This is really it's a remarkable seminar and it's something that really presses me in terms of thinking about the types of issues in my own particular context. I think one of the things that I'd like to do is just give you a little bit of background on the American Enterprise Institute. I'm sure some of you have different opinions about what it is or what it isn't but essentially AEI as we call it is a 41 year-old Think Tank based in Washington. It's basically affiliated with 50 universities and colleges around the country and its primary task is to study public and private balances. It's a public policy research Think Tank.I would say out of the 160 staff 75% Republicans and 25% Or democrats and independents 60% of conservative and 40% of moderates. Somehow. The liberal label is dropped out of existence even around ATI. The thing that ate the ice was organized around in 1942 was the competition of ideas is fundamental to a free Society. And one of the things I enjoy about it because I had heard about you know a t I also know I was working there as a consultant with someone that I knew but I had my reservations about the organization but what I found out fairly quickly was they really do operate based on that competition of ideas theme so that when they had Morrowind Bound come discuss deregulation, they had Ralph Nader on the other side of the table to discuss those issues with him when they had the Governor Cuomo and to do a luncheon address, they invited Governor deukmejian from California to Minnesota Buick Encore presentation, and they had a debate when a t I took up the MX missile missile and it's a military area studies. They got the two best officers one pro MX in 1 anti MX and they published it in a single volume and just about everybody in Congress praise the book because it was the one place that they could go to get both sides of the issues and Comprehensive treatment so that we're not a right-wing crazy think tank that popped up around 1980. I think some people got that impression because so many of my colleagues went into the Reagan Administration. I was offered a job in the Reagan Administration, which I promptly turned down and you'll find out it's my biases against the government. I don't care who's in charge wasn't particularly Ronald Reagan, but I can remember one of them interesting comment that I heard when I was first starting at 8. Yeah. I was G we have thirty-two people that have been going into the Reagan Administration. Isn't that great and that's really sweet of a testimony to the research we've been doing on the last 4 years that captured, you know, the attention of the new president and then I heard other people saying G Reagan administration took thirty-two people in we've just lost our Lunatic Fringe so it's a It's an interesting, you know, it's an interesting organization but enough about that list. Let's talk a little bit about the project that I'm involved with. I do research on distress neighborhood. We focus on a thing called mediating structures Family Church, neighborhood ethnic and voluntary associations and essentially will look at the role that they play in delivering welfare state Services looking at the whole balance between the public and the private sector now, it's very interesting that the the style that we've sort of adopted. Its to look for Effective strategies things that work in distress neighborhood and then use that information to disseminate it to both the public and private sectors and also then the comment on the effectiveness of what's happening in the public sector Now, let me just read to you three of the major findings from the project and I think you'll get an idea of where we're at in terms of looking at Power. Mediating structures are uniquely successful in improving and in maintaining social order in distress low-income neighborhoods safety security and attitudes conclusive to human capital development cannot be maintained in the absence of active mediating structures in revitalizing neighborhoods families churches voluntary and neighborhood associations have extensive interactions with the economic education and criminal justice systems of the community. The opposite is true in distress neighborhood or second finding was that mediating structures are uniquely successful in preserving the economic and social games in distressed communities in neighborhood without strong mediating structures or where mediating structures are not included in revitalization efforts, the destructive impacts of vandalism and other Express of criminal Behavior coupled with the absence of skills information and resources to preserve profit proper. And positive behavior patterns results in the study and often rapid erosion of programs and depend facilities despite massive public or private investment and third and finally mediating structures provide alternative Service delivery mechanism with can amplify the impact and improve the targeting of Public Services in addition mediating structures fill Service delivery Gap and assist Unser population when public programs malfunction we've added to that went public. And when the nonprofit Community malfunctions because there was certainly a lot of malfunctioning within a nonprofit community. To talk about power steering very interesting that one of my friends Tom door who's at the Humphrey Institute the two quotes that I remember most vividly from Tom. The first one was that a point. I guess he was involved with some organizing around problems with the United Way and eat any dubbed United Way the OPEC of Charities that really stuck in my mind because of the the inflexibility within the United Way system. It's a tremendous systems the tremendous positive system, but because it is a system there certain types of inflexibility there the other thing he said that Minnesota with the last Bastion of belief in Goodwill, And I had to think about that cuz I didn't know what he was talking about. And I think it's going to report the personality, you know of the state at least the twin cities are in the people that I've met, you know, since I've been here, this is my first time in Minnesota and I've met several people from Minnesota always struck me as soon as straightforward direct personable people friendly people willing to reach out and I think that may be part of the reason