Youth Take the Lead in Foodie Business Programs

At Whole Foods Markets and farmers’ markets in the Detroit metropolitan area, you can purchase a box of Mitten Bites, the yummy no-bake granola treats dreamed up by Hassan Amaleki and a group of his former high school classmates. These all-natural snacks come in two delectable flavors — dark chocolate peanut butter and cranberry date — and are healthy and sustainable to boot.

Mitten Bites are the first youth-created product of Small Batch Detroit, a social enterprise subsidiary of the youth leadership organization Detroit Food Academy.

“We had the task of figuring out a snack that everyone would want, whether you are a mom at home that has kids and need something healthy, or a biker that needs an energy snack to go,” said Amaleki, now 19, who first started attending Detroit Food Academy’s afterschool programs when he was a freshman at Cody High School.

Launched in 2011 as a one-semester program at Cody High, the organization currently offers afterschool programming in culinary arts, business basics, and leadership in 10 high schools through the school year, as well as a citywide six-week summer program. The Academy works in public, private, and charter schools: anywhere students and educators have expressed interest, administration staff have shown support, and the budget allows. “We encourage young Detroiters to raise their voices, explore their communities, and to actualize their vision for what they want to see in our city—all through the medium of food,” said Jen Rusciano, co-founder and executive director of the Academy. This year, 200 youth are participating (around two-thirds from their public and public charter school partners and the remaining in private schools). About 95 percent of the students are young people of color.

The focus of the fall semester is cooking basics: learning about knife skills, nutrition, grocery budgeting and shopping, and meal planning; this work culminates with a student-planned community dinner for friends and family. In the spring, students design their own healthy, local food products, with guidance on how they would turn their ideas into full-fledged food businesses. When summer rolls around, Academy graduates can apply for a paid internship within either a culinary arts or food entrepreneurship track.

Detroit Food Academy launched Small Batch Detroit last year as a way to help the organization grow toward financial self-sufficiency. Profits from products like Mitten Bites have so far helped to cover production expenses and some of the wages for graduates, like Amaleki, to work part-time for the enterprise. “It’s an alternative for someone who doesn’t want to go to college right away, like I didn’t,” he said. Wages for students who work for the Small Batch program year-round start at $12.50 an hour and can go as high as $15 an hour.

Rusciano said that it’s been challenging to scale the business up to fund more youth staff positions and programming, but with support and knowledge-sharing from local groups like FoodLab Detroit and the Product Center at Michigan State University, they are making their way through early-stage hurdles, like mastering the legal requirements for packaging products sold in grocery stores.

Rusciano mentioned that the goal of the enterprise — and what they instill in their students for their own businesses — is that entrepreneurship is more than profit. “We talk about going into business as a tool not just for making money, though it can be used that way,” she said, “but rather that it’s a powerful tool that can be wielded either for good or for dehumanization. You can make a lot of change if there are values built into how you run a business.”

Even if students choose not to pursue food entrepreneurship or employment in the future, Rusciano said experiences like staffing Detroit Food Academy’s table at a farmers’ market or receiving mentorship from local chefs in the afterschool program, helps to weave them more into the social fabric of the city. Often they are cut off from fair wage jobs, career pathways, and the opportunities for innovation that are helping Detroit to rebound from insolvency.

“[Students learn] there are communities out there that are willing and excited to embrace them,” she said. “They learn they are needed and wanted in the city, not just tomorrow when they get their degree, but right now, today, as young people.”

A new leadership model in culinary training programs

In other cities, youth-oriented organizations are combining the social enterprise model with leadership and culinary skills training. At Old Skool Café, a youth-run, jazz-themed supper club in San Francisco, teens are behind decisions related to everything from the restaurant’s entrées to uniform design.

Teresa Goines, a former corrections officer, envisioned a violence prevention program taking the form of a dinner theater in 2004. Finally opening four years ago in the Bayview-Hunter’s Point neighborhood, Old Skool Café is staffed by youth who have either been incarcerated, gone through the foster care system, or are otherwise disconnected from traditional work opportunities.

The cuisine is international comfort food, specifically designed to reflect the cultures of the youth in the program. “We always encourage them to submit family recipes,” said Goines. “If their mom or dad or grandmother wants to come in and teach us how to make something, we’ll have them come in and there’ll be a tasting.” If restaurant staff like the dish, it will be produced as a special and get the chance to become a regular menu item. That’s how “Abu’s Peanut Butter Stew” got on the menu; the chicken dish is named after a staff member who created a take on his grandmother’s recipe from Sierra Leone.

In one case, two program participants were more interested in fashion design than food. Through a collaboration with retired NFL player Dhani Jones’s BowTie Cause initiative, they were able to design a bow tie worn by restaurant staff.

“We really want to encourage them to find what they love,” added Goines. “But also they’re getting to make money and have access to mentorship and life coaching.” As of 2014, the recidivism rate for graduates of the program is 10 percent (compared to the national rate of 76 percent). Ninety-four percent have either found outside employment or are enrolled in school. One alumnus has recently completed the University of Southern California’s master’s degree program in screenwriting. Goines said the student found her career passion outside of the food industry, but was able to pay for some of her tuition through waitressing after having gained work experience at the café.

Back in Detroit, other young people are flexing their training skills in interesting and innovative ways after graduating from Detroit Food Academy. Hassan Amaleki has been doing food demonstrations for Mitten Bites at local grocery stores, earning money for when he attends college in the fall. He is now enrolled to attend Schoolcraft College on a culinary arts track. “Right after I found out the right way to do business from scratch, it didn’t seem so hard,” he said. He added that his current hope is to work his way up to running Small Batch Detroit full-time.

