The Duke Endowment-sponsored Program for the Rural Carolinas convened in Henderson for the second consecutive Thursday last week at Pinkston Street Elementary School.
The program, which includes Team Vance, is the result of a three-year grant from the Duke Endowment. The program’s ultimate goal is to better understand poverty by going back to its roots.
Presiding over the Pinkston Street meeting were two internationally reared Duke University students, Damien (from Bosnia) and Nicholas (from Colombia), and Team Vance member Margaret Ellis. They tried to find out, by going to the source, how well the federal and state governments are helping with the problem of poverty.
The evening followed the pattern set a week earlier during the Program for the Rural Carolinas gathering at the Gateway Center.
About 20 people from in or around the Pinkston Street neighborhood gathered for the program Thursday. Ellis introduced the students and defined Vance County in a word foreign to them but all too common to this county: “po’.” Not poor or low-income, just po’.
The first activity sought a sense of how a typical family would react should they start earning money. Hypothetically, a family of three to five has nothing. Little by little, they start earning money and build from the bottom. The researchers wanted to know what the people of Vance would buy, not should buy, in order of importance.
The first three purchases were necessities: food, shelter (an apartment with utilities) and clothing. A good used car, a phone and a television with cable came next. Those three caused a debate over what would be bought and what should be bought. The previous items were what inevitably would be bought, but things such as health care and further education took priority in many minds at the meeting.
With more money, the typical family would start a savings account, buy a second used car so both parents could work, and buy a reasonably priced home for the growing family. Finally, the family would turn to further education, improving chances for a better job. With new job prospects, the next items on the list were “bling bling” and a computer.
The folks at the meeting discussed that the typical family would most likely buy luxury items before realizing the necessities of savings, education and insurance.
The next activity broke down the list into three parts: po’, poor and all right. Until the family members had a cellphone, they were still what Ellis referred to as po’. Only when they moved into their own home were they doing all right.
Exhausted by the activities, the group broke for dinner, including a delicious peach cobbler. After the meal the group, one by one, opened up and told the researchers where on the list they had been over the past 10 years. Most had been poverty-stricken, and some had made the same mistakes as the theoretical typical family, but all had learned from their experiences and were glad to help the research in the hope that it will make a difference.
(By the way, I was sorry to tell one person that, no, homeinhenderson.com did not have any reasonably priced homes for sale and that, no, I did not know how to explain the intricacies of a blog.)
— Written by Davis Harper