that you start with sort of a good human bases whenever you go into anything that doesn't mean you always end up in the right spot and I think this particular topic so to leave the Senate map. I would say they're two things when I think about power and shearing competition and cooperation that really go to get me going. The first is that we underestimate the power of the poor and we underestimate the power of people in distress communities, we underestimate and overestimate their economic power you underestimate their power to problem-solve and we underestimate their power to exert social control in the wrong neighborhood and part of the problem as you'll see is I get into some of the examples is that we begin to think about power sharing as though we have the pie and we're going to share a slice with people who are powerless. I pay you the worst chapter I've ever read in just about any book. Was that one in Rollo May that was entitled black and infinite that's in power and innocent witches on your your reading list and it's very difficult to start to consider power Concepts and relationships when you start out with a wrong death Mission and that is that there's such a thing as powerlessness. Nobody LaxPower. You have some form of how the issue is. How do you choose to apply it the other thing that we do and I think it's important in terms of looking at Power relationships is we under a underestimate the abilities of women and minorities to compete and therefore we feel the solution to the problem involve sharing at that slice of the pie. In other words taking white male power Prestige access jobs and influence and then somehow changing the conditions of women in minority by allowing some of that power to spill over onto them that Is patently wrong also. Let me just get into a couple of examples and then maybe wheel. Get a good feel for what I'm talkin about. I want to talk about is Kimmy, correct? The Kenilworth Parkside resident Management corporation is a low ride public housing project in Washington DC. Its approximately 25 years old and we started studying the project in 1980 because of an exemplary College support program that they had set up and tutorial program and one of the things that I found that was very interesting was that for three years. They had no heat in hot water. The welfare dependency rate with 85% 85% of the families were totally dependent on transfer payments for their income. The crime rate was extremely high every 18 months. The kid was killed crossing the median strip trying to go to the 7-Eleven. The drug problems were outrageous DC has a number of problem neighborhoods. Kenilworth-parkside was one of them you had basically a 1 stop driving shop for drugs. You could drive your car into the neighborhood drug pushers for come up with the car and ask you what you want and they didn't have what you want. They would take you to drive down, you know, two or three car lengths and speak to the guy in the red hat. It was terrible the money that was made from the drug sales was used for gambling on the street. Obviously fights erupted there was shootings many residents were injured by stray bullets. It was a real hellhole. Now the government had focused on kenilworth-parkside. They had put money through the public housing the DC government had a daycare center there. They had health clinic. They had all sorts of counseling. They had neighborhood organizers training available. They worked with the tenant board. They did all sorts of things to correct the conditions there and things kept getting worse and worse. And then all of a sudden at the end of about eight months the private contractor that was managing Kenilworth hadn't been paid for like six months and their contract was up. So they walked off the job. No one was managing kind of work. All the residents had been planning for about a year to take over and actually manage the property themselves, and this was their window of opportunity. In January and February of 1982 they began managing the properties themselves and in the next two and a half years, they turned out such a success case that people don't believe me when I tell them the statistics. They'd reduce crime by 75% They reduce teenage pregnancy by 50% in the first year and 75% in the second year. They reduce welfare dependency from 85% of the families down 39% of the families. They reduce the welfare payments coming into the community from almost a million dollars a year and in DC the average welfare payment is $3,599 for a woman with two minors. So you're talking about a lot of families in order to get a million dollars worth of payments from afdc into that 460 four-unit complex with approximately 3,000 people. They reduced that from me or a million dollars down to six hundred and fifty thousand in less than 2 years. The rent collection rate went from $36,000 per month the increase of 131 percent to where it's now stands at $83,000 per month. They now or generating enough Capital to run that on a break-even basis before they were losing approximately $180,000 a year, even though the district government was getting a half a million dollar supplement from HUD to handle the cost at the housing project all this occurred and people say will Qi this is you know, someone miraculous. How did they how do they do it? Well, they did it by problem solving they did it by coordinating with professionals who could teach them things that they could apply that the professionals could not apply. First thing they did they felt they had to deal with the drug problem. So they sat down with the police department. They said police you do not exercise your power to protect our community in the white suburbs 10 miles away. If someone breaks a ball in the middle of the night or starts yelling and screaming 10 cop car show up and they get 15 phone calls here. We can have somebody being beaten half to death and you asked us is a person dead. If it's a murder we will come out. Otherwise we have to deal with murders and rapes all over the city. So they basically demanded that the police exercise their power to stop crime in the community and that the community Val to work with them. The first thing they did was sit down with the seven major drug pushers that were working in their area and they did a dossier on each drug Pusher. His name is