Read the rest of the March 10, 2016 America's Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model issue.

Power Your Advocacy with New Equity Data

Clean air and high-quality schools are fundamental elements of “communities of opportunity” that allow residents to thrive. Last week, the National Equity Atlas, produced jointly by PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE), added three new opportunity indicators to equip local leaders with relevant data to build equitable cities and regions:

 

The National Equity Atlas team was proud to participate in the “The Opportunity Project,” an Open Opportunity Data event held yesterday at the White House where the new Atlas indicators were showcased. The White House effort focuses on facilitating the development of a suite of digital tools that puts neighborhood-level information on access to opportunity at the fingertips of families, community organizers, non-profits, local leaders, and the media.
 
Writing in a letter to the editor published in the New York Times, on March 7, PolicyLink President and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell noted the importance of disaggregating data by race and ethnicity is critical to understanding trends and developing solutions: “Recognizing this ‘people’ dimension of poor neighborhoods — and the complex interplay of race and place — is essential for catalyzing equitable and sustainable economic prosperity for all.”
 
School Poverty Data Highlighted in The Atlantic
The Atlantic is already demonstrating the analytical power of this new data. Abigail Langston and Sarah Treuhaft from PolicyLink are quoted in “The Concentration of Poverty in American Schools,” by Janie Boschma and Ronald Brownstein, who note that in about half of the nation’s largest 100 cities, most Black and Latino students go to schools where at least 75 percent of all students qualify as poor or low-income:
 
“Kids who spend more than half of their childhood in poverty have a high-school graduation rate of 68 percent,” said Abigail Langston, a senior associate at PolicyLink, and a public fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies. “You see how these things compound over time. There is a link between housing policy, economic and racial segregation, you see what those do to schools and to people who grow up in those neighborhoods.”
 
In the article, promising school integration models from Dallas and New York City are lifted up as tools to address these gaps. The Atlantic also uses the National Equity Atlas’s school poverty indicator in the stories “Separate and Still Unequal” and “Where Children Rarely Escape Poverty.”
 
Join upcoming Equitable Development and Environmental Justice Webinar
On Friday, March 11 the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice will conduct the free webinar “New Data Tools for Supporting Analysis of Equitable Development and Environmental Justice.” Sarah Treuhaft, who is PolicyLink director of equitable growth initiatives will present the new air pollution indicators in the National Equity Atlas. The webinar will also feature a demo of the new environmental justice screening and mapping tool. Register here

Transportation, Jobs, and Civil Rights for the 21st Century: An Interview with Faith-Based Leader Ana Garcia-Ashley

For Ana Garcia-Ashley, living out the values of her Catholic faith is about more than helping one's neighbor, or caring for those in need — it’s about dismantling systems of oppression and racism that have left so many Americans cut off from opportunity. As executive director of Gamaliel, a national network for faith-based community organizing, Garcia-Ashley has helped engage congregations across the country around a range of political issues — from predatory lending to immigration reform to congressional spending. The first woman of color to lead a national community organizing network, she has brought a relentless activist spirit to the faith-based work of her organization.

Advocating for a more equitable transportation system, both in terms of access to quality transportation and access to jobs in the transportation industry, is a core part of Gamaliel’s work.  Leveraging 44 Gamaliel affiliates in 17 states and the grassroots Transportation Equity Network that includes over 300 community organizations, the organization advocates for transportation as not only a civil right, but a crucial driver of upward mobility — a link bolstered by a recent Harvard study that identified lower commute times as the single strongest predictor of escaping poverty for low-income families. This connection between transit and economic opportunity can also be seen in Gamaliel’s recent work to promote the Department of Transportation’s local and targeted hiring pilot — a one-year initiative launched last March that allows city and state governments to prioritize the employment of local, low-income workers for contracts to build roads, bridges, and transit facilities.

Garcia-Ashley spoke with America’s Tomorrow on the importance of transportation access — a sector of Gamaliel’s work that has taken center stage following the approval of the local and targeted hiring pilot. 

Q: Why is local and targeted hiring important for building opportunity for low-income communities and communities of color?

A: You have these multibillion dollar highway projects that could provide quality jobs with benefits and career pathways into construction jobs. And these projects are often being built in neighborhoods with high unemployment, often that are communities of color. It’s a no-brainer that these projects should be used to have positive impacts on the communities where they’re being built by ensuring that a portion of the construction jobs go to local workers in that community. And we already see that they have been successful when implemented on a local basis. But for decades, there was essentially a moratorium on local hire for federal projects, because unions, developers, and others in construction felt that there wouldn’t be ready labor and it wouldn’t be cost-effective to hire locally. So we were very emotional and excited when, after years of advocating for local hire, Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the pilot of local hire in March. Of course, now it’s up to advocacy groups like PolicyLink and Gamaliel to go into the communities where we have a footprint and ensure that they put this pilot to use, that we document best practices, and show how all the fears about efficiency and cost-effectiveness aren’t actually a problem.

Q: What has been the most crucial element within the organizing that Gamaliel does to promote local hiring?

A: We need community members to be able to talk about these policies and their impact – not just policy wonks. We need to have the housewife, the preacher, the young person being able to talk about local hire and regulations and transportation access — just like they talk about Beyoncé! Young people always seem to know what she’s doing, but not what the Department of Labor is doing — but the DOL affects their lives a lot more. It’s about building awareness and civic-mindedness in the young generation, building these local champions who can talk about what it means to them, what it means to their communities.

