Blog

Our staff at the Center is extremely excited at the success of our new program the Community and Economic Development Fellowship, designed to prepare UCA graduate and undergraduate students for careers in the field of community and economic development!

The mission of the CCED Fellowship is to expose UCA students to a variety of community or economic development careers and provide networking, coaching and mentoring to enhance career preparedness.

During the program, fellows participate in three site visits that showcase community and economic development activities at the local and state levels of government and in the nonprofit sector. Activities include job shadowing, organization tours, mock interviews and mentorship from CCED staff. Fellows also have the opportunity to join the Arkansas Community Development Society and attend the 2018 Community Development Institute free of charge.

Students are selected for the program through a competitive application process. The fellowship program will be held in both the spring, summer and fall semesters.

The five students were selected for this spring’s program: Danny Baxter of Clarksville, Jacob Holland of Cabot, Jordan Johnson of Jacksonville, Brittany Lutz of Montclair, Virginia, and Ellen McKinnie of Cabot.

Alexandra Taylor of Conway was selected as the summer 2018 Fellow.

For more information on the CCED Fellowship, visit uca.edu/cced/community-and-economic-development-fellowship/ or call Shelby Fiegel at 501-450-5269.

Featured on the CCED blog is our new intern for spring 2018 Brittany Lutz, a Master of Community and Economic Development student! Brittany participated in the UCA Student Poverty Simulation our team hosted on February 1 in McCastlain Ballroom on UCA’s campus. Brittany shared her experience as follows:

On Thursday, February 1st UCA’s Center for Community and Economic Development held Living on the Edge: A Poverty Simulation open to students who wanted to engage in a first-hand experience of what it is like to have to live in the daily system of poverty. The program was set up so each student was either a member of a family or a single adult, with certain circumstances that they had to overcome. There were about 25 volunteers, and around 50 students that participated, which made for around 15 family groups. Each family was given a sheet of paper that outlined the duties and roles of each member as well as all of the situational aspects of their lives. These aspects began with any governmental assistance such as food stamps and TANF benefits, and went on to list any job positions, earnings, housing and transportation resources, and school and college. For example, some families had incarcerated members, some had disabled members, and some had unemployed heads of households.

The simulation was divided into four fifteen minute “weeks” and four five minute “weekends.” There were numerous community services available around the room including social services, a homeless shelter, a childcare service, a food bank and grocer, a pawn shop, an inter-faith service, a community action group, both a juvenile and an adult detention center, a public school and college, the rent and mortgage center, bank, utilities office, and a hospital which also acted as the general employer. The simulation began as an entire group with about fifteen minutes of training from the supervisor, Monieca West with the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, where she gave instructions and explained each document that the participants had received. The families then had about ten minutes of preparation amongst themselves, where conversations of budgets and strategies could be heard.

There were many obstacles and rules that UCA students had to endure, such as having to pay for each trip they take in transportation passes (which had to be purchased from the bank). These passes ended up leaving a heavy burden upon the wallets of some of the families. Services were closed on the weekends. Working individuals could also not be more than five real-time minutes late to work, otherwise they would not be paid. Children could also not be left at home without supervision, or else they would be put in the juvenile detention center. There was also a thief who was allowed to walk around and steal from participants. Monieca also acted as a God character, randomly handing out ‘green cards,’ which were a laminated form of stress that illustrated different scenarios that negatively affected your family’s situation, such as being robbed or arrested.

After the last week had ended, there was a debriefing where all of the participants sat in a seminar-style circle and talked about the experience and feelings about the poverty simulation. Monieca went around the circle, asking questions and facilitating the discussion. Some students came forward to speak about their family’s story and experiences. One girl played the guardian of her grandchildren because her daughter was in jail, but the problem was that she was disabled so she could not work. While she received social service benefits, it was still hard to make ends meet and keep all of the kids in school. Another girl came forward and spoke about how she had to basically drop out of college to take care of her baby as well as many other family affairs. Another girl noted how the school system was flawed, which reminded us about the declining public school system that we have in many places in this country. A lot of students brought up how many houses got evicted. There were probably only two or three left by the end of the simulation. One student spoke about how with careful planning, he was able to keep his house, but his family had to go hungry for two weeks. As a nutrition major he was well aware that there is a difference between food and nutrition, and he was not sure to what degree his family was getting the right nutrition they needed even when they did finally get food.

