Being home with your family presents challenges and opportunities. Join GCO’s Joyce Mayberry and Katherine Greene as they share ways that you can take care of yourself and your community.
While the Georgia legislature takes a hiatus, there is a lot happening around the state. GCO’s Vice President of Public Policy, Buzz Brockway, shares valuable information on what you can expect with the election, new help for businesses, and additional learning resources for those attempting school from home.
At times, it may not feel like it, but the fact is that these are moments in time. We are a resilient people. We are going to get through this—and we actually are getting through this. When chaos happens we learn things about ourselves. Sometimes the dwell on the ugly things, but good things are happening and we simply need to learn from them.
Here are a few opportunities and lessons learned that will help us shape a better future for everybody:
1. A Job Is More Than A JobWhat a difference a few weeks makes. Just a month ago, unemployment was at 3.1% and the economy was booming. Now many face financial uncertainties for their businesses and for their households caused by closures and lockdowns. For many the feeling of hopelessness is new, but it proves the power that a job and financial provision can bring. When we are driven by purpose, hope is restored.
It’s easy to villainize those who want to increase jobs as callous individuals only interested in the “almighty dollar.” Now we can see a job brings purpose, hope, dreams, and a sense of dignity. Work is an important part of our sense of well being.
2. We Were Meant for RelationshipSocial distancing and lockdowns are making us appreciate the need and rewards strong relationships bring.
During a crisis that asks us to maintain distance, people are finding new ways to connect.
Why? Because we need it for our well-being. It is why we must continue to work to strengthen family and interpersonal relationships in all communities. Many people are taking online classes or learning new activities to bring us closer. While many of us had models for healthy relationships and interactions, not everyone has had that luxury. And after this is over, we will need to continue to foster these activities. Moving forward we must make sure that all people have access to the social capital that many of us are learning to appreciate on a new level.
Many of us are experiencing the struggle of educating our kids. We are learning what it is like to try to find the best tools to keep our kids learning.
While a great resource, online education isn’t as readily available as we hoped. More importantly, while some students have moved to online options, not all can.
The lack of equitable educational opportunities will lead to change. The solution going forward will be modular options in education. Not all kids need to go into a physical 22-person classroom to get educational needs met. Ones that can should continue to do so, but we must open up our thinking to ensure every person has equal access to high-quality education.
4. As Necessary as Government is, Our Communities Hold the AnswerYes, government has played a huge role in keeping society moving with stimulus packages and mobilizing services, but where we really flourish is in community action. From nonprofits providing services, feeding the needy, and connecting communities in an online environment to businesses providing the industry needed to keep goods flowing, all are examples of what happens when we work together to fight against a common enemy.
There will be thousands of stories coming out of this pandemic of neighbors supporting neighbors, foster families stepping up to help children forgotten during hardships, local community organizations providing services typically served by government, and businesses serving despite shackles of a lockdown as they await a return to normalcy.
We will persevere and we will be better.
As our communities, state, country, and even the world face unprecedented times because of the COVID-19 virus, one thing remains constant: community. It’s true that because of mandates on social distancing, physical gatherings are being discouraged. This may make some people feel disconnected.
It is a natural reaction. We are meant for community and the family it brings. It is why one of the vital pieces of the success sequence is family, and it is why the Georgia Center for Opportunity provides classes on relationship.
So what do we do when we can’t physically be together? Never underestimate the ingenuity of people to create community however they can.
Here are a few great examples of people who are working to establish connection amidst social distancing:
Josh Gad, most famously the voice of Olaf in Frozen, daily reads kids books via Twitter.
Let’s read! https://t.co/dmHWtH6PAS
— Josh Gad (@joshgad) March 14, 2020
In light of fear of exposure to the elderly and immune compromised, a Charlotte man is offering to shop for those who are unable, or concerned about, going out for themselves.
Jon Foreman, lead singer of the band Switchfoot, leads nightly acoustic sing alongs from his home in California.
While many churches offered online streaming options before the outbreak, many are being thrust into a new way of doing church for everyone. It’s not just Sunday morning services, but small groups and youth ministries as well.
Last night my son joined dozens of other middle school students on Instagram for a live stream and chat. My men’s small group meets virtually, and my wife is working with our women’s ministry to host daily chats with women stuck at home.
Our church is far from the only one doing this. Church communities all over the country are finding ways to stay connected virtually.
Brad Paisley has already shown that he is doing everything he can to support the community during this time. But on Thursday, March 20, 2020 he will be hosting a live concert on Instagram and he is already taking requests via text.