Q: Can you give an example of where local hiring as a policy in transportation projects has been a success?

A: In the building of the I-64 bridge in Missouri, advocates were able to get 1 percent of the budget to go into training and hiring single moms and people of color. So they spent $2 million to not only hire locally, but to train people to take on these jobs — and the project came in under budget. We need more opportunities to implement projects like this, and we need to collect data about them to back up their success and make the case for these policies being applied more widely. Then, hopefully, we can institutionalize local hire into all infrastructure projects and maybe expand it to other federally funded projects. We should be using federal money — tax payer funds — to empower all Americans, not hold up a system that oppresses them, that builds highways that divide low-income communities and displace homes, without giving anything back to the people who live there.

Q: A crucial part of Gamaliel’s work is advocating for access to public transportation as a civil rights issue for low-income people and people of color. Why do you view transit access as a civil right?

A: During the Civil Rights movement, advocates were looking at the immediate and urgent ways of gaining basic rights as citizens, but transportation was always a piece of that larger picture. Rosa Parks did not just sit on the bus because she wanted to sit anywhere she wanted on the bus — it was a symbol of the dignity of people of color, the right to have access to the bus, to have a job to go to on that bus. Victories like the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act provided us a platform, and a responsibility to make sure that people can move to opportunity — because the structures of our society were not designed to serve women, people of color, or the poor. Instead, these structures have created and preserved hyper poverty areas where people literally cannot leave their neighborhoods because of lack of transit.

But when we hear transportation, the dominant narrative is always the highways, the two-car garage. This is reflected in a transportation budget that has been so focused on the creation of highways and connectors that have historically destroyed and divided communities — especially communities of color. Countless highways have cut through Black communities, displacing residents and destroying Black businesses. We need to move away from just thinking about highways and cars and start thinking about a transportation system where everyone, no matter how poor or elderly or young you are — you can get where you need to go.  Because equal opportunity includes being able to get to where you need to go without having to spend $10,000 to own a car. That’s why we feel that transportation is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. It’s essential we expand our conceptions of civil rights to include it.

Q: Gamaliel is a faith-based advocacy group — how do you see the issues of the church intersecting with transportation and civil rights?

A: It’s not a connection that everyone makes right away. I still get push back from people — “Why is a faith-based network so obsessed with the Department of Transportation and how highway dollars are spent, and what does that have to do with living out your faith?” But we see transportation and infrastructure as determining the quality of life people can have, and we see public transit as protecting the planet because, for every bus, you're taking hundreds of cars off the road. People want to know where in the scripture it talks about public transit, but the scripture talks about caring for your neighbors, being a steward of the earth, and living in a community that respects the dignity of people — and we see quality, affordable transportation access as central to living up to these values.

Oakland Army Base Is a Model for Equitable Development

Nearly three years ago developers, unions, community leaders, and government officials in Oakland, California, came together to make sure the city’s biggest construction project in decades would create jobs and apprenticeships for residents who need them most. By every measure, the agreement for redeveloping the old Oakland Army Base is a resounding success.

It is meeting ambitious targets for local hiring and far exceeding targets for connecting people facing employment barriers to career-path training. It has inspired a similar agreement on a $178 million construction project for Bus Rapid Transit from downtown Oakland to San Leandro. Perhaps most importantly, the Army base deal demonstrates what it takes to translate large-scale urban investments into equitable economic growth — and why it matters.

“This has changed my life,” said Sadakao Whittington, who landed an $18.29-an-hour apprenticeship with Laborers Local 304 a few months after he was paroled from state prison at age 40. After working on demolition at the base, he moved on to similar jobs around the Bay Area while earning certification in welding, heavy machine maintenance, and more than a dozen other skills. Now a member of Sprinkler Fitters Local 483, he earns $24.42 an hour plus full benefits. His wage will rise to $60 within five years.

“I have a nice apartment that’s fully furnished,” Whittington said. “I have a good credit score and a bank account. I pay taxes and spend my paycheck inside my community. I have a sense of achievement. I feel valued.  All these things happened because all these people came together in a collaborative and cohesive way to provide opportunity to someone trying to get somewhere.”

The labor and community benefits agreement covers the first phase of an $800 million public-private venture to transform the shuttered Army base into an international trade and logistics center at the Port of Oakland. The deal pertains to the city-owned portion of the project; a similar agreement is in the works for the port’s piece. The project broke ground in late 2013. It is expected to create more than 1,500 construction jobs over seven years and 1,500 permanent jobs in operations. About 500 new hires currently work there.

Read the full story in Next City.

Worker Ownership Behind Bars: The World’s First Co-op Run Entirely by Prisoners

Roberto Luis Rodriguez Rosario with his book, Corazon Libre, Cuerpo Confinado.

By David Bacon

It was a cooperative in Puerto Rico's Guayama prison that changed his life. Growing up, Roberto Luis Rodriguez Rosario was surrounded by violence, and lived most of his pre-teen years in foster homes. "By the time I was a teenager, I was filled with anger," he remembers. "I became a rebel, and lost my way in drugs and alcohol. I stopped going to school at 14, and began getting arrested at 15. By the time I was 17 I was doing things that could get you locked up for life. Then, when I was 19, I saw what a disaster my life had become."

