About 40 people gathered at the Gateway Center on Thursday night to help representatives of the Duke Endowment’s Program for the Rural Carolinas better understand poverty.
Team Vance, created with a three-year grant from that Duke Endowment initiative, sponsored the gathering based on an application from Team Vance member and Gateway leader Margaret Ellis.
The group that came to Henderson on Thursday combined Duke University students and researchers and a collection of leaders from counties around the state for a discussion titled “Stages of Progress: Movements Into and out of Poverty.”
Duke assistant professor Christina Gibson-Davis said the team is researching how individuals experience poverty as opposed to how the federal government defines poverty. The federal government defines poverty as three times the amount the average person spends on food for a year, or about $18,000.
The researchers’ goal is to ascertain whether the way the federal government deals with poverty makes sense.
Vance County is the first stop on the researchers’ summerlong tour of 16 counties in North and South Carolina. Vance has maintained one of the state’s highest unemployment rates throughout this decade and is rated a Tier I county, one of the poorest in the state.
Thursday’s presentation, at times abstract and academic, invited the attendees to discuss how a “typical person in our community” would spend increasing amounts of money. Attendees were asked to designate levels of poverty based on needs and wants met.
After a break for dinner, the team facilitated a discussion of how the “typical individual” should spend money to avoid poverty. Items such as big-screen TVs and SUVs fell off the original list and were replaced by higher rankings for savings and investments, homeownership, and educational trips for children.
The basic needs of food, shelter, clothing and transportation topped both lists.
Presenters asked people to share and define their experiences with poverty based on the levels the group had constructed.
The Vance residents pushed the discussion toward issues they consider problems in the county. Those problems include the high level of renters compared with resident homeowners in Henderson and the unwillingness of banks to make home loans but readiness to make car loans. Speakers called for greater homeowner education, a problem Gateway and the Generations credit union tried to address with a recent seminar.
The local mind-set also came in for criticism. Vance residents were described as “crabbish” compared with people who live elsewhere.
Researchers praised the opportunity to hear the “voice of the people” about their real needs to complement their analysis.
The researchers will interview Vance residents today and next week to gain insight into poverty in the county. The team will issue its report in late summer or early fall.
The next Team Vance community meeting will be next Thursday at 6 p.m. at Pinkston Street Elementary School.
— Written by Brad Breece