Community Possibilities
Community Possibilities
Challenging the Systemic Barriers of Poverty: Meet Dr. Donna Beegle
Dr. Donna Beegle's remarkable journey from the depths of generational poverty to achieving a doctorate in educational leadership offers a powerful narrative of resilience and hope. Through her story, we unravel the systemic barriers that perpetuate poverty and the transformative power of education and community support. Dr. Beegle's insights challenge us to rethink our approach to poverty, highlighting the critical need for poverty-informed communities and improved communication across social classes.
Join us as we explore the transformative power of language and empathy in dismantling poverty barriers. Through Dr. Beegle's work with the Poverty Immersion Institute and insights from successful initiatives like Amarillo College's poverty-informed mindset, we uncover strategies for fostering a culture of caring and empowerment. From training community leaders to equipping non-profits with evaluation skills, this episode provides actionable insights for creating supportive environments where individuals and communities can thrive.
Guest Bio
Donna Beegle grew up in generational, migrant-labor poverty and was essentially homeless the first 26 years of her life. She is the only member of her family who has not been incarcerated. At 15, she left school to get married and start a family. She had six pregnancies and—with emergency rooms as her only access to health care—only two survived. At 26, she found herself with two children, no husband, little education, few marketable job skills, and no affordable housing. With the help of Community Action and a pilot project, she received stable housing and was able to achieve her GED and—10 years later—her doctorate in Educational Leadership—studying poverty, communication, and education. Dr. Beegle brings an insider perspective of poverty as a health determinant combined with 34 years of working with health providers in all 50 states to increase access to health services and break poverty barriers.
Since 1989, Dr. Beegle has across the nation with people and organizations who want to assist people in moving out and staying out of the war zone of poverty. As president of Communication Across Barriers, a consulting firm dedicated to building poverty-informed communities, Dr. Beegle has designed models and curriculum to directly impact people currently in poverty, as well as professionals who want to make a difference for our neighbors. She has authored four books and training curriculum kits, including See Poverty...Be the Difference, An Action Approach for Educating Students in Poverty, Breaking Poverty Barriers to Equal Justice, and If Not Me, Then Who? Empowering Our Neighbors.
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Hi everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. Today, my guest is Dr Donna Begle. I had the opportunity and great privilege to meet Dr Beagle a few years ago when she did an amazing training for one of my community coalitions. Dr Beagle grew up in generational poverty. She was essentially homeless for the first 26 years of her life. At 15, she dropped out of school and got married. She had six pregnancies and, with emergency rooms as her only access to health care, only two of her children survived. At 26, onna found herself with two children, no husband, little education, few marketable job skills and no affordable housing. With the help of community action and a pilot project, she received stable housing and was able to achieve her GED and, 10 years later, her doctorate in educational leadership, studying poverty, communication and education.
Ann Price:Dr Beegle truly brings an insider perspective to this conversation. She is president of Communication Across Barriers, a consulting firm dedicated to building poverty informed communities. Dr Beegle has designed models and curriculum to directly impact people currently in poverty, as well as professionals who want to make a difference for our neighbors. She's authored four books and training curriculum kits, including See Poverty Be the Difference Everybody. Please help me welcome Dr Donna Beegle to the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to Community Possibilities. I am beyond thrilled to have Dr Donna Beegle with me today. Welcome Donna to the podcast.
Donna Beegle:Thank you so much. I'm honored to be with you.
Ann Price:Well, I don't. I'm sure you won't remember me because I'm one of many, many, many people who have taken your trainings over the years, but you and I actually did meet I want to say in 2019, maybe in Pike County, Georgia, where you were doing your training a couple of days and I was honored to go to the first day, and I hope we can dig into that. But, yeah, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for everything you do. You travel all the time. Woman, you must be exhausted.
Donna Beegle:Well, I have been to all 50 states and eight countries and I speak to about 90,000 people a year. My dream is that everyone is poverty informed and that every community is an opportunity community.
Ann Price:Well, that is exactly my audience, right? So, community members, community coalitions, community leaders yeah, you and I have the same. Yeah, I think we have a lot of the same goals and a lot of the same passion. So for those of you, maybe, who are not familiar with your work, can you just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, and I always ask people to tell us how you came to be who you are not necessarily your business bio.
