I hear you.

I hear you.

You are not alone.

Let me encourage you.

These are three statements that I heard spoken to one man yesterday and regularly hear from our staff members.

That these were some of the first words spoken to him after expressing his frustration, reminded me how proud I am to be at Able Works, with our hard working and compassionate staff.

Oftentimes the community members we serve are indeed frustrated, upset, and often feel hopeless. Frankly, most of them are justified in feeling this way having been taken advantage of numerous times by banks or refinancing scams. Whenever they interact with individuals, our staff is able to reach out and connect on a level that is deeper than just looking over their paperwork. They connect on a heart level and really live out our mission of equipping people with financial education, life skills, assets, and enabling them to live free from oppression and poverty.

Working at a non-profit, it’s not often easy to see the fruit of your labor. Yet sometimes, the fruit isn’t necessarily all that matters. Sometimes a home can’t be saved, or a financial situation not readily fixed, but this isn’t our only metric for success. What’s most important, as the result is to let these people be heard and encourage them when encouragement can’t be found anywhere else.

What would it look like to view the problems of those around me not as an opportunity to achieve some result, but realize that by simply listening, I have an opportunity to really connect and speak life and encouragement into others?

Fighting homelessness.

Our LiveAble program provides counseling for first-time homebuyers, individuals seeking to rebuild their credit, and current homeowners facing foreclosure and homelessness. Our LiveAble team does this through workshops, participating in resource fairs for those facing foreclosure, and meeting with clients individually to provide one on one support.

Seeing desperate homeowners in our office each day and hearing them tell their stories outside my office makes it easy to see the good our team is doing. However, it isn’t always as easy for me to understand what our team actually does to save these homes. In the month I’ve been working here, I’ve realized my heart has fully grasped the emotions and heartache of this but my brain hasn’t fully understood the process leading up to it.

Recently, I spent some time with our housing counselors to try to better understand the foreclosure process and where they enter to help save homes. I realized, “Gosh, everyone should have the opportunity to know this.”
 
This is what they said: 
 
At Able Works, the clients we serve are applying for a loan modification as a result of being in danger of losing their homes and sometimes facing homelessness. (Modifying their loan allows them to more successfully make the payments.)
 
After our housing counselors submit a full financial package (which can be a very tedious and detail specific process), the client’s lender will review the information and send it to the underwriter. At this point, the underwriter decides whether or not the client is approved to move forward with a modification. If the modification is approved, the lender will typically send the homeowner a trial payment plan lasting three months. During this time the homeowner is responsible for making all payments on time. Once the payment plan is over, the file will return to the underwriter and the modification will likely be finalized – allowing our client, the homeowner, to remain in their home.

Due to the bureaucratic and confusing nature of the banking system, the loan modification process is one that can take up to several months, sometimes even over a year. During this time, our counselors are providing as much emotional support as they are financial counseling to these families.

It is amazing to me that these counselors can be working with clients for a long time and the subject matter is certainly not easy to handle. They are fighting for these homes alongside the homeowners and providing hope without judgment. I get emotional just writing about this and our team does it every single day.

I hope, like me, you were able to gain some perspective on the foreclosure process as well as understand the great work our LiveAble team is doing on a daily basis. They are truly saving families from homelessness and the emotional impact that causes.


--Laura Gross

What's so great about a marching band?

Growing up I was a part of the high school marching band. Every Friday night during the football games, we would play the school fight song and march during the half time show. The marching band rallied the community in showing our support and pride in the team. Despite the fact that during my four years of high school our football team won only a handful of games, we continued to show up every Friday and support them.

By my senior year, it was clear we weren't going to be State Champions, but the marching band still showed up to support the team. Part of that was because it was required for band students, but I like to think it was because we believed the best in our team and hoped for their success.

The principle of believing in one's best has remained with me. I love to believe the best in people and get excited about organizations striving to do the same. This is what initially drew me to Able Works.

Able Works strives to equip individuals to fulfill their greatest human potential. As an organization, we seek to help people be free from poverty and oppression. We provide them with life skills and assets, including someone believing for their best. It would be easy to believe that my job, similar to supporting a losing football team, is a requirement. But Able Works continues to hope for people's success and truly believes in the individuals they are helping.

It isn’t just a job when you work at Able Works. You work here because you believe in it and want to be a part of making your community and the people in it better. And in doing so you believe with your heart and soul in the individuals you are helping. I work here for these same reasons. I want to continue to believe the best in people like we believed in my high school football team. I want to hope for their success.


Laura Gross

Overcoming Odds

If you are anything like me, every four years I loose a lot of sleep, my internal clock gets messed up, and watch more Television then I do any other time of year.  Why?  The Olympics!  

I was raised in a family where the Olympics were a mandatory tradition.   We have been faithful to watch the Opening Ceremonies and as many events as our schedules allow. It is part of the DNA of my family.  My maternal grandmother and grandfather participated in the 1948 London games.   They were both track stars from Canada. My grandfather was a hurdler, and my grandmother ran the Women's 4x4 Relay.  My grandparents met at the Olympics, fell in love and got married shortly after.  So, it isn't an understatement to say it's in my genes.

Now 64 years later, the Olympics are once again in London.  My grandfather is no longer with us, but I was blessed to be able to watch the Opening Ceremonies with my grandmother.  She kept saying, "These are so much better than mine.  They made us hold candles and let a few doves fly free." The 1948 games were right after World War II, so nobody, especially England, had any money for fancy torches, costumes or light shows.

But, there is something more about the Olympics than family history or the pizazz of the Opening Ceremony.  I think what draws me in every four years is the human spirit.  The chance to see records broken and history change.  I love watching people beat the odds.  To see the underdog win.  To see the once broken, made whole.  To see dreams come true.  This is why I work at Able Works.

