Seeing generational poverty as a condition that can be treated

She was a single mom living in poverty, looking for childcare for her children. She was under-educated, unemployed and unfulfilled. But Nataline Purdy was a woman full of potential and promise and dreams.

With personal support, counsel, access to an enterprise of services, and her own desire to advance, Nat found high quality childcare, progressive employment and financial coaching to successfully purchase a home for her family.

She also found a path to return to college to complete her bachelor's and master's degrees, become program manager for Communities In Schools of Tennessee, and a board member for United Way of the Mid-South.

Here at United Way, we want more people to escape poverty and live the life of their dreams. That's why we're launching Driving the Dream.

It's a new, groundbreaking initiative to address generational poverty in Memphis and the Mid-South in a new, groundbreaking way.

Two years ago, I heard Dr. Marcella Wilson, founder of Transition to Success, refer to poverty as a treatable condition. As a physician, that resonated with me. 

Generational poverty is a condition most frequently resulting from a confluence of socioeconomic insults which create economic immobility.

In other words, over time, people and families get stuck and need help.

Over the years, I've come to see that it’s commonly not the people themselves who get stuck, but the many conditions that engulf them that tend to lock them in poverty.

As a physician, pastor, program developer and service provider, and because I know Nat, I believe generational poverty is a condition that can be treated.

In medicine and public health, we are trained to identify and address many factors that influence a patient's health -- not only physical, mental and emotional factors, but social, cultural and economic ones.

We look "upstream" at social determinants of health to improve a patient's health "downstream."

That's the new approach we want to take at United Way.

Founded in 1923, United Way of the Mid-South serves the people in Shelby County and seven surrounding counties in West Tennessee, North Mississippi and East Arkansas.

United Way’s mission has always been to "impove the lives of Mid-Southerners by mobilizing and aligning community resources to address priority issues."

Those priority issues are education, financial stability and health. All of those are factors in generational poverty.

We want to leverage United Way's vast network of public and nonprofit human services providers to create a network of care for individuals and families mired in poverty.

Driving the Dream's network of care will bring together dozens of local groups with a history of alleviating consequences of poverty to share data, strategies and resources.

Rather than just leaving persons to make it the best way they can, to figure a way out on their own, Driving the Dream's network of care will collaborate to help more people gain greater financial security.  

We hope to launch the program by year's end. Last week, I sat in a room with more than 40 local service providers to start working on the nitty-gritty details. They get it.  They know that this is about more than a change in how the human services sector works together.

Driving the dreams of economic self-sufficiency will really require a change in our mindsets, our hearts and beliefs.

We may not have all gone to medical school, but we can all work together to treat this condition called poverty. Where there’s a you, there’s a way. A United Way. Driving The Dream.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth S. Robinson is president and CEO of United Way of the Mid-South.