Donna Beegle:Well, I was born into generations of migrant labor, poverty, and what that translates to is most of my family members can't read and write. Some of my family members, when they sign their name, they will sign with an X. And what kind of jobs do you get when you can't read and write? It's going to be temporary, seasonal jobs. You don't move up, and jobs where you work that day for food that night. So my family, everybody, worked hard but we still got evicted, we still went hungry and I just I didn't know throughout school the words that teachers were using and I would always ask like, what does that word mean? And the teachers, the best of intentions, would say go look it up in the dictionary. So I'd go to the dictionary and there'd be five more words. I didn't know more words that not a human being in my environment could say. This is what that words means, and I teach that the isolation of poverty perpetuates it. If you just think about who do middle-class people spend time with. So, if you're in generational poverty, every single human being you know and love. They're in similar situations with experiences and exposures that you have had, and the only way you can learn the meaning of a word is if you're able to dialogue with someone who knows that word, who can use examples you can relate to, and that was the other piece that was really hard for me. I didn't know the examples teachers were using because their lived experiences were primarily middle class, so their context they were describing daily experiences that I had no frame of reference for, and so it became a whole lot of well, everybody knows this, everybody's been here, everybody's done that, and so they would use examples from middle class life experiences when I didn't understand them. Very often they would explain it again using the exact same example, sometimes a little louder, like I wasn't hearing. And, yeah, that wasn't helpful either. So I ended up dropping out of school at 15.
Donna Beegle:I have five brothers. I am actually the only family member who's not been incarcerated, and I tell people it's not because I didn't break the law. Poverty doesn't always allow you to be good. You do what you see possible with your experiences and exposures. United States of America has more people in cages than any country in the world, and that's both young people and adults, and if you go to our prisons, you will hear poverty, poverty, poverty. We have people in jail for stealing diapers. We can do better, but not in ignorance.
Donna Beegle:So I did drop out of school at 15. I actually had my honeymoon in a cherry field shortly after that. I got married at 15 and married a guy from Generations of Migrant Labor Poverty and literally used to think about how did I manage it? How did I manage to find a guy? The whole world out there? And I managed to find a guy who lives exactly like my family. They are not literate or barely literate. They work that day for food that night. So a big part of our work has to be closing the divides in our communities and making sure that people are engaging across social class barriers.
Donna Beegle:So I ended up getting a divorce at 26. That's when I got my GED and, 10 years later, my doctorate in educational leadership. I studied poverty all the way to the doctorate and focused on education and communicating more effectively across poverty barriers. Because I knew I didn't speak the language of the middle-class world, I said ain't every other word. I didn't know when to say seen or saw, or how on earth do people know when to say gone or went? I didn't even know I wasn't speaking middle class sentence structure. But I knew my whole life that people couldn't hear me, because I would literally watch two helping professionals Talk to each other about my life. They talked over me, about me, around me, but never, ever, like hey, donna, what would be helpful to you?
Donna Beegle:Or what do you wish could happen? Nobody knows your name when you're in poverty, let alone looks up when you're in a room. So you come to believe very clearly that something's wrong with you. And I did believe that. So I come at this work from the perspective of somebody who spent pretty much 28 years of my life homeless, constant evictions, and also the last 34 years as a research addict. I am a research addict. If you ask people that know me what does Donna do for fun, they will tell you she does research, but only in the interest of really giving people practical, doable things that they can use right away to create communities that work for all, not just the people who have.
Ann Price:You know I've read your book. Correct me if I get it wrong. I want to say it's See, poverty Be the Difference. That's correct. Oh, my gosh, brownie points for me. So I've read your book and I think in the book, when you talk about your story, I think you talk about someone that you, I think you got into a training program like I don't know if it was a junior college. I can't remember that part, but there were people that helped you along the way. Is that right?
