Community Heroes: What A Year As An AmeriCorps VISTA Member Taught Me About Community Development

By Edward Patrick Akinyemi

You probably care deeply about various issues in society–homelessness, inequality, climate change–but need additional tools to better understand and more strategically tackle them. You're ready and willing to learn because you know that merely talking about how awful things are isn't a very effective way of solving them. You're also tired of the malicious manner in which every societal issue is politicized, and you hate the toxic bickering between both sides of the political spectrum. You're desperate for a more level-headed perspective on these issues.

 

That said, you know that social change requires a lot of work, which leads you to believe that your efforts are too small to make a difference. You're afraid that you'll fail in achieving this goal, despite your positive intentions. You think that if you can't succeed in changing one huge existential problem in the world, it's not worth trying at all. If your contribution doesn't make a big-picture impact in the world, what's the point, right?

 

Wrong.

 

Community Heroes will focus on community development, rather than global change. Guided by my experience in the nonprofit sector as an AmeriCorps VISTA member, I will help you focus on incremental change in your community, rather than transformational changes to the entire world. Even though you hear people say that there are so many problems in society that you're powerless to create change, that "the system" is rigged against us, and that it's impossible to change it, I can assure you that these are not valid excuses to give up and do nothing to help your community.

 

In Community Heroes, you'll learn why it's important to:

• Suspend your dreams of changing the world and instead strive to be a hero in your own community;
• Understand why working on Wall Street might be a more effective way of achieving social impact than working for a nonprofit;
• Recognize why your efforts to make a positive impact in society might actually be for selfish, instead of selfless reasons;
• Understand the barriers to employment that disenfranchised people face and why they are such powerful impediments to progress;
• Break the unfounded stereotypes you might have of the (working) poor in order to serve them more effectively;
• And much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Patrick Akinyemi
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386424871

Edward Patrick Akinyemi

Edward is a former AmeriCorps VISTA member and a current nonprofit professional. His experience of being a VISTA taught him valuable lessons about community development and the nonprofit sector. He currently works together with his awesome colleagues at the North End Community Improvement Collaborative in Mansfield, Ohio to improve the quality of life and economic landscape of the North End community. Edward also holds a BSc Economics and Business Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam and an MSc Economics and Business Administration in Sports and Event Management from the University of Southern Denmark. Edward has many years of experience writing, mostly on his personal website edwardp.me, though he also has been a writer for the Juventus SB Nation website for almost 5 years. Besides talking about community development, the easiest way to grab his attention is to ask him about the club closest to his heart, Juventus F.C. Oh and don't call him by his middle name. He hates it when people do that.

Book preview

Edward Patrick Akinyemi

Community Heroes

What a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA member taught me about community development

First published by Edward Patrick Akinyemi 2018

Copyright © 2018 by Edward Patrick Akinyemi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

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Contents

Introduction

Purpose

Details, Details

I. THE RATIONAL PART

1. The Working Poor

Assets

2. Bridges Out of Poverty

Criticism

3. Asset-Based Community Development

Neighbor-Up Night

4. Religious institutions

Volunteers from schools

5. Community needs

6. State-wide and national priorities

7. Corporate Social Responsibility

Moral Duties

8. You have to make money

9. Boards and committees

10. Computer literacy

11. Barriers to employment

12. Keyhole economics and First Principles thinking

13. Partnerships

Social Determinants of Health

14. Upward social mobility

15. Three types of entrepreneurship

16. Don’t start a nonprofit!

II. THE EMOTIONAL PART

17. Adapt to survive

18. Emotional management

19. Motivation

20. Think small to do big

21. Effective altruism

22. Impure altruism

Enlightened self-interest

23. Passion

24. Representation

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Contact

Bibliography

About the Author

Also by Edward Patrick Akinyemi

Introduction

This book is not a love story. It is not an inspirational story about how you can overcome all things if you just believe in yourself and, as much as I do like them, it is definitely not a moving tale of a hero appearing out of nowhere to save the world from the forces of evil. But enough about what this book is not; you want to know what it is. You want to know who it’s for, what to expect from it, and what its purpose is.

Community Heroes is for people that are about to become, or already are, nonprofit professionals. This specifically includes AmeriCorps VISTA members (a term that will be explained later) but is certainly not limited to them. It is also for people that don’t necessarily want to change the world but do want to learn about how to improve their communities. We hear so much about changing the world, but very little about changing our communities. Hence, and in apparent contradiction to what I just said, Community Heroes is also for you if you are not a nonprofit professional and don’t intend on becoming one, but care deeply about social impact and community development.

You might care about an issue in society – homelessness, inequality, climate change, animal abuse – but need additional tools and skills to better understand and more strategically tackle this problem. You are ready and willing to learn because you know that merely talking about how awful something is isn’t a very effective way of solving it. Community Heroes will give you an insight into the nonprofit world so that you can better engage with those that are improving their communities. You might have a sibling, uncle, or neighbor that works in this sector but perhaps you never had the chance to ask him about his work. I hope that this book will be the catalyst you needed to have a conversation about the work that your loved one does.

In Community Heroes, you’ll learn why it’s important to:

Focus on community, instead of global change;

Suspend your dreams of changing the world and instead strive to be a hero in your own community;

Make money with your nonprofit, even though this makes you uncomfortable;

Focus on and build from what your community already has, instead of what it doesn’t have;

Explore whether the private sector should or should not have a social responsibility and/or role in social impact and philanthropy;

Understand the barriers to employment that disenfranchised people face and why they are such powerful impediments to progress;

Understand why working on Wall Street might be a more effective way of achieving social impact than working for a nonprofit;

And much more.