real name all of his aliases all the registrations on his car. His wife name his children's name where he really lived any people get contact within the police department and they brought out a nice resume they call the business meeting and they said look your business man. We are 15 welfare mothers who were part of the resident Council here and we want to negotiate with you and me. So what do you want to negotiate about that? We want to negotiate your lease. Your lease is up. You are hereby evicted from this community. They laugh two of them were packing guns and it was Little people thought it would be a tense situation. And they basically been handed out the resumes and they said we are going to have a demonstration one week from now. If you were still in this community, we will be outside the FBI building at 10 The Drug Enforcement Administration at 2 and the DC police office at 4. And we're going to have all the media day and we're going to have your picture and your resume and you can sue is reliable or whatever else. We have no money. That is not a threat to us. So they reluctantly moved out about two weeks later. They wanted to test the water. So they started coming back in while the residence allow the police to set up observation post in the apartments and then the residents that they would testify against the drug pushers and they can the court on one case and it convinced the drug pushers that they can't fight the community the community brought fifty Witnesses. You can intimidate one, but you can intimidate 50 people. So they just left the community. Then the next thing I did was focus on welfare dependency. It was clear that people who were trapped in poverty would not be able to lift themselves up help their children take advantage of opportunities that were out there if they were trapped into watching soap operas and collecting welfare. Check the first of month. And it wasn't out of a punitive mindset that they did this. They basically believed that the women there had the talent the leadership Kimi gray had been on welfare for 15 years the woman who's managing the property and I have been on welfare for 11 years and had nine kids. She is now certified a certified property manager took all of the exams and can tell me more about the HUD regulations than anybody at ATI. So they began to work with these women they set up certain types of incentives. The first thing they did was to look at the way people were keeping your homes and whether they were dealing with your children properly and they sign new leases that basically called for social responsibility. If you did not pay your rent on time and you are not socially responsible you could be evicted and what they began to do anyone who kept their kids home from school was basically brought to a community Pier court and are asked why are you depriving this child of an opportunity to have a good life? I'm not doing that. Yes, you are by keeping him at home because you're not getting up and getting him to school. They took the families that were not taking good care of their premises. They put them in a class. They did a small repair tutorial for all of the people so that they knew how to take care of minor damage in their apartment. And then what they did was they reinforced it, you know, usually in public housing if your refrigerator breaks, either you don't get one for a long time or you get a brand new one while they change that the regulations call for a usable. Refrigerator not a brand new one. So what they would do to the woman who had destroyed her refrigerator if they have the truck pull up with the new refrigerator unload it right in front of her doorstep. Okay, then the truck will pull down the block and everybody be wondering of course, no crowdsource to gather round the new equipment and they made sure they got the big oversized one with the double doors in the ice makers in the whole, you know whole nine yard, then it would go down the block and need to get Mrs. Smith's recondition refrigerator that they told her we're going to move out and give you a new refrigerator. Then he would bring the recondition refrigerator and put it into the negligent tenant's apartment and they take the new one and roll it through the neighborhood. And then bring it to the woman who had taken care of all of a sudden now the value start to change you have to do something over to get something all of a sudden the property damage was reduced by 85% They reduce their operating costs by 60% in the first year. They reduced their administrative costs by 60% in the first year and another 20% and second-year. This is why they have such a high profit at the time. I first went out to Kenilworth. They would 1200 broken windows in 464 units. It was really in bad shape. They basically just transformed this whole situation and with a bunch of welfare mothers, you know, and if you would listen to what we see even the material being written by a bucket to the port these women are powerless. They're beating damn. They have no money. They don't have the energy to get up in the go. Just not true. Any solution to turn around public housing that are based on we're dealing with a bunch of basket cases and I like to tell people, you know, the difference between liberals and conservatives conservative say yes, these welfare Mother's Day Basket cases and we have a moral obligation not to waste money on programs. That won't work for them and liberals say yes, we agree. These women are basket cases, but we have a moral obligation to try to do something even if it doesn't work. And what I disagree with is the characterization that their Basket Case is the reason all of the solutions didn't work is they did not tap into the power that was in that community. Let me give you one other example Villa Victoria is an exemplary neighborhood group Hispanic neighborhood group in the South and the Boston. Maybe the operation of 1963 basically when they organized to oppose the urban renewal program actually the urban removal program that was the literal title of the program. Then they changed it been quite sitwell politically to have it title that way and what they were able to do over the next 10 or 15 years was to put together the most beautiful low income housing development that I've seen in the country. It's 15 architectural Awards