Donna Beegle:Absolutely. I mean this whole idea that you know people will say you need to be self-sufficient and the truth is there's no such thing as self-sufficiency. Human beings are tribal. We actually need each other. For some people the help is built in, and for people in generational poverty, working class poverty, you know they're like me fighting for their brothers for the back window of the car, no place to lay your head, me fighting for their brothers for the back window of the car, no place to lay your head. So for many of our community members, you are the help and that happened for me At 26, my lights got shut off and I had six-year-old Jennifer and two-year-old Daniel, and my 15-year-old cousin Linda was living with me.
Donna Beegle:I went to a community action agency and community action came out of Johnson's War on Poverty and it's a solid model that actually works. I mean, most people don't even know that we had a war on poverty. I've literally asked thousands and thousands of judges, lawyers, doctors, school board members, teachers, social workers, how many of you have had the course History of Poverty, united States of America, and I never see a hand. We don't know our history. I have studied the history of poverty, united States of America and Johnson's War on Poverty was working. It was a solid model. If you ever get a chance to read it, it's genius. We had more community colleges than prisons back then and we were funding them. And the TRIO program was born, helping people in poverty go to college. The GI Bill actually funded people to live, have housing and transportation and they could actually go to college. And a lot of people made it out of poverty using the GI Bill. That has been so watered down now that if you talk to our vets they will tell you that no, they have to work, they can't go to college, even though they have the GI Bill to pay for their tuition. They don't have housing, they don't have child care, they don't have transportation. They can't do it.
Donna Beegle:The community action came out of Johnson's War on Poverty and the model was designed to. Johnson said you know, we need people in the community who can see what's in the way of our children and adults thriving, and we need to not only help people with emergencies like food and water and electricity, but we also need to help people with opportunities to be able to earn a living, to be able to take care of their families. So Community Action was designed to be in the communities, to listen to the voices of people impacted by poverty and provide resources and opportunities. Head Start was born out of Johnson's War on Poverty. Children who go to Head Start more ready to learn when they get to elementary, more likely to complete their education. Yet in the United States we turn away half of the four-year-olds who qualify. We don't fund it. So we reduced poverty by 23%. When this incredibly powerful nation, america, said we're not going to have poverty, we reduced it by 23% during the war on poverty and then they pulled all the funding out and they took all the people and resources out of the war on poverty and they put it into the war in Vietnam. And at that point you start to see poverty rates begin to climb. And as a nation, the wealthiest country in the world, we haven't addressed poverty since.
Donna Beegle:Listen to our politicians. You don't even hear the word poverty. We don't talk about poverty. We say things like opportunities are out there if you really want them. Everyone has the same chance.
Donna Beegle:And I'm like, really, and how come I went to schools? Middle-class people would never, ever, ever put their kids in. How come I can call up a real estate agent in almost any community in the United States of America and ask this question Excuse me, where are your good schools? The fact that we are all okay with that question and we allow it, that tells us we don't have equity and we say we want to treat people fair. We have to treat people fair, but treating people fair is based on the idea they start the same. They don't start the same. Some people have a pillow to lay their head on, some people have food to eat, some people have transportation, others not so much, and as a community we have to recognize that.
Donna Beegle:So I walked into community action in 1986 when my marriage fell apart and I said I need help with my lights and the person there said I think we can help you with your utilities. We have some vouchers. So she went in the back and she got the vouchers. She came back out and she said this will help you with your utilities and you might want to check out. This new program is for single moms like you, and at this point I was 26. I had a bad perm from my cousin Wanda.
Donna Beegle:I was, I said ain't every and I don't know if any of you have ever run into somebody with attitude and smart mouth. But I had both and I will tell you, I teach people, I teach poverty teaches attitude. When I work with people in poverty, I have a model I developed called the opportunity community model and I work directly with adults and children who are now in poverty to remove the shame, rebuild the hope, reduce the isolation with our navigator neighbor program and to connect them to a poverty informed community so that, no matter what door they walk into, they're treated with dignity and respect. And I teach everybody in that community to take an if not me, then who? Approach. That's the name of my newest book. If Not Me, then who? So that whole model is based on the idea that every one of us can make a difference, is based on the idea that every one of us can make a difference, and so I had attitude. When she said, go check out this program, I said why don't you do the program?
