By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
A national anti-poverty program offering to pay low-income residents of Lincoln County for information about their lives, is off to a slow start despite trying to recruit people since last fall.
The Family Independence Initiative is seeking 900 participants from Oregon’s Lincoln and Jefferson counties, the only two counties in the state picked for the pilot research program.
The two rural counties were chosen because they consistently fall in the lower third of Oregon counties for most measures of income, education and health.
Family Independence Initiative is an 18-year-old nationally-recognized non-profit based in Oakland, Calif. working to help keep low-income families from cycling in and out of poverty. The effort is supported by the Oregon Department of Human Services.
A representative of the nonprofit is holding meetings throughout Lincoln County, trying to recruit people who can receive $800 over one year if they submit monthly details about their income, housing, medical care and the like.
The goal is to have 450 families sign up in each county. But in Lincoln County just 50 have signed up so far with a goal of another 50 by the end of March, according to recruiter Paul Haeder of Waldport.
Understanding acronyms and skepticism
“Learn how to secure $800 for pilot project Lincoln County,” declared the recent post on the Waldport Library’s Facebook page.
The four adults who turned out for Haeder’s information session late last month were interested but skeptical. Their understanding may have been hampered by the esoteric terms and acronyms that peppered the presentation, like UCF (unlimited cash transfers) and “social capital”.
“What’s the catch?” asked one man.
Instead of the “top-down” approach to social services typically taken by state and federal agencies, the organization partners with families to “learn from them, connect families to each other and unlock dollars” to fund their goals, according to the group’s website.
Once enrolled, people get access to an Internet platform called UpTogether. That’s where they submit online journals once a month, and share information with others in their network, Haeder said.
That sharing is what FII means by “social capital” — basically, anything you can get for free from people you know, like a ride to your job, or help moving furniture.
Haeder said on the UpTogether website participants might solicit their network for advice on starting a business, or ride-sharing.
“The goal is to help families rise up,” he said, “to engage with people who go in and out of poverty and give them networking tools to end that cycle.”
“What FII wants is data and stories from the enrolled families or households,” he said. “From there, a hundred data points are recorded … so the heads of DHS can see what social services are missing and what families are really doing to rise out of poverty.”
Haeder says data security and privacy are key concerns he hears at his Lincoln County information sessions. He tries to allay that fear.
“When FII gets the data there are no names; when the state of Oregon gets the report from FII you’re a number, not a name,” he says.
A household can be comprised of a single person, a single parent, a couple with or without children, married or not. However, there are two conditions — enrollees must have an active email address and a banking account or debit card to accept the $800 in payments.
Haeder is conducting information sessions throughout the county. For details, he can be reached at 509-879-9337, or paul@fii.org.
FII has established its networking communities in several major U.S. cities, including Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Austin, Albuquerque and Oakland. The group was founded by Mauricio Lim Miller, author of the book “The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty is Wrong.”
— Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance writer who can be reached at wordsell@gmail.com
I would like to participate