Kalamazoo, Regional and National Highlights
Edwardsburg Resident Living in Poverty Relates Struggles, Hopes for the Future
The author is a resident of Edwardsburg, MI who preferred to remain anonymous. This story references common obstacles to those who face poverty everyday.
During these hard economic times everyone seems to be struggling. People are looking for any type of job that will get the bills paid. Unfortunately, I work as a server at two different restaurants and I am finding it very difficult to make ends meet no matter what I do. I currently work five days a week with the need to work more, but my schedule is so full already that I am unable to pick up extra shifts. Not only do I have two serving jobs, but I go to college, have an internship, and most importantly I have a toddler at home.
Life as a server is not easy, you have to work day and night, weekends, and holidays. We know that everyone has to eat and not everyone cooks these days, but often people forget that at the end of a meal you have to not only pay your bill, but tip your server. As a server we only make a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour and since times are tough business is slow making it so that we are only working two or three hours a shift giving us maybe four to five tables a shift if we are lucky. If you figure that each table leaves you with $5.00 then we are walking out with only $20-$25 a shift and that just is not going to pay bills when you have to pay for gas just to get to work everyday. I used to be able to bring home almost $500 a week and now I am lucky to bring home anything over $250.
I have moved in with my mother to try and make ends meet, but she needs my income to help her pay bills and I just don’t have that. I cannot even pay my bills that rack up to over $800 a month and that is not including groceries and clothes that I have to buy for my toddler. It seems that no matter what I do I am unable to get caught up and stay ahead with my bills. Servers are always going to be needed, but will always be at the low end of things because people see us as just someone to take care of them while they eat. We run around like chickens with our heads cutoff to make people happy and anymore we get nothing in return because no one can really afford to tip more than 10 percent of their bill.
Even though times are tough and people can barely make a living working as a server, I plan on finishing my education this spring and finding a job in my field. I hope to find a job sooner than my graduation date and get started on a career as soon as possible. My hope is to get started and begin working my way out of debt and in to the clear once again.
Tell us your story. Contact Kevin Lignell at klignell@haltpoverty.org.
Kalamazoo's Healthy Babies Healthy Start program gets $3 million grant
by Linda S. Mah | Kalamazoo Gazette
KALAMAZOO -- Healthy Babies Healthy Start, a program of the Kalamazoo County Department of Health and Community Services, has received a $3 million grant to continue its work trying to reduce infant mortality and eliminate racial disparities in prenatal health.
The grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration will provide $600,000 annually for five years. The annual budget for HBHS is about $600,000, said Carmen Sweezy, the program manager
"We are very pleased to have received this grant," she said. "This is an evidence-based and outcome-based program. The families in our program have very good outcomes even though they are at the highest risk."
This is the third time the program has received a five-year federal grant.
Sweezy said Healthy Babies Healthy Start is a community-based model that relies on collaboration with area hospitals, nonprofit groups and faith-based organizations to address the issue of infant mortality in Kalamazoo. Kalamazoo County has a high infant mortality rate, especially among minority groups.
Between 2001 and 2005, the infant-mortality rate for white babies was 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, and the rate for black babies was 17.6 deaths per 1,000 births.
Healthy Babies Healthy Start provides direct support and services to about 400 families each year in the Northside, Eastside and Edison neighborhoods.
In addition to working directly with families, the 10-year-old program tries to reduce the infant mortality rate by supporting medical professionals and providing educational programs on topics such as smoking cessation, nutrition and housing for about 1,000 more members of the general public each year.
Building a broad network of support for families is key to solving the problem of infant mortality, Sweezy said. "We find that many of the issues related to infant mortality are not just medical but are due to social, economic and cultural issues," Sweezy said.
Another county program aimed at improving prenatal health and reducing infant mortality, the Nurse-Family Partnership, is in danger of elimination because of state budget cuts.
The Nurse-Family Partnership targets clients from the same neighborhoods as HBHS, but it can take patients from across the county, said Linda Vail Buzas, director of Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services. Also, she said, the NFP follows a very structured national curriculum, a medical-based model in which the nurses have a chance to develop longer and more intense relationships with the clients.
"Quite frankly, there are many more people out there that need service than either program can accommodate," she said. "You cannot have enough of these kinds of programs when we have the fetal infant mortality rate that we do."
Contact Linda S. Mah at 388-8546 or lmah@kalamazoogazette.com.
WMUK Report: Officals Working to Break Down the Stereotype of those in Poverty through Hands-on Experience
PRI Simulation Facilitator Maggie Hiatt spoke with WMUK about the purpose of Poverty Simulation Workshops in Southwest Michigan.
"And even if it's just not rolling your eyes when the woman in front of you is counting up food stamps at the grocery line, that attitude makes a big difference in our greater society."
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