27/4/13 – Spring Flowers and the Doe Fund

Today Peter refereed two rugby games out at New Rochelle in Westchester County – New Rochelle HS v NY Rugby Club U18s. I could have gone with him, but instead I had a relaxing facial @Bloomingdales and was then ‘tempted' by social stereotyping to go shoes and handbag shopping. You’ll be pleased to know that I am learning to blend in very well with ‘the NYC girls’ and now can tell you the name, location, release date and current price of any Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Kate Spade or Ralph Lauren handbag!

   

Today was always going to be a great day because, after the facial I had decided to go to MoMA to shop for some home wares for our Perth apartment. We have lived in Perth long enough to know that every store there has the same ‘stuff’ for the kitchen and bathroom so we thought we’d get something different.

My plan was to put this loot in Peter’s suitcase so there was still room left in mine for my new clothes, shoes and handbags!!  But alas it seems he has now more new books and clothes and shoes and boots and hiking poles than I do so we’ll have to leave the Florence Knolls couch behind! Or will we? 

The expedition into the world of modern design was as successful as it was delightful and I am sure we will thoroughly enjoy using the items we chose when we return home!

I have enjoyed having the time to follow my interests and learn about these designers and their work. It is fascinating what processes artists go through to develop an idea or concept or message into a piece of work. It really makes you appreciate how hard it is to create something original. I am sure artists don’t see the world like I do. (Probably ‘a good thing’ I hear some of you say!) But I am still unsure about the end - how do they know when their work is done?

While I pondered these thoughts, I walked home through the uptown streets bathed in sunshine and spring flowers. Never before have I walked home through such an array of colour and form. They don’t do green here in NYC but they are great at changing up the colours on the pavement! Last week daffodils and this week it’s tulips! Enjoy the photos…..

On the way home I came across another New Yorker who needs a medal – the renewable resource officer for E72nd Street – these guys collect cans from every bin and are the best recyclers in the city. People and businesses say they recycle but they don’t so God Bless this man he is doing a great job! I assume he gets paid something for all his work … but I have yet to find out how this happens and who pays!

And speaking of socially useful jobs, let me tell you about ‘The Doe Fund’. This story is another classic example of a fundamental difference between the mindset of people in the US as compared to those back home in Australia. According to Wikipedia, ‘The Doe Fund is a non-profit organization in the United States that provides paid transitional work, housing, educational opportunities, counselling, and career training to people with histories of homelessness, incarceration, and substance abuse. Graduates of The Doe Fund’s flagship Ready, Willing & Able "work first" program secure permanent housing and employment and become taxpaying members of their communities, fulfilling the group’s mission to break the cycles of homelessness, addiction and criminal recidivism’. 

In Australia running a program like this would be considered as falling within the proper role of government but in the US governments do not concern themselves with such things! Instead this program is run by a not for profit organisation begun by one man who used his personal wealth to ‘make the world a better place.’

The Doe Fund was founded in 1985 by George McDonald during a sharp rise in homelessness in New York City. McDonald, an executive in the garment industry at that time, began by distributing food to homeless people on the floor of Grand Central Terminal for 700 consecutive nights. McDonald later recalled people telling him "'…this is a great sandwich, but I really wish I had a room to stay in and a job to pay for it.

He could clearly see that these people did not want charity, they wanted to work, and so he decided to help them get work.

His conviction that paid work and personal responsibility could turn lives around became the foundation for The Doe Fund's "work first" philosophy.

He and his wife, Harriet Karr-McDonald, developed The Doe Fund’s key programs based on their belief that most homeless individuals will seize the opportunity to change their lives if given the opportunity.

In 1985, a homeless woman, known only as "Mama"—whom George McDonald had fed and befriended—died of exposure, the result of spending the night on a concrete sidewalk after being ejected from Grand Central Terminal on Christmas Eve by Metro-North police, despite her pneumonia and the freezing temperatures outside. The incident drove George McDonald to redirect his executive career to focus on providing the homeless with a way off the streets. He created the organization he called The Doe Fund in honour of “Mama Doe.”

In 1990 The Doe Fund received two contracts from the city: the first a work contract to renovate low-income housing; the second, a contract to purchase and renovate an abandoned building on Gates Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn where program participants would live. In 1995, George McDonald decided the organisation should address the growing problem of litter on New York’s streets.

Using Ready, Willing & Able’s remaining funds to buy rolling trash buckets, brooms, and bright blue uniforms with American flags sewn on the sleeves, he sent unemployed men who had agreed to participate in the program out onto the streets to clean up a five-block area around East 86th Street. The crews quickly became so popular that neighbourhood residents began to support them with private donations, enabling Ready, Willing & Able to expand.  

As of 2010, The Doe Fund’s community improvement projects include over 150 street miles in New York City and Philadelphia and the organization’s annual operating budget is over $40 million. 

To enter the Doe Fund program, participants must pledge abstain from using drugs and alcohol, forego their social welfare entitlements (with the exception of Medicaid), and agree to submit to random, twice-weekly drug tests. They also must sign waivers allowing The Doe Fund to identify orders for any current or past child support they may owe.

Once accepted, they move into one of Ready, Willing & Able’s dormitory-style residences, and, following a month of counselling and orientation during which they receive a small weekly stipend, they are put to work for 30 hours a week starting at $7.40 an hour, which gets raised to $8.15 after six months. All are first assigned to a Ready, Willing & Able cleaning crew, after which they can transition to work in the culinary arts, as drivers, on security details, or in other assignments—most of the positions having been created by The Doe Fund's various social entrepreneurial ventures. All take classes in life and computer skills, job preparation and financial management.

After three months, they are offered occupational training in fields that include culinary arts, green building maintenance and pest control. Graduation from the program comes 9–12 months later, once they have found full-time employment, are living in their own non-subsidized apartments, maintaining complete sobriety and, if applicable, paying child support. Sixty-two percent of all who enter the program go on to successfully graduate from it.

A Harvard University study by criminal justice expert Dr. Bruce Western which tracked Ready, Willing & Able's formerly incarcerated clients for two years after their graduations, found that they were 45% less likely to be reconvicted than other parolees. A follow-up study by Western found that they were 60% less likely to be convicted of a felony than other parolees within three years. The resulting savings in social service and criminal justice expenses exceeded the program’s costs by 21%, the study found.  Keep up the good work Doe Fund!

ps Last photo note - Peter and I were contemplating telling this guy that it was not a good idea to wear his mum’s lilac pants to work today! Perhaps he’s colour blind.