Donna Beegle:Oh my goodness, I had such a smart mouth and she could have taken it personally, like a lot of people do, but she was centered enough to know that she wasn't doing anything wrong.
Donna Beegle:My attitude had nothing to do with her. It had everything to do with her. It had everything to do with 26 years of watching my mom do without food so her kids could eat with, watching my granny do without her medicine, watching my brothers being taken away for stealing to try to keep our lights on. It had everything to do with the war zone of poverty. So she came right back and she gave me. She got a little aggressive about putting the phone number in my hand and I ended up calling that number and that was really the beginning of my journey. And the number was to a pilot program in Portland, oregon, where I live now. It was called Women in Transition and the thing that I teach is that pilot programs nearly have a 100% success rate. And that's simply because in pilot programs we do two things.
Donna Beegle:Number one when we do a pilot program, we get everyone at the table. So we're going to need childcare, we're going to need mental health care, we're going to need transportation, we're going to need business at the table so people can get into living wage jobs. We're going to need transportation, we're going to need business at the table so people can get into living wage jobs. We're going to need all the different elements that people need to thrive. We don't try to do it alone, single focused approach. Here's a three-day box of emergency food, good luck, nevermind you don't have transportation or a place to sleep. It's a whole community-wide approach. And the second thing we do when we do pilot programs is we really we take that NASA approach of failure is not an option. So if you're doing a pilot project and you have participants who don't show up, you go get them and find out why, like what was in their way. Oh, you needed childcare. Oh, I see your tire blew out on your car. You know there is a reason people don't show up. There's a reason why people aren't following through. If you seek to know the why behind the behavior, then your solutions and resolutions as a community make so much more sense. So in pilot programs you really do that NASA attitude.
Donna Beegle:So I was in group one of the really do that NASA attitude. Yeah, I was in group one of the Women in Transition program and in that program everybody who participated got access to Section 8 housing. So I didn't have any self-esteem or confidence. Poverty had stolen my hope. I thought I was stupid. I didn't know middle class words, I didn't know middle class subject matter. I thought, well, maybe my kids will be smart. And the only reason I went to the program was they said I would get housing if I finished it. I didn't, and absolutely. When people make it out of poverty, they rarely cite a program and almost always cite people.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I think you had both, and I think some of what you've been talking about, like these communication barriers and fun fact, dr Beagle, when I met my husband, he would use words like ussens and weens and zinc instead of sink, and crick instead of creek, and Crick instead of Creek. Yeah, so yeah, that's a story for another time, but I wanted to ask you about the title of your organization, and there's so many things you do and you've already kind of talked a little bit about that, but I think what you've been talking about is a lot about communication, right, and so your organization is called Communication Across Barriers. So I'm assuming you chose that name and this is assumption on my part Because of this, we don't speak the same language and therefore we make all sorts of assumptions and we have all sorts of prejudice with people for a lot of reasons. So I didn't know if you wanted to kind of start with the Communication Across across barriers.
Ann Price:What is that? And then maybe digging into some of the myths that people have about people living in poverty and how the helping I'm doing air quotes here how the helping professionals make all sorts of assumptions about people living in poverty.
Donna Beegle:Well, it is a perfect name. My company is Communication Across Barriers and you talk to 10 people about poverty and you're typically having 10 different conversations. Because we graduate people from college in every sector, without the history of poverty United States of America, without a clear definition of the many different lived experiences of poverty, without the facts that will absolutely shatter the stereotypes and myths, and we leave the number one teacher of poverty to the media, not our university. So the communication is about education, but the actual name? Very interesting how that came to be. I was a student at University of Portland junior year and one of my most significant mentors, dr Bob Fulford.
