Salvation Army seeks to establish program in Willmar to lift people out of poverty

By Jacob Belgum
jbelgum@wctrib.com
WILLMAR - The local Salvation Army is trying to establish a program in Willmar that focuses on helping people lift themselves out of poverty.
Called Getting Ahead, the program aims to help people achieve stability and self-sufficiency.
Lifting themselves is paramount to Getting Ahead’s curriculum. The first point of the program’s overview states that it “does not provide answers or financial resources.” Instead, it promises to provide “motivation, insight and plans that come from the participants themselves through desire and knowledge acquired.”
Salvation Army Captain Linda Faye Jones stressed that the program will not succeed without committed leadership on the steering committee.
“You can’t do it without a solid foundation,” she said.
The Salvation Army must drum up a little of both resources and planning to officially get Getting Ahead off the ground in Willmar. It must raise another roughly $5,000 which will go toward hiring Getting Ahead’s full-time administrator and for training a pair of facilitators who would help at weekly meetings.
It also must attract three to five additional members of a steering committee who will make key decisions regarding the program’s direction, including the hiring of a leader to head the program. It currently has five people committed to the steering committee.
Jim Ott, a school psychologist from Dubuque, Iowa, has helped captain the Getting Ahead program there for the last eight years. He spoke last week at the Salvation Army’s open forum on the topic and spoke with the fervor of a politician campaigning for office when explaining how past poverty programs have been initiated by the wrong people with the wrong ideas.
Ott contends that other programs fail because people with the resources to help bring about change - the wealthy and middle class - look to higher education for expert poverty analysis without realizing who the real experts are.
“They look to doctor so and so, they look to some expert that’s written books,” Ott said. “The problem is, the experts in poverty are (in poverty). Nobody knows what it’s like to be in poverty except the people who are in your community that are in poverty.”
Instead of focusing on educating impoverished people, Getting Ahead aims to foster conversation which will allow them to educate themselves. According to Ott, this cannot happen without the involvement of three types of people: the wealthy, the middle class and, of course, the impoverished.
“Why do we need wealthy people? They’ve got the money,” Ott said. “They’re experts at provision. We need middle class people at the table because (they’re) experts at planning.”
About 15 people attended the July 13 event, business owners, community leaders and landlords among them. Though no one publicly committed to serving on the steering committee, many expressed belief that Getting Ahead could make a difference in Willmar.
Becoming a member of the steering committee requires some commitment: members must undergo Bridges Out of Poverty training, of which Ott is a certified trainer, or read the book of the same name which outlines the curriculum.
Reaching out to potential steering committee candidates was a key reason for the open forum last week.
Ott said in his presentation that 70 percent of enrollees in Getting Ahead graduate from the 20-week course and minimum 18-month mentoring program. Of that 70 percent, 85 percent report that the course was successful in positively influencing the direction of their life.
Jones said that the initiation of the program has taken a lot of work, but that it’s just beginning.
“We’re just excited that we have the potential to make a change, but it has to be a community effort,” Jones said. “We need mentors, we need the churches to go alongside of us.”
The program would begin Feb. 1, 2016.