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Dear 2-1-1 Texas Call Center Volunteers, On behalf of United Way Capital Area and its programs Hands On Central Texas and 2-1-1 Texas, we would like to extend our sincere appreciation and gratitude for volunteering your time during Hurricane Ike. The response to the broadcast e-mail was truly inspiring! We were especially gratified to see an array of volunteers that included individuals, businesses, corporate and the large turn out of state employees (Heath and Human Services Commission). You worked with great energy and great compassion as Hurricane Ike victims’ calls came in, helping to ease their frustrations and despair. We experienced firsthand at our 2-1-1 Texas Call Center the extraordinary depth of caring and dedication each of you displayed during the emergency response to the Hurricane victims. Your tireless efforts will long be remembered by those who received your help. Listed here are just a few of the highlights of your accomplishments – Friday, Sept. 12 through Friday, Sept. 26: 213 volunteers contributed a total of 2,000 hours of service for a total value of $39,020Answered 249,081 disaster callsCovered 57 shifts Once again, thank you for the magnificent support and your contribution of time. Best Regards, Armando Rayo Hands On Central Texas, Director and Kay Euresti-GarzaSenior Helpline Manager

In our community engagement work, we use dialogue or what I like to call “meaningful conversations” to build trust & engage people in the issues. I’ve been keeping a good distance from the dialogue & deliberation crowd, not because I don’t like it, but because it’s been, from my experience, very polarizing or clique-ish. I guess one of the reasons I haven’t connected with it is because of the language they use (deliberation, communities of practice, whiteness, intellectual freedom, etc.) and I don’t know how it would connect with regular community people. Maybe it’s a cultural thing? I don’t know. So I decided to dive into this world. I signed up to be a moderator for the E3 Alliance’s Blueprint for Education Change. The training is being facilitated by my friend and colleague, Taylor Willingham from Texas Forums. I’m pretty excited about it (oh did I just turn that corner?). We’re going to be in 6 communities (Austin, Bastrop, Hutto, Leander, Manor, and Pflugerville) facilitating structured “meaningful conversation” sessions aka deliberative dialogue with almost 600 people in Central Texas. We’re going to have conversations about what “we” can do to prepare students of today for the jobs of tomorrow with the focus on 3 core approaches – A Firm Foundation, Academic Achievement & The Central Texas Community. Check out the Blueprint for Educational Change. I’ll have to credit Taylor (D&D guru) for winning me over. She’s made the process easy and something I can relate to & something anyone can […]

We’re fortunate to have the Ad Councils generous nationwide support for our Live United campaign, so you might start seeing some of these billboards popping up around town. Many thanks to the Ad Council and Reagan Outdoor for their generous support!

Okay, now I’m tired. so we started this 24 hours ago (well, just the blogging part) with the hope to increase awareness about poverty, outline some of the ways United Way is trying to fight it and share with you some other Central Texans perspectives and real world local successes. We hope that 24 hours later you are just a little bit more informed about what poverty is, how easy it is for anyone to drop into poverty, what some of the keys are to escaping and also that you are inspired to do something about alleviating poverty and financial hardship in our community. We urge you to get involved, whether it’s by Giving (always takes money, but the payoff both personally and as a community is huge) Advocating, find your voice, speak out, use it Volunteering, mentoring a student to help reduce the drop out rate or sign up for one of our Hands On Central Texas projects! That’s me after being up for 42 hours straight & blogging for 24 hours! Thanks for reading, listening, watching and supporting us through this crazy day.Be a part of the change. Live United! Now, I’m off to bed…finally! Si Se Puede!Mando

The last part of the series. All skills, all talent!

The kids talk about what they want to do to to end poverty. Check out their discussion…

Young members of the Cipher, Austin’s Hip Hop Project share their experiences with poverty & living in the Eastside. These kids are talented, smart and I wanted to share some of the experiences with you.

My wife, Ixchel is my green educator. She finds real ways to connect environmental issues to issues we work on such as poverty. Enclosed is her post for Blog Action Day…. Poverty & the New Green EconomyI’m participating today because I became aware of poverty after moving to the east side of Austin, TX. I come from a third world country – I thought I knew a lot about poverty. One thing I didn’t know is how pervasive it is in these United States. And how easy it is to ignore. One of the best proposals I’ve currently come across outlines potential solutions to several of the problems our global society is facing – namely social inequity and environmental degredation. Some solutions come from Van Jones and his recent book, The Green Collar Economy; How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems The idea is to train people in the emerging green market which includes; weatherizing homes, installing solar panels, training hybrid electric technicians, etc. Bringing jobs to sectors of our economy that have been left behind in the move to protect our environment.Continue Reading…

I live in the Eastside. I see the predatory advertisements every time I walk or drive in my neighborhood. I have the luxury of choices. I can choose to bank at a regular bank or credit union, I can choose to bypass the fastfood restaurants, I can choose to ignore the glaring billboards that send wrong messages to kids and families. People living in poverty don’t have these luxuries. They don’t have the options to spend a little more for fresh foods; They have to pick between a meal that costs $3.00 at a fast food chain or $6.00 at a grocery store. When parents need to feed their children and they want to make sure they have enough to make it through the week. These are tough choices and no family should be put in these types of situation. It is sad that we tolerate these types of conditions for families in Austin. As I was coming home, I took pictures of these types of predatory advertisements. It’s real and they are plaguing the East Austin. See pics… Church’s on East 7th Street Predatory Income Tax Center on East 7th Street Pay Day Loans Billboard on East 7th Street Predatory Check Cashing Center on East 7th Street