Donna Beegle:I met Dr Bob Fulford in 1989, and he had studied language and social class his entire career. He founded the communication and the journalism department at University of Portland and when he met me he said to me I would like to help you learn a second language, and at this point I'm 28. I still have a bad perm from my cousin Wanda. I'm on welfare with a couple of kids. I'm driving a big car that was donated to the welfare office, grateful to get it because it got us off the bus, but I'm like second language. And he said, donna, when middle class people speak, they use a very specific sentence structure, they use vocabulary they've heard since they were in the womb and they use examples that they're around all the time and familiar with. He said because of the segregation by social class in America, you're not going to be interacting, having meaningful interactions, with people who use those words and examples and have had those experiences. He said you communicate beautifully and it works in your context, but let me give you a language that will help you in education and the work world. So I always tell my audiences I am bilingual, I speak fluent middle-class language. And he also said to me be careful, because if you get tired your grammar may revert to your natural sentence structure. So a few years ago I got selected to be a Princeton fellow and they were sending me to these very prestigious universities to speak and I was crossing time zones and I'm sleeping under a chair at the airport and I get up the next day to do an all-day training and they filmed it and somewhere out there on the internet is me saying the word worser. I'm like where'd that come from? Where'd that come from? But it's absolutely true that I can slip right back into my. It has nothing to do with IQ. The way people talk has everything to do with how people around you talk.
Donna Beegle:So at this point in my life my brother, wayne, had spent most of his life in prison and I was telling stories about him to Dr Fulford and he says, well, I'd like to meet him, where does he live? And I'm like he lives in Salem, which was prison, and I didn't want to tell him because I wanted him to like him, I wanted him to not judge him. And a few months later I told him another story about Wayne he goes. So where is he? And I said he lives in Pendleton. The prison had moved him and a few months later they moved him again and I told a Wayne story and Dr Fulford said so where is he? And I said he's in prison. And he looked at me and said, well, can I go visit him? And I am telling you and I am telling you that just meant the world to me that he would go. I'm like you would go see my brother and my brother at that time was in prison in Portland. So Dr Fulford was pretty famous. He taught politics, rhetoric and journalism, journalism, and he was on the news all the time campaigns, analyzing political campaigns, and so him going to the prison was a big deal.
Donna Beegle:The warden came out and we were leaving after the visit with Wayne and he says, donna, they're having problems here and this was a co-ed prison. He said they're having problems communicating across class, across race barriers, gender barriers and they have all these different ages in here, generational barriers. He said so I told him that you and I could help him. He said what do you think about starting a business? At this point in my life I didn't know what a business was. I've been a fruit picker, a moss picker. I didn't know what it'd be. I worked at Pizza Hut. I worked at a foam rubber factory. I didn't know what a business was. And I said I worked at a foam rubber factory. I didn't know what a business was. And I said okay. And he said well, donna, people in businesses, they play different roles. He said what role would you like to play? And I just said the only thing I could think of president. And so he gets a files for a business license and a few weeks later I see him he has a business license, he has business cards made and I am listed as president and he's listed as vice president and our company's communication across barriers and that is the name of the course that he's teaching at University of Portland, communicating communication across barriers and it was communicating more effectively across race, class, gender and generational barriers. And we had our first contract for Columbia River Correctional Institution to develop a 10-week curriculum to help people who are in prison to be able to better get along while they're in prison and when they get out. And so that was 1989 when Communication Across Barriers was born. And it's just, it's grown every year and exploded into all 50 states and I trained the highest court in the land in Trinidad and Tobago.
Donna Beegle:I spoke to 50 countries through interpreters. In Ireland I've presented in Paris. In London I spoke to rural Chinese leaders. Most of my work is United States, but it's more than work to me. I tell people I know too much to be quiet and we've grown the company now so that there are more people.
Donna Beegle:We have our Beagle Poverty Immersion Institutes where people come and they spend two days with me and they say it's life-changing. They don't leave the same people. They really are going to see what the world looks and feels like from the perspectives of people who are impacted by poverty and they're going to gain real practical things they can use right away to break poverty barriers. And that Poverty Immersion Institute qualifies them to go on to become a certified Beagle Poverty Coach. And we train the Beagle Poverty Coaches to use my work throughout their organization so they can look at policy strengths of community partnerships, they can look at programs, they can look at curriculum, they can do interventions when somebody. They can look at curriculum, they can do interventions when somebody's falling through the cracks. We're working extensively with the state of Louisiana right now to help infuse poverty-informed practices. But we have thousands and thousands of Beagle Poverty Coaches.