After we talked about our families, we then moved on to talking about our feelings and observations. There were heavy emotions in the room by this time. A lot of health, education, psychology, and communications majors spoke up and explained how they will use this experience to accommodate and communicate with people from a background of poverty in their future careers, because no one really knows what people are dealing with at home. Monieca then shared a few enlightening words with us when she said that to help those who are less fortunate than us, one does not always have to donate large sums of money and volunteer all of their time, but sometimes all it takes is a conversation and a little compassion, because relationships are a currency in society. It is easy to be an ally, and it is something that we should all realize. It is a mantra that people should always try to live their lives by.

This simulation teaches people that those in poverty are not in that position because they do not work hard enough. Nobody in their right mind would wish that kind of stress and suffering on themselves. So often we ignore the cries of help coming from those in poverty and dismiss them as lazy and/or entitled. If we actually stop to think about what it would be like to live like that day after day, feel what it feels like to not have any money, to be unsure if your family will be able to eat this week, or have a place to sleep tonight, then perhaps things would change. If people would put themselves in the shoes of someone in poverty, then maybe they would have a little more compassion for them. I challenge all of us to take part in this simulation, or better yet, live in poverty for a month, and see how you feel afterwards.

View photos of the UCA Student Poverty Simulation on our Facebook page.

On December 5th our team at CCED partnered with the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, Federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education program to host a community-based poverty simulation.

Over 50 community members (consisting of UCA faculty/staff, local non-profits, and elected officials) came out to participate in Living on the Edge: A Poverty Simulation held at UCA. Participants were challenged to think critically about the harsh realities of poverty and the potential solutions communities can implement to address the problem. The simulation provided a comprehensive, engaging experience that allowed participants to better understand how poverty affects our students, coworkers, and the community as a whole.

You can learn more about the simulation through these news stories:

• KATV – UCA offers different realistic view on poverty
• Arkansas Democrat Gazette – 55 people walk in poor people’s shoes

Thank you to our other partners: Faculty Senate, Staff Senate, Schedler Honors College, Housing & Residence Life, Student Government Association, Social Justice League, Center for Leadership Development, University Training, Office of Diversity, and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.

We will also be hosting a simulation for UCA students on Thursday, February 1. More information can be found here: uca.edu/cced/ucapovsim/

Pictures from the December simulation can be found here.

November is one of the busiest times of the year. Our team is balancing training events and projects across the state while preparing to wrap up the 2017 year as the holidays approach. And even though our hands are full, we made time to host two of our biggest events the first week of November: Hot Spring County Conversations and Community Development Basics.

Hot Spring County Conversations was an event hosted by Hot Spring County, with the support of County Judge Dennis Thornton, in partnership with Entergy Arkansas, West Central Arkansas Planning and Development, Hot Spring County Economic Development Corporation, Malvern/Hot Spring County Chamber of Commerce, College of the Ouachitas, and our team at the Center. This event brought over 100 Hot Spring County community leaders together to hear community and economic development professionals from across the state and offer a forum for conversation to build a brighter future for the county. Jon Chadwell of the Newport Economic Development Commission and Russell Carey of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation shared how to engage young families and leaders and information related to Arkansas’ current and future workforce needs. Attendees also discussed the future of Hot Spring County, and were issued a challenge from the county judge.

You can view photos from Hot Spring County Conversations here.

Right after completing Hot Spring County Conversations, our team hosted Community Development Basics. This event was a one-day training session on (you guessed it!) the basics of community and economic development. The purpose of this session was to educate community leaders on the basics of community and economic development in an effort to strengthen Arkansas communities. Participants explored topics such as community and economic development, community capital, how data relates to community and economic development, cross sector collaboration and integrative leadership. Speakers included representatives from the UCA PhD Leadership program, Arkansas Center for Research in Economics, Arkansas Community Foundation, Arkansas Economic Development Institute, Arkansas Economic Development Commission, and the Jack Welch Institute for Management.

There is no cost to attend either of these training sessions. They were made possible through the Moving the Needle Grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

If you are interested in hosting a community and economic development training event in your community or if you need assistance with a program or project in you community, please reach out to our staff through our assistance form: https://uca.edu/cced/request-assistance/