Purpose

In addition to the goals stated earlier, the purpose of Community Heroes is to provide advice about effective community development and social impact to people that are about to start working in the nonprofit sector, given that I was also once in this position. The contents of this book are based on and inspired by the lessons I learned during my year of being an AmeriCorps VISTA member. I remember feeling terrified about starting my career in the nonprofit sector and not being able to find a resource that resonated with someone as new to the industry as I was at the time. I couldn’t relate to most of the books I found for one of two reasons: they were either too pie-in-the-sky emotional for my taste or were written by experts that were too far ahead of me career-wise. I wanted to write a book that was both grounded and more relatable to the average person. As mentioned earlier though, another important reason I wrote this was to provide people that are not deeply involved with or knowledgeable of the nonprofit sector an insight into this world.

As with everything in life, however, there is also an emotional reason for my actions. I have reached the age and point in my life where, after reading about all the injustices, poverty, and inequality in the world, I can no longer ignore the difficult questions of life. What is my responsibility to society? What is my positive contribution to the world? I realize that these are questions that make most people, including the vocal cynic within me, roll their eyes and say: Here we go again. Another one of those do-gooders that thinks he’s special and destined to change the world.

It is probably for this reason that I ran away from my responsibility to confront these questions for many weeks, months, and years of my life. For lack of a better way of saying it, I foolishly believed that having these thoughts at such a young age wasn’t cool. I also didn’t want to be that obnoxious person that turned every conversation or social media post into a lecture about how unjust society is and why humanity is so terrible.

Inevitably though, these thoughts and questions could not be suppressed forever. I finally decided to get rid of my limiting beliefs and realize that I too have a responsibility for making a positive contribution to the world, no matter how small it might be. Like the heroes we cheer for in the movies that we love, I also have a moral obligation to live and fight for something greater than myself, despite how painfully melodramatic that sounds and despite the fact that my contribution, in the greater scheme of things, will probably be minuscule. Nevertheless, whether you want to call it social justice, philanthropy, or even a divine calling, to me it is a matter of personal honor. Hence, I suppose that this book is my (un)official declaration of intent: for the sake of personal honor, I will dedicate my life to a social good greater than myself.

Alright, full disclosure. In addition to the melodramatic reasons I outlined above, I’m also writing this book for selfish reasons. Having the credential of Author attached to my name is extremely valuable personal branding and a great way to further my career. So yes, I too am painfully vain. As the great Trevor Noah once said, you laugh, but it’s true.

Details, Details

Two more things before I finish this overly sentimental introduction. First, you might be wondering what the term VISTA means. Since I’ll be using it quite a lot over the course of the book, allow me to define it.

VISTA stands for Volunteers In Service To America and is part of the AmeriCorps VISTA program, which is the domestic version of the popular Peace Corps initiative. It is a national service program that aims to eliminate poverty in the United States by sending out volunteers (who are given a monthly living allowance) to help nonprofits, colleges and universities, local government offices, and other community organizations build their capacity and strengthen their programs. VISTAs spend one-year terms at their respective organizations, although they can, subject to approval, re-enroll for additional years (although they are limited to a maximum of five years of service).¹ In my case, I spent my year of VISTA service in Mansfield, Ohio at the North End Community Improvement Collaborative Inc.

Lastly, this book is divided into two parts: the rational part and the emotional part. I did this because I believe that information is better processed when emotion is explicitly separated from reason. Based on my experience, discussions often become messy and incoherent when emotion and reason are mixed, to the point where those involved completely forget what they were talking about in the first place as emotion clouds their reasoning.

Hence, Part 1 is the rational part where the topics discussed are more practical, data-focused, and (obviously) rational, while in Part 2, the emotional part, I discuss the emotional aspects of social impact, community development, and nonprofit work in general.

¹ To learn more about AmeriCorps VISTA, please visit the official website at https://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/americorps/americorpsvista.

I

The Rational Part

1

The Working Poor

We’ve all heard the typical stereotypes about people in poverty. If they weren’t so lazy, they would have a job already. Why don’t they work harder? Why are they always cheating the (welfare) system? The homeless, the unemployed, those on welfare; many of us think that their misfortunes are solely due to their lack of a work ethic. Not only that, but the mainstream narrative tells us that these people cheat the system by collecting excessive (and fraudulent) amounts of welfare benefits. However, the data offers a less sensationalized perspective. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that the share of households in which one or more members are employed and receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits increased from 19.6% to 31.8% between 1989 and 2015. ² In other words, close to a third of those receiving SNAP benefits are also employed.

A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyzed improper payments for government agencies and programs found an error rate of 3.66 percent for SNAP payments and 4.01 percent for public housing and rental assistance in 2015. For the sake of comparison, the error rate for travel pay by the Department of Defense was 7.90%.³ Though the poor are often accused of cheating the government, the issue might actually be more of a reality with the rich. A study by Annette Alstadsaeter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman found that the top 0.01% of households in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark evade 25% of their tax liabilities by concealing assets and investment income abroad.⁴ Using data from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the Bank for International Settlements, James Henry of the Tax Justice Network estimated that the richest individuals in the world (the private elite) held between $21 and $32 trillion USD⁵ of private financial wealth in offshore tax