Donna Beegle:I've trained more than 7,000 judges in Massachusetts and they now have to take my poverty competency trainings. All first-year judges mandatory have to take that. I partner with the American Bar Association. I wrote a book called Breaking Poverty Barriers to Equal Justice. They give my book and 90-minute poverty competency training to all pro bono. Attorneys. They can get it for free through the American Bar or they can attorneys. They can get it for free through the American Bar or they can. Social justice folks can get it on my website. So we train faith-based groups.
Donna Beegle:I just keynoted for the National St Vincent de Paul Society. They're using my work throughout the nation to move beyond just helping people get a bed, but to help them actually move out and stay out of poverty. We developed the Opportunity Community Model, which brings the entire community together to work in ways they've never worked before. So right now we're implementing that in Alexandria, louisiana, and in Lindsay, california, which is where I was yesterday, and we have implemented in Fulton County, georgia, the Opportunity community as well. But that's one that's the most profound work I do is really build out a poverty-informed community so that everybody has a role to play, and we're all taking that if not me, then who? Approach to saying is there something I can do? And we give people so many different ways to get involved directly and directly and so that they can play a role in saying poverty is not okay in our community.
Ann Price:Yeah, well, one. I don't know when you sleep, I know you do have, you have it. You have a team that, as you said, and that's really you know, helped spread the word. I want to, as having participated in day one of the Institute, I want to just share. I won't give away the secret sauce, of course, but I want you to talk about the secret sauce but I want to just say share with you for a minute how that training impacted me.
Ann Price:One I'm, you know, I share with you. I'm a community psychologist. I go to a lot of conferences, I do a lot of trainings and I participate in trainings. Your training is one of the best that I've ever been to, and here's why, for those of you who are listening and are interested in bringing this to your community, because we all have assumptions, we walk in the world with assumptions about people, and what is great about, I think, about the training is the experiential things that you all do to help people understand the perspective of other people. So I'll give you one example.
Ann Price:So my group at lunch I was paired with a group and I don't know how we got together, but we were a group and we were given a little scenario I think we were supposed to be like I don't know, a family of four or six. We were given like an income level you know description about our family and our task was to find the local food bank and see if we could get assistance. You know some food and we oh, by the way, we did not have a car right the day I was participating it was pouring down rain like cats and dogs. So, being you know, middle-class folks, of course, we said well, heck, no, we're getting in our car because we do have a car.
Ann Price:But we had to probably go to three locations. The first one and I use this example all the time when I'm speaking to communities the first one was only open. I want to say it was like you know, I don't know 10 to noon, and I want to say it was like you know, I don't know 10 to noon and you know two to four or something right, when most people are working right. So it wasn't accessible, so they weren't open, so they sent us to some church and then we had to, like, walk all over this very large campus trying to find the office.
Ann Price:So it was a lot of stress, like a lot of stress and strain, pouring down rain, our family is hungry, and then we get there to find out oh, by the way, you can only get a food box once a month, didn't matter how many people you had or what your needs were. So it was very kind of eye-opening about what the experience might be for people who are seriously living in poverty. For people who are seriously living in poverty. Yeah, and I don't know if I'm doing a good job representing, but that's what I remember about that experience.
Donna Beegle:Yes, and that's essential because you know there's an assumption well, resources are out there if you really want them. Or you know what'd you do all day? You had all day. But when you actually walk through the experiences of what is it like to try to access the resources that you need? I have a friend who is a multimillionaire and I never thought I'd say that, but I do and he's an amazing human being. Who sold his company in the 70s for about 90 million, started a foundation for children, the environment and peace. Who sold his company in the 70s for about $90 million, started a foundation for children, the environment and peace what's not to like, right? He wanted to mentor a kid and he ended up getting matched with a 15-year-old boy.
Donna Beegle:And because my master's is communication, I know that language shapes our actions. So if people say I have to deal with those students in poverty or I have to deal with those people in poverty, I know it's time to go to work. The poverty competencies aren't there, because deal with is a negative connotation. You deal with the toilet running over. You don't deal with something you believe in. So I know there's judgment in the subconscious mind just by the words people use, and psychologists will tell you that our subconscious mind responds before our conscious mind. So a lot of the programming about poverty and the people who live in it, from our media, from having a lived experience of poverty or from looking in at people in poverty, it resides in our subconscious mind and people make decisions about who they will help based on that programming. So this friend, he starts out with that kid, that kid, that kid, and so I know there's not a connection just by that language.