There were arrest warrants out for him, and Rodriguez made what he calls the most important decision of his life. He turned himself in. His sentences totaled 125 years, and even served concurrently, they still added up to 35 years behind bars. "But I began to work on my life," he reflected. When he was transferred from a maximum-security institution to the medium security prison in Guayama, Puerto Rico, he joined a worker-owned co-operative run entirely by the inmates.

"I was looking for tools to help me work on my problems,” said Rodriquez. “I thought at first [the co-op] was just a way to reduce my sentence, but once I got involved, and started practicing the principles of co-operativism, I realized it was making a big change in my life."

The co-op, started in 2003, has helped dozens of inmates reduce their sentences and return to their communities. Of the 50 co-op members who have been released from prison in the past ten years, including Rodriguez, only two have gone back to prison, and one of them is again out on parole. The recidivism rate elsewhere in Puerto Rican prisons is over 50 percent per year according to Lymarie Nieves Plaza, director of marketing at a local credit union. Today, the co-op has 40 active members, in a prison with a population of roughly 300. And cooperative projects have sprung up in three other prisons throughout Puerto Rico, where they plan to make everything from children’s clothing to renewable energy products.

“These are jobs that are much better than the slave labor the prison itself offers,” said Jessica Gordon Nembhard,  professor of community justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, where she studies how cooperatives can empower communities of color, prisoners, and returning citizens (read our interview with her about her latest book Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice). “There are many benefits from co-ops that extend beyond their market value. They promote leadership development, financial education and literacy, high level social skills, and collective decision-making that extend beyond the operations of the co-op.” 

The culture of cooperatives and democratic decision-making has had a big impact on the lives of many prisoners, Rodriguez explains, and cites his own history. The co-op meetings are run democratically, and every member has a voice. That creates the basis for trust in each other. "I can have an opinion in a meeting, but the members decide everything," said Nieves who has been working as a co-op educator and marketer with the prison co-ops.

“The co-op provides a different point of view,” said Gordon Nembhard. “It's not ‘me against the world’. It’s the co-op and my fellow members working and thinking together. They can now afford to pay for the things they need and help to support their families even though they are in prison. That is transformational.”

Changing laws and changing lives

Creating the co-op took several years and a change in the law. In 2000, a small group of prisoners in the Guayama state prison began to create craft items in an art therapy program. Some combined clay figures of Don Quixote or of saints, on a carved wooden base, holding a brightly painted Puerto Rican flag. Some inmates were leather workers, and made portfolios, belts, hats, and sandals. Others carved boats, or made pencil portraits.

None could be sold outside the prison, however. One of the inmates, Hector Quiñones Andino, began to investigate how prisoners might organize themselves so that their work might find a market. He looked at two possibilities. One was to form a corporation. "But they didn't like that idea much," Rodriguez says, "because it focused too much on individual profit." Quiñones found a book about cooperatives, and that provided another alternative. So he asked for an orientation from the Co-operative League of Puerto Rico, according to Rodriguez.

Discovering that they faced a legal prohibition from participating in cooperatives because of their criminal history, Quiñones and fellow prisoners in the art program wrote a letter to the governor at the time, Sila Maria Calderon, asking her to modify the law. She was moved by their story, met with some of the prisoners, and in 2003 she worked with the legislature to amend the law.

The co-op they established, the Cooperativa de Servicios ARIGOS, was the first co-op ever organized exclusively by prisoners themselves, with a board of directors made up solely of inmates. To become a member, a prisoner has to buy a $20 share, and inmates without the money up-front can work off the cost in about two months. After that, each co-op member has a voice in meetings, and one vote.

Most of the craftwork is sold in assemblies or public events organized by other cooperatives or associations. Inmates themselves can go to present their work, but they must pay for transportation and the prison guards who accompany them. They have recently expanded their work to include a nursery growing cucumbers, bell peppers and tomatoes used in the food eaten by inmates.

Rodriguez is not much of an artist, he says, so he became the co-op's secretary, responsible for keeping the books and seeking new markets. Of the money received in sales, 15 percent goes to the prison for the cost of the space and services, and 10 percent is invested by the co-op in capital expenses. The other 75 percent is divided among the co-op members. "For us, this is so much better than working for the prison itself, where they only pay $25 for 160 hours you work in a month," he explains.

The co-op has to defend its existence to the prison, often in strict economic terms. Rodriguez smiles at the way they have been able to meet objections that the co-op costs the prison money. "We showed that the prison was getting $10,000-$15,000 from its share of our sales," he recalls. "That made them much more interested in supporting us."

After serving just over 14 years of his sentence, Rodriguez was released on parole, which he completed a year ago. Life outside, however, has been challenging. Rodriguez would like to start a co-op for ex-co-op members, but it's difficult to get people together, and parole restrictions bar socializing among ex-inmates, a law they hope to change soon. Rodriguez recently released a book on his experience, entitled Corazon Libre, Cuerpo Confinado (Free Heart, Confined Body).

"We've learned how to run a business, and some former inmates now have their own small businesses outside as a result,” said Rodriguez. “If you can change the way people think in prison, you can do anything. It is a model for social change."

Four Ways to Lift Up Women of Color in the Workforce

Ensuring the economic success of women of color has never been more crucial to America's future. Though women of color make up a large and growing share of the workers, breadwinners, and entrepreneurs that are driving local and regional economies, they are consistently paid less than all other groups of workers — White women, men of color, and White men [see graph above]. Further, women of color are all too frequently employed in low-wage jobs that fail to provide family-supporting wages or basic benefits such as paid parental and sick leave.

