, health, education, and utilities assistance information. In addition, residents have received mobile numbers for staff members and we will continue to provide mass updates to families through our Springboard App, which we have been using as a communication tool with families for the last two years. We are ensuring that even while practicing social distancing, all residents know that they have access and support from Springboard at this time.

Finally, we will continue to live out our Radically, Resident-Driven model making sure that even from a distance, we are listening to our residents and responding to their needs in every way possible. Community Specialists will be calling each resident to hear what they need, and we will be doing all we can to distribute gift cards for groceries and supplies and emergency funds to help families as we are able. 

As always, we are deeply appreciative of this community of supporters and partners that care so much about us and our families! We hope that everyone is staying safe and well and taking necessary precautions during this time.