It all comes down to connection. We are meant for community. Despite the need to stay apart physically, we still find ways to connect.
Relationship is vital to your well being and to your upward mobility. Stay connected and find ways to be part of the community, virtual or not, around you.
To celebrate Black History Month, let me take you back to November 2008.
The morning of the election—an election that would make history with the victory of Barack Obama, first African-American president in U.S. history—a small headline appeared on websites and in papers: “At 114, a daughter of former slaves votes for Obama.”
Gertrude’s story really typified the reasons why. She was born less than thirty years after the conclusion of the Civil War, during the presidential administration of Grover Cleveland—at a time when African Americans were often kept from voting and subjected to unspeakable abuses. Her life had overlapped those of many of America’s (and history’s) great black leaders, like Frederick Douglass (he died about six weeks prior to Baines’ first birthday), W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
She had lived through some important milestones in the fight for civil rights and equal opportunity. She was 53 when Jackie Robinson jogged onto the diamond at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, 60 when the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was handed down, and 61 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.
She has also been witness to some of the most shameful moments in our nation’s history. She was 61 when 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, 69 when four black children lost their lives in a Birmingham church bombing, and just two days shy of her 74th birthday when Dr. King was assassinated. (Please take note: those are just the high profile abuses she witnessed as a senior citizen.)
Gertrude’s story reminds me of how exceptional and amazing American democracy is. How many other countries have elected ethnic minorities to lead them? Generally speaking, elsewhere in the world, such transitions don’t happen without military coups and civil wars. The fact is, America is exceptional in large part because of the many people of color who helped rise above and form it that way.
Can you imagine Gertrude’s parents ever having said to her, “One day you will cast your vote for a black man who will win the presidency”? I suspect they never could have imagined it. And yet, on November 4th of 2008, Barack Obama became America’s president-elect. And it was not by court order, legislative edict or military force, but by popular vote. The majority of American voters—black, white, Asian, Hispanic, etc.—chose him to be their leader.
The fact is, America is exceptional.
It’s worth pointing out that this is a trajectory we have been on for decades as evidenced by the fact that people of various ethnic backgrounds have been elected or appointed to become governors, lawmakers, cabinet secretaries, judges and so on.
We celebrate that this Black History Month.
Admittedly, I’m just a white guy from Orange County, California, now living happily in Atlanta. My ability to understand the plight of minorities in the U.S. is obviously limited. But I am a human. And I am able to recognize suffering, heartache and inhumanity when I see it. So I am also able to recognize both the source and manifestation of profound joy felt by millions of African Americans – and people of African descent worldwide—in seeing Barack Obama elected to the White House in 2008.
While that was a great moment, so much more remains to be done to ensure that everyone, of every color and ethnic background, has a legitimate opportunity to flourish. We’ve come a long way—but we have a long way still to go.
Gertrude Baines passed away in September 2009 at the remarkable age of 115—at the time, the oldest living person in the world. What a lifetime of progress she saw toward the realization of the American ideal—laid out (but not always carried out) by our visionary and courageous founders: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
And that’s why we at GCO we will be celebrating those who have contributed so much to our nation—those from the African-American community who, like Gertrude, remind us of what is great about this country.
We can’t create flourishing communities without flourishing families—and foster care and adoption are crucial parts of achieving that goal. An alarming 97 percent of kids who age out of the foster care system without a stable connection to a family end up in chronic poverty.
At Georgia Center for Opportunity (GCO), we understand the importance that foster families play in creating stable environments for the most vulnerable in our society—foster children.
That’s why we were thrilled to recently welcome Georgia’s leading providers of adoption, fostering, and prevention services to our offices and to tour some of our state’s foster care community organizations. A particular highlight was welcoming Lynn Johnson, Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, as part of the group.
Our site visits included allied organizations Faithbridge Foster Care, Bethany Christian Services, Foster Care Alliance, Connections Homes, and Promise 686.
The visits come as Gov. Brian Kemp and lawmakers in the Georgia General Assembly are pushing for legislation to reform Georgia’s adoption and foster care system, including increasing the tax credit for adoptions out of the foster care system from $2,000 to $6,000 for the first five years. The measure would also reduce the youngest age allowable to be an unmarried adoptive parent from 25 to 21, plus create a commission to recommend “systematic reform” in the foster care system.
We hope to see the foster community empowered through the current legislative session, so all of Georgia’s children can flourish—no matter their circumstances. For more, don’t miss this video of our panel on foster care and adoption from Breakthrough 2019.
In the end, we wholeheartedly agree with Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan when he said let’s make Georgia the No. 1 place for foster kids in the U.S.