Donna Beegle:And at one point I went to his philanthropy office for a different reason and when I walked in the door he said I'm not a good mentor, I'm a failure. And I said what, what happened? And he said, well, he quit school. So I'm not good at this. And I said, well, why? What's going on? And he said no, he just quit. No, there's a reason. Seek to know the why. There's always a why he goes. Nope, I'm just not good at this. And I said, hey, I want to talk to him.
Donna Beegle:So he gets the kid on the phone and I find out that the kid, the mom and dad lived in a trailer court and the owner of the court demanded that they upgrade the trailers, all the trailers in the court or move them. And they worked at senior care centers and they were getting hours sometimes and not hours other times and had no capacity to move the trailer. So the trailer was seized and the entire family evicted. And the kid says his mom and dad are living with some friends. The sister was living with a friend and he said I met my angry uncles. He just quit going.
Donna Beegle:So now I know the why and I'm in my community and I have a full resource backpack. I know people, so I'm going to call. I just start making phone calls and leaving message and I made probably three or four phone calls to people who have solutions to that issue because I know he needs a sense of place in order to learn. Maslow was kind of right. So I'm probably on my fifth phone call when my friend sitting at his philanthropy desk over in the corner, he says Donna, and I turned around and I said yeah, I had forgotten he was even there. I'm on a mission now. And he says Donna, and I said yeah. He says I have money and I'm like, oh my gosh, of course you do, yay. And he says but I don't want to enable them. And here's what I teach. The word enable has become a massive excuse for not helping.
Ann Price:Oh gosh, can you say that again.
Donna Beegle:The word enable has become a massive excuse for not helping. Maslow taught you cannot enable human beings that don't have their basic needs met because they can't self-actualize or be all they can be. He didn't say, hey, go, do everything for people, but he sure did say, do it with them. He also said and this is, I think, one of the most profound things he said if an action isn't going to occur without your support, it's not enabling, because nothing's going to happen. If an action isn't going to occur without your support, it's not enabling going to happen. If an action isn't going to occur without your support, it's not enabling. So I gave him my little spiel, and it's also interesting again, because I have a master's in communication. I really do pay attention to words. The word enable is a positive word in the middle class world and I bet every one of you have heard somebody say this. Well, my grandparents enabled me to travel Europe debt-free. My parents enabled me to graduate college debt-free. My parents enabled me to have my first car. My grandparents enabled me to have my first house. It's a good word for people who have, but for people who have nothing, you need to do it by yourself. No, we humans were tribal and some people the help is built in and others they're out of salt and butter too. There's nobody to help. There's no change in the couch, there's no. You know, you're 10 cents short for your milk. You're not getting it because there's nobody to ask for a dime. Nobody has a dime. And we have to realize that level of understanding, because I actually judge people's wealth by how much change they have in their console, in their car, on their dressers, like, oh my, you will never see that in generational poverty that won't be a penny. And we're not in neighborhoods where we go to stores where there's a cup there with change in it saying take some. That's never, ever going to happen. So the context we live in is very, very different.
Donna Beegle:So the Poverty Immersion Institute I developed that I had been speaking about 16 years and I work with all sectors. I train attorneys, I was Speaker of the Year for New Mexico Bar, trained judges. I train school board members. I just trained Alabama School Board and they all went through my institutes and became certified Beagle coaches and now they're going back with their action plans to infuse it throughout the state of Alabama because their education rates are abysmal 12 teachers. I train faith-based leaders. I train businesses, I train chambers, rotaries, counties, cities, anybody who really wants to understand poverty from the perspectives who lived it. And I had been doing that about 16 years and I was working with Vancouver School District and the professional development director. He had me train all of the school board members, professional development director. He had me train all of the school board members, administrators, for a year. And then he said well, you know, our teachers need this, our K-12 teachers. So I trained all the teachers and by now they have poverty competencies and they know dang the janitor can affect a kid's mood. The front office person, the bus driver? Oh, we graduate people in every sector from high school and college without an understanding of poverty. And so what ends up happening is we fight the people, not the poverty. So I train all the classified staff and the third year I'm working with them.