MIT has done 66 Urban studies on Villa Victoria and we went in and looked an interview today after we said what are the problems that you're having now? This is a beautiful place that's safe. They're located right next to high Pride Condominiums and townhouses. The average selling price is 175002 doors down from the low income housing. They've done such a good job Architects with you can't tell the difference except that I think Villa Victoria looks a little bit better than the townhouses and condominiums in a lot of people do and when we ask for directions to get to the neighborhood and it was in Boston for a year, so I knew but we were asking people on the street they said well if you're going to walk and I had that, you know, three piece suit in the time when they said, you know, you'll go over there and you'll see this be pretty buildings and it's like a a plaza, you know, like Spanish people have Plaza walk through there cuz that's the safest area in the neighborhood. Okay, that was telling me something about people's General perception of the neighborhood. Well, when we interviewed the parents and the people who have grown up in the neighborhood and if so, where now I guess I should mention company names in this town, but they were working for a computer firms. They were working for city government. They had good jobs. And we said what are the problems here now seems like it's going very well. The first thing they said was well or 6s cases are leaving us. You know, my son who grew up. In this neighborhood who's now an engineer, he can't live in the neighborhood anymore because we only Built low income housing subsidized housing. And for his salary, he would have to spend almost $800 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. And for that price, he's buying a home and he's has to move a half hour away, but he still brings his kids back here for daycare. And I'm the grandmother. I'm upset that he's left. Okay, we found that this was a problem problem. That's what we refer to as filtering and most of our government government programs underestimate the power of people to succeed. They underestimate the number of families rising out of poverty. And as a result of that we don't make any provision for them to stay most people leave a neighborhood because of crime. Because of poor educational opportunities for their children. And because of the lack of housing opportunities now, this is a neighborhood that basically use culture as a way to get across an empty crime feeling and to instill sort of a higher level of Consciousness among the residents. They hired one of their their own as who went off and got a master's in Fine Arts to come back and direct the cultural program and what they did was they linked up with the local school that they have been working with since 1963. It's one of the best bilingual schools in the country. They the community provides all sorts of Arts and Cultural Events for the school the school invites other school groups from around the city of Boston until they always have visitors coming into the school. It's a positive school. It's an effective school. It's a safe neighborhood. But there were no middle income housing options. They never plan for people succeeding. They underestimated the power of people there to make. So when you start to talk about power and sharing and you start telling me about some of the naughtiest problems that are out there, you know a year ago. Nobody in Congress really wanted to lock horns with the hole which will public housing. They felt it was a lost cause the only thing we can do is try to pay her back on the amount of money that goes into public housing but no one thought it was actually possible to solve the management problems and some of them are big city multi-family units. Now we have two bills that have been introduced in Congress, which is basically been geared to allow public housing residents to buy and manage their own units. That's a far cry from the person who told me these women can't even take care of their own children. How the hell are they going to manage a mortgage mean that was just a rational that was seen as a rational response to the issue on the part of most of the congressman on the help. But as I frequently tell people who are not in Washington who don't have to put up with, you know, the national news is, you know, National News segment. And then after the National News segment, you get the local news, which is also the national news. So you get a double dose of double-talk and it gets to be a bit much to handle some time. But people in Washington aren't used to seeing things that were And I think one of the most potent things that you can do, especially in this area where you're used to seeing things succeed. It's a bring that message somewhere. But even in a in the Twin Cities area, I think you're going to run into problems if you underestimate what's happening with the poor. I think one of the areas that I wanted to touch him. And this is just based on our observations in about 15 neighborhoods that we've been working in his under estimating the power of women half the neighborhood that we went into. Women led the organization they provided for the division. and the toughness and the skills basically Revitalize their Community. We've been looking at both the social and economic Enterprises and half of those Enterprises were led by women. We've been looked at who is being employed three-quarters of the employees were women. When you add up all the potential asset to the community women stand out as one of the cheap if not the major asset in distress neighborhood. But why aren't we moving forward you know in many of these distressed neighborhood is because of male-female power struggle types of issues. And it really does get in the way when Kimi gray goes to talk with a male Foundation director and he just can't understand how this woman is sitting on top of a million dollars worth of real estate development and she's a welfare mother and she doesn't have a lot of educational though. She is educated. Somehow it just doesn't it just doesn't click one government actually said to Kimmy. Cheap my wife is got a master's degree. If she couldn't handle that. How the hell are you handling it? It's this type of attitude when we start to talk about problem