"More than 70 percent of women of color are either the sole or co-breadwinner, making their economic security inextricably linked to that of their family," said Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women's Law Center.

Tackling the disparities in pay and employment facing women of color will require policies at the national, state, and local level that link these women to the education, workforce training, business support, and work opportunities necessary to thrive. Several cities and states have taken pioneering steps to enact the types of policies and programs that lift up women of color workers, providing models for other local, state, and federal initiatives. These local successes center around four policy priorities:

(1)   Improve the quality and wages of low-wage jobs: Because women of color are disproportionately employed in the low-wage sector and live in or near poverty, strategies to raise the floor on low-wage work can have immediate impact for these women and their families. Effective policies to raise the floor include those that encourage workplaces to invest in their workers (e.g., programs that upgrade workers' skills and pay) or make it easier for workers to organize and collectively bargain for better pay and working conditions. "You are seeing some companies recognize the value of investing in their workers — that it is valuable for workers to feel good about their workplace and be able to fill their roles at home," Goss Graves said.

Policies that directly establish higher standards for wages and working conditions, such as increasing minimum and living wages, eliminating the sub-minimum tipped wage, and providing paid sick leave, child care supports, and retirement savings are also vital to increasing the pool of quality low-wage jobs. In September 2014, after a two-year campaign by community, labor, and civil rights groups, the Los Angeles City Council approved a living wage ordinance to raise the minimum wage for the city's hotel workers to $15.37 an hour. This will raise pay for 13,000 low-income hotel workers, most of them women and people of color. 

(2)   Create pathways for women of color to access good jobs: Women of color often face barriers to accessing "middle-wage" jobs that offer career pathways but do not require a four-year degree, such as those in construction or some health care. Targeted and local hiring policies for public investments can increase access to middle-wage jobs for women of color, as can workforce training strategies that connect women of color to apprenticeship programs and workforce training programs in high-growth industries.

The Washington State's Home Care Worker Training Partnership is the nation's first large-scale career pathway program for home care aides, training 40,000 aides a year in 200 classrooms across the state and online, providing instruction in 13 languages. The partnership runs the nation's first registered apprenticeship for more advanced training so that aides can increase their earnings and move up the career ladder.

(3)   Support women of color to become entrepreneurs: Despite many barriers to quality employment, women of color are the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs and job creators, numbering 1.4 million workers and generating more than $220 billion in revenues in 2013. At the same time, numerous studies show that women of color have a harder time getting business loans or equity investments than their White and male counterparts. Policies that increase access to affordable capital, support business development for entrepreneurs of color, and leverage government procurement policies to link women of color-owned businesses to government contracts are all effective strategies for supporting these entrepreneurs, and helping them create employment opportunities within their communities.

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority has dramatically increased contracting with firms owned by women and people of color from 11 to 31 percent as part of a new commitment to equity.  

(4)   Ensure girls of color can succeed in school and access science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers: Higher education (at least an associate, if not a bachelor's degree) is a critical stepping stone for success in the 21st century job market, but girls of color often face challenges accessing high-quality preK-12 public education and are more likely to attend schools that lack STEM-related courses. Many girls of color are also subject to overly harsh school discipline measures that result in disproportionately high rates of suspensions and expulsions, reducing their learning time and ability to thrive in school, according to Goss Graves. Policies to eliminate the use of harsh school discipline measures, increase access to high-quality public education and STEM courses, and supplemental programming that exposes girls of color to STEM-related skills and experiences are key to setting girls of color on a track toward later career success and financial stability.

Black Girls CODE is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to training and empowering girls of color to become leaders and innovators in computer science and technology. In the three years since its founding, it has served more than 3,000 girls ages seven through 17 and opened seven chapters around the country.

For more data on women of color in the economy, such as the percentage of people of color who earn $15 an hour or more, see the National Equity Atlas.

Read the rest of the May 15, 2015 America's Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model issue.

How the Proposed Fair Housing Rule Will Boost the Economy

Strong and effective fair housing laws are essential for building prosperity — for people struggling to get by, for local and regional economies that benefit from thriving communities, and for the nation as a whole. That’s why a proposed rule by the Department of Housing and Urban Development is so important. As inequality soars and neighborhoods of concentrated poverty are on the rise in most American cities, the rule would push municipalities to deliver on the promise of fair housing. By helping to connect low-income families to neighborhoods of greater opportunity, the rule has the potential to spur economic growth not only within these households, but within cities and regions.

The rule, due out this summer, is called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). It would sharpen the tools that equity advocates and public sector leaders can use to increase investment in high-poverty neighborhoods, fight racial discrimination in the housing market, and add more affordable housing choices in neighborhoods with jobs, good schools, and other essentials. It would do this in three important ways:

(1)  It would make municipalities more accountable to community member needs by requiring resident engagement on fair housing and community development issues.
     
(2)  It would require a data-driven analysis (an "assessment of fair housing") of community conditions and impediments to fair housing, including factors that contribute to areas of racially concentrated poverty and high unemployment (e.g., school performance, transportation access, and toxic exposures).
     
(3)  It would require jurisdictions to tie federal funding — such as Community Development Block Grants and HOME funds — to addressing the fair housing challenges that are identified.

Taken as a whole, the proposed rule would mean that cities, counties, and states must be proactive to ensure all people can live in neighborhoods where they have access to the opportunities and resources we all need to succeed.

