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We all intuitively know that our strongest influencers are family and friends — our social networks — whether we are rich or poor. The people that surround us play a huge role in shaping and sustaining our future. When a society recognizes the best in any community and supports its growth from within, positive social change grows, sustains, and spreads naturally We all intuitively know that our strongest influencers are family and friends — our social networks — whether we are rich or poor. The people that surround us play a huge role in shaping and sustaining our future. When a society recognizes the best in any community and supports its growth from within, positive social change grows, sustains, and spreads naturally.
PDC is actually more focused on how individual positive deviant efforts can be role models for the larger community. It is the interaction of self-determination with mutuality that makes PDC so powerful. The positive efforts of friends or peers facing your same barriers shows that something can be done and so others become inspired and take more action or similar
The role of professionally run programs in PDC is to provide this option to its existing client base. Most programs bring about some change and can make living in poverty more tolerable, but they rarely have the continued funding needed to stay with a community to see the longer term change. It is therefore imperative that the residents targeted have an option to continue the change process itself, for themselves and their community. Many of our current social service organizations are role modeling this
PDC requires professionals to step back and transition the leadership to the clients their programs serve. Generally when this approach is introduced, a number of the staff are skeptical and curious as to the long term role they can play. While true that professional staff plays a much smaller role in PDC, what it does is free staff to engage many, many more of the residents. Since there are 6 billion people struggling with poverty there will always be a role, even if not in leading the change. Yet this change in roles can be
In PDC, program staff transfer the responsibility for success or failure to the participant. You have to know and trust that they can find their own way. Most program staff feel an obligation to provide advice or answers to clients. In PDC that is not allowed by staff. The role of the staff person if a client asks for help is what is called ‘positive inquiry’.
If you are a large agency already providing services – training, counseling, housing, etc. – then it is necessary to set up a separate ‘division’ where the expectations of staff are to step back from providing services. The role is to facilitate and help spread the efforts of the everyday people your enroll. In agencies where staff is trained to help, much of the work is to retrain the staff to not disrupt any of the natural leadership that may arise in the community.
Costs vary depending on the size of the demonstration and length of time to catalyze the process, etc. Current demonstrations have budgets ranging from $3 million over 3 years to just $50,000 for fewer initial participants over 2 years in a low cost region. We are exploring a model that focuses less on economic growth and more on the peer or community building aspect that will require even less funding and can scale mutual support quickly. Your primary consultants will be staff and families from peer organizations or communities already involved. After you start you will be expected to then help others as well.
Most current legislation and policy that helps low-income families is based on families showing ‘need’. Those in more privileged social networks or that already have money are provided incentives, breaks and investments based on the potential merit of the projects or businesses they propose. We need as much recognition and funding to be directed at low-income families based on their efforts and proposed impact, much as grants vary for the ideas coming from programs and social innovators. Small cash transfers because people are poor, such as UBI will not work or level the playing field. The residents themselves have big ideas and investing in them as we invest in programs now will create even more self-help collective efforts and innovations that come from and are led by the people we think are charity cases.
Most research and programs to date surface the weaknesses in low-income communities. We need research about the strengths and sense of mutuality that keeps 80% of the world’s population alive. People survive because of their own efforts. Programs, aid, government and corporations do not reach most of these 6 billion people. They survive selling on the street and helping one another, counter to the stereotype. They have ideas and they can lead their own change. We need the research and data about that resourcefulness and talent to flip the stereotype that these populations are ‘takers’ from society. Funders and policy makers should minimally want to explore this option, peer-driven change.
Most current legislation and policy that helps low-income families is based on families showing ‘need’. Those in more privileged social networks or that already have money are provided incentives, breaks and investments based on the potential merit of the projects or businesses they propose. We need as much recognition and funding to be directed at low-income families based on their efforts and proposed impact, much as grants vary for the ideas coming from programs and social innovators. subquestion5.1 ans is here
Most current legislation and policy that helps low-income families is based on families showing ‘need’. Those in more privileged social networks or that already have money are provided incentives, breaks and investments based on the potential merit of the projects or businesses they propose. We need as much recognition and funding to be directed at low-income families based on their efforts and proposed impact, much as grants vary for the ideas coming from programs and social innovators. subquestion5.2 ans is here