solving and projecting our own deficiencies on to other people that really gets in the way and power-sharing really is going to work out at last week for the begin to deal with some of those issues. The other thing we found out was very clear when we went in and talked about new Enterprises to to generate jobs and deal with the problem of unemployment that most of the largest pool of untapped entrepreneurs who are women. That's true Nationwide in everybody talks about our Competitive Edge and how we're going to get our Competitive Edge back with the Japanese. Well, the answer to that is when they or the best educated group of women in the world. We have the best resource. I don't know whether you've ever heard Dennis Doyle talk about United States as the university to the world. But we are we have more universities and colleges here than anywhere else in the world put together. And so are the women in our country are basically better educated, but they're always being you know. Talked out of going into business for themselves. Yes, PA had a woman's Enterprise program for a while under the Carter Administration. They run conferences now, they don't do financing but it was a token program. It wasn't a massive effort to get financing in for women who wanted to go into business. When I go into a distressed neighborhood first thing I want to know do you have any sort of way of capturing entrepreneurial interest in the neighborhood? And unless we deal with the fact that women blowing in business. I mean, you know the struggles that occur from the bedroom to the corporate boardrooms are blocking in my way of thinking the type of application of power and talent in distress neighborhoods that we need to revitalize it. But let me just talk a little bit about education. when I was in Detroit I visited with the neighborhood group that told me that there had been 50 school girls right between September 1983 and March 1984 evil girl that would mean so dragged off the street on their way home from school a police school system the newspapers of Corporations and Foundation everybody and their grandfather were involved in trying to solve that problem and stop this really terrible series of crimes. You know who finally solved the problem? the indigenous neighborhood groups the churches in several neighborhood organizations got together. They organize volunteers of women who were at home during the day to ask or groups of kids to school. They organize seniors who could sit by their windows with their phone next to them to watch out of their Windows as the kids walked along very Define pass to and from school all the power of the police or their patrol cars on their bullets all the money from the foundation in corporations or the concern being expressed by the school system did not solve the problem. The point is most of the problems. I seen distressed communities cannot be solved by outside agents alone. It's not an issue whether we apply more power from the corporate sector or more money from the public sector. It's an issue of trying to find out what the problem is and who has the power to change it. One of the other things that I was involved with the talking with the group of Educators who were concerned about the new rules with the NCAA and what impact it would have on minority athletes that they had to have certain scores on the SAT. And what they kept telling me was we have to change the standard in order for these young people to make it. I heard the same thing from some black college leaders who felt that the teacher certification test. We're having the same type of impact that many minority graduate from their schools would not be certified as teachers in many states because of the test that was instituted while I looked at the test and I really got embarrassed when I saw the types of items that people were failing on or many common sense types of items things that you would think someone in junior high school would be able to handle and this was a teacher certification test while the point that I tried to make to them that they didn't hear very well. There's a difference between changing the standard. And helping someone meet a standard and when I invited them to do with the contact some of the people I knew in the foundation world and the speak with certain people within the government about setting up special tutorial programs for these athletes that were in danger of not making it because of the test scores not to change the standard but use it as an opportunity to motivate people. To do better academically not to just rely on on a physical Talent where there was basically One Chance in a hundred thousand that they would ever be able to earn enough money with that physical town. If you're going to deal with the whole issue of minorities being able to meet a standard. You cannot continue the battle the standard. Let me give you an example. I ran a program in New York City, which is at Stone gem Youth Center in New York and was a college prep program and we basically raised the SAT scores of minority students there by 150 points from their PSAT score to the rest 80 score and it didn't take a whole hell of a lot. I was a sophomore at the time and we were running the tutorial program and what we basically felt was that we didn't have the power to change the exam what to change the way people were using the exam. The only thing we could do is better prepare the students and what I've seen happen is that we put so much emphasis on arguing about whether the test. Is fair or a good predictor that we forgotten that the one sure way to beat the system is to empower the students to better enable them to do it. And unfortunately what I see in many educational circle is many Educators that do not believe that these children are capable of doing when I was out in LA with an interesting thing. I ran into one young man who was part of a national champion chess team, from what? And it was counterintuitive for people to believe that you can have a national team other than in basketball. From a predominantly black high school. Why because nobody tried nobody tried and so I do not believe and this is based on my training as an educator and working in these environments with you through are considered intractable unteachable that we have really attempted to deal with the issue