This rule is long overdue. It will help turn around the lasting negative impacts of historically discriminatory practices that contributed to the creation of poor neighborhoods of color, and it will reduce barriers that cut millions of Americans off from economic opportunity. This rule can be a powerful tool to advance equitable economic growth for the nation, and here are five reasons how:

(1)  Reducing growth-limiting racial and economic exclusion: Research shows that families living in disinvested and low-income communities have limited economic mobility and reduced future earnings. This effect creates generational cycles of poverty and limited opportunity: For example, two-thirds of Black children raised in the poorest quarter of U.S. neighborhoods a generation ago are now raising their children in similarly poor neighborhoods. This proposed rule has been proven to help direct more investment to neighborhoods that need them and help low-income families move to neighborhoods with more resources. Both the Puget Sound and the Twin Cities regions built off of their fair housing assessments – part of a pilot for the proposed AFFH rule – to focus new infrastructure investment in Native American, African American, African immigrant, Latino and Southeast Asian communities in need of investment. When St. Louis conducted a fair housing assessment, the city found that Housing Choice Vouchers were being used primarily in low-income neighborhoods where there were few jobs and community amenities. This assessment helped the city revamp its program to help residents find diverse housing choices that better met their needs.
     
(2)   Connecting people to job opportunities: By encouraging more job investments in high-unemployment communities and promoting transit investments that connect these communities to jobs elsewhere, this rule would help people previously isolated from employment opportunities better engage in the regional workforce and contribute to local economies. For example, Puget Sound used its fair housing assessment to strategically plan for a new food distribution hub and job incubators within historically disinvested neighborhoods where job growth was needed. And a New Orleans assessment that found transit was not serving late-shift schedules for hospitality and healthcare workers led to realignment of services to better meet low-wage, transit-dependent workers’ needs.
     
(3)  Creating jobs: Places that support the development of quality affordable housing and new infrastructure in disinvested neighborhoods also create new jobs both in the short- and the long-term for communities. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that building 100 affordable homes can lead to the creation of more than 120 jobs during the construction phase and roughly 30 jobs in a wide array of service industries once homes are occupied. When coupled with job training, inclusive hiring and contracting practices, and provisions for good wages and benefits, these jobs can help put low-income and unemployed residents on a pathway to good careers and financial stability.
     
(4)  Attracting new employers: Lack of quality affordable housing that connects to transit makes it more difficult for employers to recruit and retain employees, putting the local economy at a competitive disadvantage. In a national survey of more than 300 companies, 55 percent of large companies reported an insufficient level of affordable housing in their area, and two-thirds of these respondents cited this shortage as negatively affecting their ability to hold onto qualified employees. Other survey data suggests that affordable housing availability plays an important role in where new businesses decide to build or expand their operations. In Boston and Chicago, fair housing assessments helped these cities support new affordable homes around growing job centers in order to attract more employers to the area.
     
(5)  Providing low-income families with more disposable income to invest and save: The disproportionate housing burden on low-income communities and communities of color makes it hard for them to save for emergencies, make long-term investments, or spend money within the local economy on necessary goods and services. Affordable rent and mortgage payments, and access to affordable transportation, can substantially decrease household costs, in some cases by as much as five hundred dollars a month. When families can save on housing and transportation costs, it bolsters their resiliency and financial stability and allows greater spending on health care and education. These investments contribute to greater stability not only for these households, but for the broader economy: a recent study found that every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers actually adds about $1.21 to the national economy.

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule is powerful only if we understand it and put it to use. Learn more about the rule in our upcoming webinar.

How the Proposed Fair Housing Rule Will Boost the Economy

Strong and effective fair housing laws are essential for building prosperity — for people struggling to get by, for local and regional economies that benefit from thriving communities, and for the nation as a whole. That’s why a proposed rule by the Department of Housing and Urban Development is so important. As inequality soars and neighborhoods of concentratedpoverty are on the rise in most American cities, the rule would push municipalities to deliver on the promise of fair housing. By helping to connect low-income families to neighborhoods of greater opportunity, the rule has the potential to spur economic growth not only within these households, but within cities and regions.

The rule, due out this summer, is called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). It would sharpen the tools that equity advocates and public sector leaders can use to increase investment in high-poverty neighborhoods, fight racial discrimination in the housing market, and add more affordable housing choices in neighborhoods with jobs, good schools, and other essentials. It would do this in three important ways:

(1)  It would make municipalities more accountable to community member needs by requiring resident engagement on fair housing and community development issues.
     
(2)  It would require a data-driven analysis (an "assessment of fair housing") of community conditions and impediments to fair housing, including factors that contribute to areas of racially concentrated poverty and high unemployment (e.g., school performance, transportation access, and toxic exposures).
     
(3)  It would require jurisdictions to tie federal funding — such as Community Development Block Grants and HOME funds — to addressing the fair housing challenges that are identified.

Taken as a whole, the proposed rule would mean that cities, counties, and states must be proactive to ensure all people can live in neighborhoods where they have access to the opportunities and resources we all need to succeed.

