Poverty persists through generations

Clearly, there are factors in the Estrada kids’ favor. Their modest parents believe in hard work and education. The kids know they need to go to college, not only to develop the chops required to lead the free world, but even to swing a bat at a ball before stadiums full of fans.

Here’s another factor in the Estradas’ favor: A new Boys & Girls Club recently took up residence at Washington Elementary School. It costs only $30 to join for a year. Without it, Crystal said, the kids would spend too much time home alone, and maybe get mixed up in the kind of trouble that unsupervised kids in this neighborhood too often fall into — or run from. Instead, they are finishing up their homework and building their social and athletic skills — all the while surrounded by colorful college pennants that border the cafeteria, beckoning all these kids toward a brighter future.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve really tried to create a college-going environment,” said Elise Menashe, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southwest Washington.

The club is one example of many new or expanded Clark County programs aimed at children and families who are stuck in what experts call the cycle of “intergenerational poverty.”

That means poverty that’s pervasive and self-replicating. It’s not caused by unexpected crises such as layoff or foreclosure, divorce or health emergency. It’s a culture of low expectations and low self-esteem — and something that parents naturally pass on to their children.

Local cycle-breaking initiatives were sparked by a big grant from the world’s wealthiest philanthropic foundation, just up Interstate 5 from here. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, recently settled on intergenerational poverty as a significant and persistent social ill, and granted $5 million to nine Pacific Northwest grantors who are redistributing the money to community agencies best positioned to attack the problem.

Here in Clark County, that local grantor is the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington, which was given $700,000 to dole out over four years; it also added its own discretionary dollars to the mix. It convened a committee, studied the problem and decided on an “upstream” approach, emphasizing early childhood education above all else.

“Education, education, education,” said Menashe. “More than anything, that’s what changes the cycle of poverty.”

Sense of SELF

“Research shows that when kids enter school behind, they stay behind,” said Debbie Ham, the director of grantee Support for Early Learning and Families, a homegrown Clark County nonprofit. SELF won the biggest chunk of money from the Community Foundation — $119,000 — and is preparing for a huge, in-depth strategy session among dozens of local stakeholders in this issue in the spring. By July, she said, SELF should be ready to unveil an agreed-upon community agenda for attacking chronic poverty through early childhood education.

That mirrors discussions and initiatives that are happening across the nation, she said. The United Way in Portland also received $700,000 from Gates.

“How do you approach big social problems and begin to effect social change?” Ham said. “What are the things that make the most difference? We don’t know yet. We need to rigorously measure progress over time.

“What we do know is that there’s a critical window, age birth to 5, that’s the most rapid period of brain growth. It lays the structural foundation in our brain. Opportunities and activities at that age make a huge difference. The more stressors and trauma in the family, it has a really big impact on the developing brain and the ability to learn and be successful,” she said.

The personal and cultural repercussions of that disadvantage can be profound and lifelong. Donna Beegle, a Tigard, Ore., consultant on poverty issues who emerged from intergenerational poverty herself, wrote in a 2003 study: “From birth, children from generational poverty learn that their families are not ‘normal,’ but rather that they are deficient because they do not have the ‘right’ appearance, food, house, job or communication style. Such messages place blame on those in poverty and reinforce their alienation from middle-class society.”

Community schools

Early childhood education often means whole family education, experts say, because children don’t value learning unless parents set the example. And parents who never had that example may have a lot of learning — and perhaps some attitude adjustment — to do themselves.

“A lot of these parents didn’t exactly have great experiences in school when they were children,” said Jennifer Blechschmidt, administrator for early learning at Vancouver Public Schools.

That’s why the Vancouver district has emphasized turning 13 of its schools, located in low-income neighborhoods, into what it calls Family-Community Resource Centers. It wants to transform the whole idea of what school is and what it — to families. Parents used to seeing school as a strict, scary place — or just a warehouse and waste of time — now will find a cornucopia of after-school offerings such as yoga and fitness classes, lending libraries and book clubs, Latino moms’ groups and English conversation circles, résumé-building and job-hunting help and connections with social services — even access to computers and telephones for families who can’t afford them at home and emergency food for families in real trouble.

