By Amy Carboneau
4/27/10
This spring, a new initiative has spread its wings in Boston, gathering low-income families as research subjects in an effort to disprove stereotypes.
"The perception is, poor people don't know what they're doing and will never know what they're doing unless they go through the proper channels or have the professional interventions to be able to succeed," said Jesus Gerena, director for the Boston project for Family Independence Initiative (FII).
The perception is that success is impossible without the help and direction of community organizations, said Gerena. "And that [poor people] are not to be trusted with any resources."
Unlike other service organizations, said Gerena, FII looks to upset the relationship between low-income families and the people who are helping them by giving resources directly to the people in need.
"There's a power dynamic that inherently exists between low-income folks and the people who are receiving money on their behalf to provide services," Gerena said, "and we want to shift that power dynamic."
Boston will be the fourth test site city for The Family Independence Initiative (FII), now looking for groups of families from East Boston, Dorchester and Roxbury. They have already set up groups in Oakland, San Fransisco and Hawaii, using them to gather information about how low-income families work together to garner success.
Success
Maria Perez, 36, is the mother of seven and one of the "ripple" families having stemmed from FII's initial enrollment in San Fransisco. She and her husband heard of the program through a family friend.
"When we got [to the meeting]," said Perez, "we couldn't believe what they were saying. So we gave it a shot. We really didn't like the way policies are made, you know."
How FII works
Perez is now a fellow for the program, and continues to help FII run, in San Fransisco and across the United States. "It was a big struggle in San Fransisco trying to convince politicians that this is a program that really works," said Perez. "We're the ones who experience everything, you know. That's how the program runs and gets ahead is because of the families."
Perez and her husband use the $500 they receive each quarter from FII to put toward their children's education. "Kids are very expensive," Perez laughed.
Perez has a daughter who is a junior at a nearby Catholic high school involved in drama and chorus. She is able to use the extra money for school trips.
With the support of FII, Perez noticed one major change in her life. "Our motivation changed," she said. Now, she is using her experiences to speak to other families - she is bilingual in English and Spanish - and to spread the word about this program to other families in need. "Everybody's coming together," she said. "I think this is going to grow."
The approach has worked, according to CEO and founder of FII, Maurice Lim Miller. In a paper titled, "Obstacles to Innovation: Experience of the Family Independence Initiative," Miller wrote: "In all three demonstration projects where we have implemented the FII model, the enrolled families have made tremendous and verified progress. While this approach has been strongly embraced by a small sector of supporters, it continues to face major obstacles in getting policy and funding support."
But Gerena is excited by particularly the mayor's reception here in Boston. "The city of Boston has gotten completely into this, and we have their support," said Gerena, having spoken with Menino in late March.
Bringing FII to Boston
Mayor Thomas Menino said he is particularly excited about the "empowerment model" that FII is bringing to Boston. Even as a relatively small program, affecting no more than a few hundred families at the start, the approach has the ability to extend further, branching into Boston's many neighborhoods. Menino also noted that FII has had experience as a non-profit in three other cities, and seen results. They bring to Boston an innovating vision to bring communities out of poverty, and Menino welcomed that.
"At its best, our city is one that draws and supports all types of interventions and strategies to narrow the income gap. I'm thrilled that FII chose Boston, of all the cities they could have chosen, to majorly expand their initiative," said Menino.
Currently, Gerena is interviewing several groups of families, seeking a diverse collection of five to six groups of families (of diverse ethnicities), who will then work with FII to better their economic situations. FII is looking for families within close-knit communities who know each other and trust each other enough to be each other's support system. "What I've seen in Boston is some people are so disappointed that it's hard for them to find other families in the communities that they can rely on," said Gerena.
The concept is to provide people with a network and the opportunity so that they can then help themselves. Some common economic goals that families share are: wanting to buy a house, go back to school, raise their children's grades, and create savings accounts to secure a future.
What FII provides is the structure for such goals to be met, and incentives along the way. One incentive is a new Dell computer for each family. Another is a match savings program. For every dollar that a family puts away (after a three-month period of growth), FII gives a dollar to match, up to $2000 for the year. There are also incentives given to each initial family who is able to bring more families into the program.
Watching it all happen
The hope is that families will use the network they've found in each other, and learn from the successes of other families in their group, as well as each other's mistakes. For example, one family fell prey to a predatory lender while trying to buy a house, explained Gerena.
"We're watching as all this happens, and our job is to just watch... this is a complete research project," Gerena said. FII puts families at the center, and says: "What do you need? What are your goals? What are your needs to be able to achieve those goals? How are you going to get them?"
"Whenever they run up against a wall, my job is to say, you know, try to figure out for them to come up with another answer, or direct them to other resources so that they can," said Gerena.
"There will be problems," promised Gerena. "But it's what network of support that you have when those happen.... If you succeed, if you as a group succeed, who else watches you, who's gonna want to follow. Not because you intervene in their lives, but because they see you... and they say we want that."
It takes FII roughly three to four months to find the initial group of about 30 families. Within six more months, there is a ripple effect of about 200 families, who have all joined because of what they've seen the first families accomplish, said Gerena.
The concept of FII is to look at how the system works: policymakers talk to the service organizations, who tell the families what they need to do. "But there's no feedback being given to the top," said Gerena. "We want to put the families on the top, so that they're giving the feedback."
"Look at Bill Gates," said Gerena. "Name the millionaire.... We can talk about how they had all this incredible strong will to be able to succeed; that's part of it. The other part of it is, who gave them opportunity after opportunity to be able to use that work ethic to succeed," said Gerena. "When you don't have that, then it becomes really hard."