of actually attempting to raise the scores. There's always this Edge this expectation that they can't really handle it the best schools. I've seen are the ones that the man that the students meet the standard not that they quibble about whether the standard is accurate. Now I should also say that I written a few things for educational testing service about the fallacies with the SAT, but I didn't want to go to go off into that to that issue, but I don't want to have anybody interpret Mia saini sats are fine stand alone at predictions of what you happened in college. What I'm saying is the problem of having minority athlete for minority students. meet that standard is more within our control mean we have the the problem. I'm not sure the students have as much of the problem is we the one they sent but one of the thing I like to point out. In a program that Iran also in New York, we had a number of people who are participating on our basketball team and they all had seized to FX. That was the range of there their grades in school. We set up a process where they buy they could not miss more than three practices and remain on the team. We put money into taking them to other cities. So it was a big deal to be on the team. And then we said you also have to have passing grades in order to participate on the team. Well, I can tell you we have 45 kids involved with that basket pro football program 8 to 12 year olds, and we only had one student didn't have straight A's. Okay, and so when people ask me about intractable problems, I keep asking myself. Well, where does the power line and ask yourself? Have you ever heard of a successful program that didn't have success clients? Have you ever heard of a program that could claim the successful when in fact the client choose not to participate? I mean the real power in any program is the response of the client to desire of the clients to do well and we can either turn that power off or turn it on. And it makes me a little nervous when I see the way the federal government operates. It's it's scary. You know, I talked with some people at the National Institute of drug abuse about three years ago. I said, what's your criteria for refunding programs? And they said the major criteria is that the area still has a major drug problem. I said, so you're saying if the program fails then we will refund you what kind of an incentive is that? Okay, this is what happens across the board. You know, I make that it when I make that same claim for daycare services. Everyone said what we've got to have daycare, what do you have to have subsidized daycare the best example of daycare self-sufficiency I've ever seen was where in St. Louis they basically help women who are on welfare and unemployed who need who are participating in the daycare program basically get job and within three years. They will be able to turn from 95% percent subsidized daycare to 5% subsidized because of the earnings of the women. The issue isn't daycare services. The issue is the money to pay for daycare. We don't need to subsidized daycare and apple in suburbs, but the money is there to pay for the services. So we sometimes missed the Target and this is where the nonprofit Community often gets off base and usually local government help them. Stay off base. Because they focus on programs rather than functions. There's a daycare program. We want to maintain funding for the program. Rather than looking at how do we solidify the base for funding for this particular function? It doesn't have to be a government subsidy. It can be wages that are earned by the women who have their children. There is nothing wrong with success, but the problem is then we'll lose the money. And the government rather than saying the way some corporations and some foundations and you know, the Minneapolis Foundation really deserves a you know, a tip of the hat for their neighborhood program you solve one problem, then you use the money in the next year to solve a different problem. You allow people to progress through stages. You don't wait and just fund one particular function so that your drug program is there for 10 years and there's no incentive to eliminate drugs from the community. You fun daycare, but you always think of it in subsidized turns you don't think of it in terms of a sliding scale and the women in the community having more employment there for allowing you to use those funds for another purpose. And what happens is the nonprofit sector defends the program pie and the way it's divided. Because they choose not to move along with the clients that they're working with. We provide daycare services. If people don't want to use our daycare service or they don't want to use our drug Services then what do we do? We're unemployed. And what happens is the very perverse thing. You have to talk about people's powerlessness and their helplessness in order to justify your funding and then you become part of the problem. I remember the worst Ad Council campaign I've ever seen was about 10 years ago. They did one on dropping out of school. If you drop out of school. The message said your life is over. That was the message. They didn't say it in just those words but that was the message and I'm sitting there at the time that commercial is running in Roxbury with these kids who have dropped out of school. We were getting depressed and I'm wondering you know, what's going on here rather than saying that it stopped her stay in school cuz it's the easiest path. But if you Dropout of school, there are programs you can get in and you can still make it they didn't say that they say your life is over. And it's the same thing we hear from the NAACP Urban League's now a number of advocacy organizations and a large number of Social Service organizations and nonprofits that basically talked about the deficiencies and use the deficiencies as the rationale for funding. You know, what I like about the corporate Community their success oriented. They want to know that they fund something is going to work. It's going to be successful. Same thing is true in most of the foundation Community, although I'll get to that next. Can I as a result they want to know that they can win that they can 16 you're quite willing to move on to the next Target. I told you I was going to step on some toes. I see people