Benevolent

Benevolent lets you help ONE low-income individual over ONE hurdle at ONE moment in time to reach their goals and sustain their families. Visit benevolent.net and be part of someone's story.

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We’re about to reach another milestone: 700 individuals lifted up through the power of donors from all walks of life. Join us in helping the hardest-working among us overcome roadblocks and reach their goals!

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William really appreciates the work supplies that he was able to get with his Benevolent funds. THey have given him the confidence to pursue a career in CNC machining. He has completed four different certifications and is ready to get to work safely and successfully! Visit Benevolent.net TODAY to see and support more stories like his.

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Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to all! As we honor Dr. King's life and legacy, we at Benevolent encourage you to find small ways to realize his message of compassion and generosity.

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The opportunity gap disproportionately impacts low-income students of color.

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When it comes to fighting poverty, we tend to think in terms of broad and impersonal macro trends and strategies. Many programs delivered at scale and according to standardized norms offer only a handful of potential paths for participants. In the process, the individual – the singular story, the unique challenge, the personal perspective – becomes diluted under the heft and weight of best and standardized practices. 

Strategies delivered from an expert perspective and at a sweeping programmatic scale are often fraught with excessive expense and misaligned with the goals and challenges faced by low-income Americans as they strive to eclipse poverty. We must shift our approach to one that suits and respects low-income Americans and supports individuals and families in reaching their goals of education, employment, and sustainability.

Armed with a belief in the importance of personal drive and self-determination, we launched Benevolent in late 2011. We listened. We asked. We opened our ears still more. As low-income adults strive to reach their goals, what gets in their way? It became clear, for example, that... Read more

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The Benevolent team is feeling so very enlivened this morning by MLK's charge for betterness, for service, for hope. Cheers to another great week! 

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" 

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Words Matter When Talking Poverty

Great great piece by James Abro of Talk Poverty shedding light on the unfortunate, counterproductive and simply destructive tendency of defining poverty with prejudice and negative stereotypes. Abro gives us the CRITICAL challenge to embody a form of change-making that lifts up real peoples’ real life experiences. It's time to listen and elevate those stories of personal and financial struggle with dignity and respect. It's time to act alongside those we wish to help. 

What do you think?

[beyondvictoriana]

All social change is speculative fiction because we've never seen a world without poverty, never seen a world with total equality, never seen a world without prisons; therefore activism IS speculative fiction, it's visionary fiction because we are writing a world we've never seen but a world we'd like to live in. It's hard and unapologetic but it's hopeful because it can cause us to move; it wakes up and shows us that change is possible.

struggling to imagine anything more enlivening and goose-bump inducing 

from AN EVENING WITH OCTAVIA’S (Butler) BROOD, as summarized by author Crystal Connor (via Balogun Ojetade, blackspeculativefiction)

[thesociologicalcinema]

"The most dangerous phrase in the language is ‘we’ve always done it this way.’" ~ Grace Hopper

[micdotcom]

There’s no doubt, the inequality within the country has created a situation where many Americans are being left behind. The question for all of us is, should we accept that, or should we try and do something about it?

Starbucks CEO Howard D. Schultz

Starbucks is offering all 135,000 of its U.S. employees a free online college education

(via micdotcom)

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The State of California will devote billions of dollars in new cap-and-trade revenue to fund projects intended to further curb climate impacts. In addition to investments in high-speed rail and public transit, millions of dollars will support affordable transit-oriented development (TOD). CNT research helped make the case that building affordable housing near transit can significantly reduce GHG from auto emissions.

HOLY COW! What an incredible policy to simultaneously decrease auto emissions AND increase the availability of affordable housing. 

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Benevolent Stands

      In our lifetimes, almost 30 percent of women will find ourselves the victim of domestic violence. While that statistic is unnerving, it calls to light the fact that every day when we're at work, in class, dropping our kids off at school, in a meeting, at a movie, we're there alongside women who have persevered and decided to stand up after someone tried to bring them down.

     This morning I received a call that no one wants to get. One of our Benevolent team members was calling to let me know that she'd been physically attacked on Saturday night by someone who was supposed to love her. She fought free, ran, and found help and safety, but not before she'd been significantly hurt. This Benevolent team member is like all women: she'd been in situations where she felt unsafe, and she'd made choices to protect herself when she needed to. Like all of us. But what happened to her on Saturday night tipped her over to the other side. The side on which almost a third of women in America stand, the side of those who have been attacked, assaulted or abused by someone who was supposed to love them.

Every time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women. - Maya Angelou

     My colleague has encouraged me to share this episode. She wants us to learn and grow from her circumstance... Read more

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Who will you help today? 

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It's three times cheaper to give housing to the homeless than to keep them on the streets

This week has been bulging with articles to this effect: It is 3 TIMES CHEAPER to house the homeless than to address the societal repercussions of chronic homelessness! 

QUICK POLL: Do you think this is the best way to end homelessness?

Another study confirms that the most cost-effective way of fighting homelessness is to get some housing for the chronically homeless. Not only does it work, but it's dramatically cheaper than sporadic police and medical interventions.

[benevolentnet]

What a beautiful soul and a magical talent for diction. Your words are a gift to us all.