“We’re trying to make these community schools a hub for parents and families,” said Blechschmidt. “We’re trying to remove the barriers, the scary parts, whatever makes school seem like ‘a big bad institution’ and less like home. Parents’ lives are already overstressed, just trying to survive. We are trying to be very intentional about building supports.”

“There are so many programs and services out there,” said Rhona Sen Hoss, executive director for the charitable Foundation for Vancouver Public Schools. “This brings them into our schools and makes it one-stop shopping.”

Learning the basics

Education is more than a bunch of facts you learn or skills you master. It’s a mind-set, a sense of forward momentum that’s at least somewhat self-propelled. Some absorb that mind-set easily because it’s an essential fact of their childhood — it’s just there in the air — while others learn to cope with life’s challenges at only the most minimal level.

That’s what Debbie Dover, the executive director of Second Step Housing, calls “a lifestyle of stress.” It’s an endless game of Whack-a-Mole, with no real sense of how to change the game. Poverty experts like to talk about helping people counteract that by developing “executive function” — a bigger picture view of life and an overall sense of competency in managing it. Second Step, a nonprofit agency that caters largely to homeless women and their families, years ago launched a Nurturing Parent Program for “at-risk families” who are beset by any number of problems, from domestic violence to addiction. The program is open to community referrals as well as Second Step residents trying to reboot their own behaviors and lead their families toward better lives.

The Nurturing Parent Program is a 12-week class that builds parental self-awareness, as well as appropriate expectations about the different stages of children’s physical and emotional development. When The Columbian sat in on a class, conversation centered on the sorts of real-world situations that any parents — regardless of income — must puzzle through. Like encouraging children to use their words instead of their fists. Like negotiating some consistency out of the different child-rearing styles of divorced parents. Like figuring out appropriate consequences for different sorts of infractions at different ages and stages.

Even like enjoying some family-style dinner conversation. Yes, Second Step pauses the heavy discussions to rehearse even the most basic family scenario: breaking bread together in polite, civilized fashion.

“Some of them have never sat down to a meal with their own kids before,” Second Step case manager Valerie Norris said.

Peer-to-peer

It’ll be a happy birthday indeed for hundreds of children, birth through age 5, who benefit from housing assistance from the Vancouver Housing Authority, which provides public housing and housing subsidies. Each one will receive a birthday present in the mail: an education packet from Janiece Michael-Schroeder and Chulina Wheeler, single moms who receive the same housing subsidies and who were hired last year to work, 20 hours per month, as early education advocates for VHA families.

Wheeler and Michael-Schroeder have made hundreds of cold calls to all those families, alerting them to the many educational resources available in the community. Last month, they made a short video with an overview of that information that’s now playing on screens at VHA headquarters and at VHA’s Rise & Stars Community Center. They’ve met with local kindergarten teachers to find out what incoming students ought to know in order to succeed, then assembled their own 16-page packets to help VHA kids master those basics.

It’s both information and skills: Familiarity with letters, numbers and colors, as well as the ability to sit still, listen attentively and follow directions. “It’s fun, it’s free, it will support your children as they get ready for school,” Wheeler says in the video. The two are also planning three educational family nights that will be held at Rise & Stars later this year. One will be aimed specifically at parents who don’t speak English.

“Every family wants the best for their children, but every family’s experience is molded by what they’ve known,” said VHA resident services director Jan Wichert. “If your parents didn’t finish high school, you may not grow up with any idea about graduating high school and going to college. So, let’s help folks know.”

But how? A school district form letter written in educational gobbledygook may get scorned and tossed, even if it’s welcoming families to the fold and offering early childhood education options, Wichert said. But a phone call or personal visit from a fellow VHA resident is more likely to get a positive reaction, she said. VHA has already learned that lesson with a previous grant that led to the hiring of four part-time health advocates.

“Putting a face on a program makes all the difference,” said VHA family resource coordinator Sharon Linn.

Strapped families

The ongoing tough times we live in — with the economy still dragging and middle-class jobs hard to find — means that “executive function” is no automatic ticket to First Class.