pulling them back in. But it's very important understand that building a strategy based on individual strengths. And Power Within These communities and then using your success as a justification for doing the next stage is the only Surefire way to have constant success. And in terms of the area, I study to see distressed communities move to stable low and moderate-income communities. I think, you know the example of Villa Victoria their problem was they were designed for low income people. There was no thought that people would rise out of poverty. Let me make one other point getting back to the foundations. Foundations are really targeted at Innovative responses. So that if you were a first-time Grant even though you had a program around for awhile, you are eligible for funding if you were Innovative untested program my dear you are eligible for funding but God help you if you've been around for a while and you are successful. Where do you go to get the money? If it's not within the public pie, you can't go to the private sector. The rather than have funding strategies that says we're going to take you through these stages and we're going to think about self-sufficiency from the first time that we fund you how are you going to support yourself over the Long Haul? We end up saying we want an innovator program. Finding Innovative program at work fairly. Well, we throw the baby out with the bathwater the federal government worse, though. I mean federal government takes programs. I mean politicians you a wonderful thing. Politicians will take an idea that 80% successful and throw it away because some other politician Champions it. And rather than building on that. Can you imagine what would happen in in cancer research if we actually threw away everything that was partially successful. Rather than building on it sharing with other people in a research community. I mean, this is what we've done the Great Society failed the Great Society didn't fail. It was highly inefficient and some areas was very ineffective. But we never learned what parts of that work. We never saved it. We never built on it. And unfortunately what you have in government, especially through the political process and all of the readings that you know, where included as part of the package really deal with those issues really makes more difficult difficult framework to solve problems involve people in Powerstroke. Maybe I should stop there. If you think I was rough on nonprofits, you hear me talk to the White House Office of private-sector initiatives, but at any rate. First of all, the whole issue of nonprofits running decentralised services that is not the same thing as people having control with those services and deciding how the money and services and what services should be provided. If you're basically providing a set of services and your funding comes to provide that set to a Define Target population and what I've seen some of the best nonprofits do is talk about the deficiency of Resident groups indigenous groups being able to decide and run those programs for themselves. So there is a conflict there is a power conflict as a weather in decentralized is not the same thing as people in communities and having worked in a lot of black communities where we had a lot of good Whiterun nonprofit organizations providing services for us. It's not the same thing, even though we said, I don't need advisory boards the other comment. Is that the issue of low income. at Kenilworth Parkside the income Rose about 20% over the two and a half years. There are still people there are 30% of the people are paying less than $100 rent. Okay, which means their income is still under $6,000 a year total family income. There are several people that are playing 6 and $7 income. It does not mean that that Community hasn't been revolutionized and that the reason an opportunity lateran play for those people to continue to climb. So in the other, and I would make was that that I interviewed a couple of women in Norfolk who participated in the program for non-traditional jobs sandblasters welding. It's a very high-paying Job 14 to $15 an hour. And it was one woman who chose to work as a housekeeper in a private school and everybody counted that is a failure. So I wanted to talk to a woman and find out whether she contribute to the failure and she said that she had lost her parents when she was five years old never been had been institutionalized all over life and that that's cool basically gave her a family. And that was more important to her than the money. The thing is we cannot impose our goal the same thing when I work with delinquent, I'd ask him if you could change anything. We called it as if counseling we could if you could change anything about your background and your talent and your interest amount of money that you have what would you want to do in life? We got answers like I want to be a roofer. Okay, I want to be an auto mechanic. They had some bind with that is the same reason that you'll find some people going into yards, even though they starve my point is that we shouldn't plan and accept people living in horrendous conditions, but we certainly shouldn't impose you know our goal for what satisfactory and I guess what I'm saying is that you have to give them the lead way to exercise their own their own choices. I would agree with you. I tend to do blanket descriptions, but that's because Two things one coming out of Washington. That's the only way you get hurt and I'm very cautious about doing that. The people tell me I had so many caveats when I make these types of statements that people don't hear the message, but there is a power struggle between indigenous self-help groups at the neighborhood level resident groups. I guess you call them here and Citywide nonprofit agencies that have decentralised services with Advisory board made up of those people as different from having his decision-making property. The other thing is that you all were different here. You understand self-help in a way that's different from people around the country and I can take you to some cities where the nonprofit Community are the worst Crooks. Okay, and the worst perpetrators of misery under the guise of helping the poor? I think that's one of the toughest issues and I'm not going to pretend like I know the