This rule is long overdue. It will help turn around the lasting negative impacts of historically discriminatory practices that contributed to the creation of poor neighborhoods of color, and it will reduce barriers that cut millions of Americans off from economic opportunity. This rule can be a powerful tool to advance equitable economic growth for the nation, and here are five reasons how:

(1)  Reducing growth-limiting racial and economic exclusion: Research shows that families living in disinvested and low-income communities have limited economic mobility and reduced future earnings. This effect creates generational cycles of poverty and limited opportunity: For example, two-thirds of Black children raised in the poorest quarter of U.S. neighborhoods a generation ago are now raising their children in similarly poor neighborhoods. This proposed rule has been proven to help direct more investment to neighborhoods that need them and help low-income families move to neighborhoods with more resources. Both the Puget Sound and the Twin Cities regions built off of their fair housing assessments – part of a pilot for the proposed AFFH rule – to focus new infrastructure investment in Native American, African American, African immigrant, Latino and Southeast Asian communities in need of investment. When St. Louis conducted a fair housing assessment, the city foundthat Housing Choice Vouchers were being used primarily in low-income neighborhoods where there were few jobs and community amenities. This assessment helped the city revamp its program to help residents find diverse housing choices that better met their needs.
     
(2)   Connecting people to job opportunities: By encouraging more job investments in high-unemployment communities and promoting transit investments that connect these communities to jobs elsewhere, this rule would help people previously isolated from employment opportunities better engage in the regional workforce and contribute to local economies. For example, Puget Sound used its fair housing assessment to strategically plan for a new food distribution hub and job incubators within historically disinvested neighborhoods where job growth was needed. And a New Orleans assessment that found transit was not serving late-shift schedules for hospitality and healthcare workers led to realignment of services to better meet low-wage, transit-dependent workers’ needs.
     
(3)  Creating jobs: Places that support the development of quality affordable housing and new infrastructure in disinvested neighborhoods also create new jobs both in the short- and the long-term for communities. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that building 100 affordable homes can lead to the creation of more than 120 jobs during the construction phase and roughly 30 jobs in a wide array of service industries once homes are occupied. When coupled with job training, inclusive hiring and contracting practices, and provisions for good wages and benefits, these jobs can help put low-income and unemployed residents on a pathway to good careers and financial stability.
     
(4)  Attracting new employers: Lack of quality affordable housing that connects to transit makes it more difficult for employers to recruit and retain employees, putting the local economy at a competitive disadvantage. In a national survey of more than 300 companies, 55 percent of large companies reported an insufficient level of affordable housing in their area, and two-thirds of these respondents cited this shortage as negatively affecting their ability to hold onto qualified employees. Other survey data suggests that affordable housing availability plays an important role in where new businesses decide to build or expand their operations. In Boston and Chicago, fair housing assessments helped these cities support new affordable homes around growing job centers in order to attract more employers to the area.
     
(5)  Providing low-income families with more disposable income to invest and save: The disproportionate housing burdenon low-income communities and communities of color makes it hard for them to save for emergencies, make long-term investments, or spend money within the local economy on necessary goods and services. Affordable rent and mortgage payments, and access to affordable transportation, can substantially decrease household costs, in some cases by as much as five hundred dollars a month. When families can save on housing and transportation costs, it bolsters their resiliency and financial stability and allows greater spending on health care and education. These investments contribute to greater stability not only for these households, but for the broader economy: a recent study found that every extra dollar going into the pockets of low-wage workers actually adds about $1.21 to the national economy.

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule is powerful only if we understand it and put it to use. Learn more about the rule in our upcoming webinar.

B Corporations Deliver on Equity, Sustainability

Benefit corporations provide a way for businesses to make profit without having to slash wages or resort to environmentally destructive practices. Ben & Jerry's, for instance, is one of the world's most popular ice cream brands with an annual sales revenue of $132 million. Its lowest-paid worker makes $16.13 an hour, which is 46 percent above the living wage in home state Vermont, and the company offsets more than 50 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions. More than 40 percent of the board and management are from underrepresented populations, such as women, people of color, lower-income individuals, and people with disabilities.

In a time when U.S. corporate profits are soaring but wages remain stagnant, Ben & Jerry's and hundreds of other companies, including Cooperative Home Care Associates profiled below, are choosing an alternative business model – benefit corporations – driven not just by profits but also by fair working conditions, diverse leadership, and environmentally sustainable practice.

One of the fundamental challenges to growing more "triple bottom line" businesses is the legal requirement to maximize profits that applies to corporations. Anything that takes away from profits, such as higher wages or more sustainable environmental practices, leaves the corporation vulnerable to being sued by its shareholders. This limitation hinders companies from advancing any values beyond profit making.

In response to this limitation, a movement was started to pass legislation allowing for a new type of corporate entity called the benefit corporation. The benefit corporation provides legal protection for businesses that choose to treat their workers well, protect the environment, and invest in their communities, even if it means their annual profits are not as high. As of 2013, 19 states plus the District of Columbia passed benefit corporation legislation, including Delaware, which is home to 50 percent of all publicly traded companies and 64 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

In 2012, Ben & Jerry's took a step beyond being a benefit corporation and became a Certified B Corporation, as conferred by a nonprofit organization called B Lab. There are currently more than 1,000 registered B Corps. A Certified B Corp voluntarily meets higher standards of governance, workforce treatment, environmental impact, and community involvement. Companies must score at least 80 points on a scale of 200 to be eligible for certification.

Certified B Corps are part of a community of socially responsible companies and span a large spectrum of goods and services. In 2012, Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) in the Bronx, New York, became the first home care company to become a Certified B Corp. Their overall B Score, at 154, is nearly twice the median score.

One of the reasons CHCA scores so high in the B Impact Assessment is because it is a worker-owned cooperative with the vast majority of the workers and worker-owners being from the Bronx. In an industry where good-paying jobs are hard to come by, CHCA deliberately chose a different business model, one that prioritizes workers over profits, and has flourished for nearly 30 years. The company has grown from 12 people to now over 2,000 employees, 70 percent of whom are worker-owners.