Able Works cares about our community beating the odds.  We care about broken people becoming whole.  We care about seeing the under-resourced rise up and fulfill their dreams.  We coach, educate, lead, and cheer for individuals to break records.  To change history.  

I will never be an Olympian.  I may not ever get a chance to go to the Olympics as a spectator, but everyday I hear stories about the power of the human spirit, and I have a part in it. I guess you could say Able Works is like Coca-Cola or P&G, we are proud sponsors of East Palo Alto and the human spirit.  


-Kirsten

It's The Little Things

East Palo Alto, CA, is a city with its own personality.  When I first relocated from San Diego, I found it very difficult to understand the culture and experienced some culture shock.  East Palo Alto challenged me to find joy in the little things, and I’m learning to be thankful for that education. 

Recently, I was in a local grocery store, Mi Pueblo, and I met a cashier named Tanya.  We had a few conversations over the course of a couple weeks when I would come to shop.  I really appreciated her warm and open conversation.  Some time went by, and I started to notice Tanya wasn’t around much anymore.  I wondered if she got a new job, moved or if she was sick. Sadly, those thoughts about her absence at work had to stay thoughts, because I had no way of figuring out where to find answers.  Until a few days ago when I was driving home from Mi Pueblo. I was leaving the parking lot, and before I turned at the stop sign, I heard my name coming from a house on the corner of Clarke Ave. It was Tanya. I got out of my car and she asked me, “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in Mi Pueblo in a while.” I thought to myself, “I was just thinking the same thing about you!”

Tanya is a 23-year-old, African-American woman.  As we began to catch up, she shared that she would have noticed me at grocery store if we were there at the same time, because she predominately serves Hispanics. So when she sees an African-American, she remembers them. The conversation quickly led to her sharing about her life, her son, her family, and catching up on what she has been doing. She invited me into her house to meet her son and siblings, and we exchanged phone numbers. In hindsight, I can see that she was genuinely excited to see me, because later on, she mentioned that she has been looking for a friend.  I think when she saw me in Mi Pueblo she was thought to herself, “Hmm…maybe we can be friends.”

From my experience working with youth in East Palo Alto, I understand that most of the community aren’t used to people exhibiting trust, loyalty, or genuine friendship. I keep that knowledge in my mind as I interact with the community. Tanya pressed a little for my phone number and asked what I did in my free time. I could sense that she was really seeking friendship. She asked if there are certain times that I don’t answer my phone, to which I replied, “Outside of work times, there’s not a time that I don’t answer my phone or respond to a text.” I told her she can test that idea by texting me at 5 o’clock in the morning, and see if I'll respond. She told me she would test it, and she did! That small act of responding to her text was my way of showing her that not everyone is disloyal or dishonest.

When I moved to East Palo Alto from San Diego, I didn’t realize how much selfishness I had hidden inside me. It’s taken a lot of spontaneous interactions with people like Tanya to take me out of my comfort zone, and show me that it’s one thing to claim ‘relocation, reconciliation, and social justice,’ then it is to actually take those concepts and actively apply them to my life. It’s the little things that make a big difference. Little things like my interaction with Tanya. 

            

New HouseAble Project- Clarke Ave

Last Friday, June 29, Able Works acquired a new property on Clarke Avenue in East Palo Alto.  The home, previously owned by a national bank, has been vacant for the last three months and is in need of major cosmetic maintenance and renovations.  Over the next 3-4 months, Able Works will transform this property back into a safe home.  It will then be made available to a working class family in our community.  This is part of Able's vision to restore neighborhoods and provide opportunities for individuals to rise above poverty.

HouseAble is looking to assemble work teams to tackle some of the less-skilled projects including; exterior painting, landscaping, interior painting and cleaning.  Experienced trades people should also contact us to discuss how they can participate.  This project is scheduled to last through September 2012.  If you are interested in helping this summer, please email info@able.is.

HouseAble seeks to help our community build assets through sensible homeownership.

How "Interesting"

When people hear that I want to teach dance in inner cities, often times their response is, “Oh! Well, how interesting. That’s cool.” Sometimes I wonder what these people mean when they say ‘interesting’. Are they using that word to describe my desire to teach inner city youth, or are they altogether ignoring the inner city context, and referring to my desire to teach dance as ‘interesting’? Something in me believes that it is the former rather than the later that makes that phrase pass their lips.

Students who were raised in the studio – most likely from middle/upper class families – tend to see dance as a hobby; something that they choose to do out of a list of many other potential possibilities. However, in the inner city, the list of opportunities is not as extensive. This is the main thing that drives my passion to teach dance to these students. Urban students aren’t sitting at home conflicted about what to do with their day due to the overwhelming options being presented. These students are conflicted because there are no options.  They do the same monotonous things day in and day out.

I grew up in a single parent home, and I am familiar with having limitations put on my desired hobbies because of financial struggles. Although I wasn’t raised in the inner city, and I am not personally familiar with most of the situations that my kids had/have to face, I do understand limitations.  My break came in high school when I was given the opportunity to join the dance team and it changed my life. Dance became a way to express myself, and took me outside of the areas in my life that hurt. When people say to me, “Oh! Well, how interesting. That’s cool,” I respond with, “You’re right. It is cool," because I understand what it’s like to want something to do.  It brings me joy to share my talents with students who, even if for the sake of having nothing else to do, will soak up what I’m teaching them.  Maybe they will find that dance is something that can bring them into their own place of healthy expression. And that, to me, is ‘interesting.’ 

-Shanae Green