answer but we have to start focusing on the strategy behind government programs. Is it a strategy that rewards failure? Is it a strategy that has a disincentive for a good nonprofit that starts out that flexible that wants to help people being trapped in the ones that are program guideline because that's what the United Way funds. Okay, I mean we have to begin to change the way the spickets operate and allow problem-solving at the local level see things that come down from on high whether it's a centralized City service or whether it's you know from the federal government which not only tells you how much money they're going to give you. But what time frame you're going to solve the problem in and what methods are going to use to solve a problem. Okay, and that's how the Great Society programs got it got in trouble. If you didn't have a drug problem. You certainly found one if that was the only money available for you to bid on. Okay same thing here. I mean, they're almost saying if you fit a certain configuration will find you rather than saying we want to deal with the problem. And then setting up some guidelines for finding out in that doesn't mean I trust the counties to come up with reasonable planned. It means that there should be a decision criteria that says we will review what you're going to do and we'll allocate the money, you know accordingly. There been a couple of efforts on the part of neighborhood groups basically the layout of grid of what they need and then the contact organizations that are providing services in the community and tell them with square they fit into and which squares they don't fit into our because many times the other thing that happens with some nonprofits is that they will oversell what they're doing. They'll say they cover three or four blocks on that grid when they only cover really one so that there's a perception while they do a multi service organization. They do everything and they're actually doing maybe one thing extremely well, but that really is an issue for the neighborhood to sort of setup. What is it that we feel we need. I think the mentorship program is one that encourages that sort of planning. And provides a technical assistance to the indigenous people to put it together the right way. That is something that government very rarely does I've been hearing about a program that the Twin Cities getting ready to do that almost sounds like a parachute job. That's what we refer to him in my project where you sort of get an idea and you parachuted into a distressed Community, but it's really there are number of groups around the country that have solved that problem the Kenilworth. In fact did that buy basically defining what the city services that were operating within a public housing project we're going to do and how they were going to live together. And if they didn't they were going to basically, you know, raise a Ruckus, but there is a way around that and end. Because the indigenous groups can make the services work better. The nonprofit's even some of the worst ones have been responsive when the groups have said we want to do these other things on the voluntary basis to support what you're doing with the program. So the nonprofit Community does respond. I mean I've been shocked at some of the groups that that episode turned around and really work with the neighborhood people. First of all, they can afford to have the people they're serving saying that you know, you guys are paratroopers. Okay, that's not their image that they have to sell if United Way in the local government and the foundation's when they go to get their Grant. when we talk about The issue of women in entrepreneurship in particular I often hear comments like well, you can give them just enough money to get into trouble. They got a lot of undergo psychological thing because you're they have math phobias and they have their not tough enough to deal in the business world, you know, most small businessman and I know either have an accountant or have a small business computer because they have math phobia is to you don't have time for that. But in the personality thing, I do know most women have the strength to deal in that situation and I guess an equal percentage of men don't have the strength to deal in a business situation, but they get the chance the other point that should be made there. Is that one of the problems I have an entrepreneurship and you know, I work with a group that are setting up incubator facilities in distressed communities, even though people don't believe there enough entrepreneurs. They're one of the problems we have with minority you is that the major source of entrepreneurial out? Change for them is in the underground economy. We don't have the junior achievement achievement in the Future Farmers of America in those types of programs operating amenities distressed Community to show them the legitimate way to go into business, but I think that you can't let me give you an example. I think you will have a program and in the Twin Cities of putting house numbers in fluorescent paint pour in some visible spot where the police and fire can can find the houses while they were to minority youth in Seattle that did that they were making $1,500 a week. Two elderly people have burned in a fire and the fire and police equipment had a hard time finding the the the blocks in this particular rule section of town. And what happened was the police chief in the fire chief got on TV and said look, we frequently can't get to people who are in trouble because we can't find the homes that there in if somebody wants to do us a favor paint the house numbers on the curb so that we can you know, fine. Well, these two kids went off and what a bucket of paint in the stencil and made $1,500 a week for almost two years straight. Me the results when a real talent they are the real issue is how do we bring it into the legitimate economy and not just keep it in the underground economy. I have some family members who dealt drugs in New York and it wasn't because they were stupid is cuz they didn't receive that they had other opportunities. And more than likely, you know in most of those situations that money isn't used to turn back into the community to do something positive. It's not a bad means to a good end. It's a bad means too bad in.