"When we started, a lot of for-profit home-care companies were established and were seen as a way of making a lot of money in a short time," said Michael Elsas, president of CHCA. "You didn't have to pay workers that much, you didn't have to train them that well, and you could move in and make a killing. And, in that environment we wanted to establish something a little different, more socially responsible."

Treating the workers well was not just a social mission, but it made good business sense. Elsas said, "Many of the people we were seeing were women, particularly women of color. The thought was if we train people longer and really spend time with them, if we prepare them for an entry-level position and get them ready to work and remove those barriers to work, and, if we provided a lot of support for those workers both before and after they were trained by us, we could create quality, full-time jobs. And then as a result of that quality job, we would be providing quality care that we could, in fact, provide better services."

CHCA has been a co-op since the company started in 1985. Going from a co-op model to also certifying as a B Corp was an easy decision and made a lot of business sense, Elsas said. "Distinguishing ourselves as a B Corp would be helpful in marketing to be able to say we are the only B-Corp certified home care company. We thought that would be helpful for those entities that want to do business with a B Corp. Quite honestly, it was a natural for us. There was very little that we had to do to get certified because we were already a worker-owned company, we already had everything in place."

Elsas said that CHCA is successful not because it is a co-op but because of the best practices they employ. Currently, 90 cents of every dollar that comes into the company goes to the worker. While paying workers less would result in higher profits and better dividends, Elsas said higher dividends is not what has made the company successful for 30 years. Instead, what makes CHCA successful is "how we train, how we supervise people, how we respect people, how we let people participate in what we do."

Companies like CHCA and Ben & Jerry's show that businesses can make a profit and embrace socially responsible practices. Higher wages and better work environments help working families reach economic security. Consumers can support B Corps and environmentally and socially conscious businesses by buying their products and services. A full list of B Corps can be found here.

New York City Invests in Worker Co-ops — and Equitable Growth

Before Yadira Fragoso became a worker-owner at Si Se Puede, a housecleaning cooperative of immigrant women in New York, she earned $6.25 to $10 an hour in various jobs. She had no control over her hours or schedule and sometimes had to bring her children to work.
 
Now she earns $20 to $25 an hour. Along with the cooperative's 50 other worker-owners, she shares decision making for all business policies and operations. Most importantly, she says, she has greater economic security and job flexibility, so she can spend more time at home with her kids. Joining the co-op "changed my life," she recently told the New York City Council.
 
Stories like this and determined organizing by advocates for a fairer, more inclusive economy have persuaded city officials to invest $1.2 million this year in developing worker-owned businesses in low-income communities and communities of color. It's the largest investment in such businesses ever made by a city government in the United States (though only a tiny fraction of the city's $75 billion budget).
 
The initiative aims to support the creation of 234 jobs and bring training and financial resources to 20 existing co-ops and 28 start-ups. It promises to raise the profile of worker-owned cooperatives as a strategy for equitable economic growth.
 
How worker co-ops spur the growth of good jobs
 
Job growth in New York City since the Great Recession has been concentrated in low-wage industries. Black and Latino communities are unemployed or underemployed at double the rates of Whites. Economic barriers have left more than one in five New Yorkers in poverty and driven income inequality to a historic high. A recent report by the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) documents these trends and says they threaten the city's economic growth.
 
The report points to small businesses — the city has about 200,000 — as the largest job creator, and to worker-owned businesses as an effective model for closing income and wage gaps by moving people from joblessness or precarious employment to dignified jobs. Worker co-ops tend to provide higher wages, good benefits, training, and career pathways, particularly in typically low-wage industries like housecleaning and home care.
 
At the eight-year old Si Se Puede, for instance, worker-owners receive 100 percent of the pay for their work — there are no agency fees or middlemen — and receive training in the use of safe, eco-friendly cleaning products.
 
Most successful co-ops provide financial returns to worker-owners, creating avenues to accumulate wealth. And because they are democratically owned and managed, they empower workers, build dignity, and inspire engagement in civic society. "There's no greater medicine for apathy and feelings of living on the edges of society than to see your own work and your voice make a difference," says the FPWA report.
 
A beacon for the burgeoning worker co-op movement in the city and across the country is Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) in the South Bronx. Founded in 1985 with 12 workers, it employs more than 2,000 people, making it the nation's largest worker co-op and a significant driver of employment in the Bronx. Wages and benefits for CHCA home care aides have increased more than 40 percent in the past five years, and turnover is 15 percent, compared with more than 60 percent for the industry overall.
 
New York is also home to several dozen young worker co-ops, mostly in immigrant communities. Occupy Sandy — an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street that mobilized to aid cleanup in the Rockaways after Superstorm Sandy — has seized on co-op development as an important growth strategy for the area, which was struggling even before the storm. The group has partnered with The Working World, a nonprofit organization that provides investment capital and technical assistance to co-ops, to incubate worker co-ops in the area, particularly in the large Central American community.
 
A bakery and a construction co-op have launched, and three more co-ops — juice bar, landscaping, and screen printing — are in development, said Pablo Benson, a consultant for Worker-Owned Rockaway Cooperatives.
 
"A huge component of the long-term recovery effort is to help develop a more democratic form of economic redevelopment," he said. "It's remarkable what can be unleashed when people have the power to make decisions."
 

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