Donna Beegle:He comes up to me, the professional development director, dr Ed Wilgus, and he says why aren't you doing your own institutes? And I tell people, you know in poverty you're not exposed to possibilities, you don't even know what questions to ask. So until he said that, I didn't know you could do that. But once he said it I was like what I could do? My own, I could design my own and it wouldn't be me coming in and someone else's time structure and their learning objectives, but I could just have people do what I want. And, oh my gosh, I was ecstatic and I began in 2004, developing the curriculum for the Poverty Immersion Institutes, and we piloted in Vancouver, washington, in 2005. And now we take them all over the United States. We host them three times a year. We have institutes coming up in December in both Portland, oregon and Louisiana and they're hybrids so people can register virtually or they can attend in person, and then organizations like Alabama School Board or the hospital they will bring us in and they'll get their people trained so that they have Beagle coaches within their system to do ongoing learning.
Donna Beegle:Amarillo College has 179 certified Beagle poverty coaches. Their first year they had 11 Beagle certified poverty coaches. They doubled retention of their students on Pell Grants. This year their president is a Beagle certified poverty coach, dr Russell Lowry Hart. They won best college in the nation this year. They're just shattering records because if a student from poverty actually makes it to college, it's abysmal. Only 11% leave with a degree or certificate because our campuses are not poverty informed. So Amarillo College I've been working with them since 2011, and they call their campus a culture of caring that what it truly is is a poverty-informed campus, where everybody on that campus takes an if-not-me-then-who approach and their whole philosophy is any poverty barrier that can be removed for a student will be removed and we will support our students to success. And they're doing it and it's just really magical to watch.
Ann Price:So let me just ask you, just practically, so, once folks go through the training because it's not just about the training, it is about that coaching piece what does a coach do then? Is it kind of what you did with that student on the phone, you know, just kind of working through what they need?
Donna Beegle:It's some of that. So the coaches learn to do professional development, because poverty, like race, is not a one-time training. I had an organization contact me and they said Dr Beagle, we'd like to bring you in to do a poverty-informed training. We already did a training, a workshop, on race and we're done with that. So we thought we'd move on to poverty.
Ann Price:Oh goodness, check the box.
Donna Beegle:Yeah, it doesn't work that way. We are so socialized and programmed with stereotypes and myths and deep, deeply held belief systems about poverty and the people who live in it. It takes ongoing work to really know thyself, to really understand your own attitudes and beliefs about poverty and the people who live in it. So we need people within our systems who can do that ongoing work and our coaches. They learn to teach my work, they get to use my work, they get to teach it throughout their systems so they can do ongoing professional development. I teach them how to do.
Donna Beegle:I developed a poverty competency assessment and action planning process, which I did with the state of Louisiana Department of Human Services. So I surveyed all 3,500 employees, I trained all 3,500 employees, I trained all 350 state leaders. Under Department of Human Services falls TANF, welfare, child welfare support, enforcement, emergency response service, which Georgia, a lot of states, are experiencing right now. But I don't know if you know this, ambulances typically arrive quicker to wealthier communities. Wealthier communities typically get fixed back up after the hurricane quicker than the more impoverished communities. So we're helping with that. And then we did a series of focus groups around the state, all nine regions of Louisiana, and out of that we produced a research report showing what they're doing. That's working really well throughout the state in these programs for people in generational poverty, working class poverty, immigrant poverty, mixed class poverty any of the many different contexts of poverty that I teach. There's so many different lived experiences of poverty. We have to meet people where they are, not where we want them to be, and develop actions around those areas for growth. So we identified areas for growth, places where people were falling through the cracks in the system. So now, year three, I'm working with them and we're tightening up those cracks so that people are not falling through the cracks. They're getting access to the resources and the opportunities they need. For example, here's a perfect example of how the coaches they need. For example, here's a perfect example of how the coaches can help.
Donna Beegle:In Louisiana, typically, support enforcement was created with the idea that you have a parent who doesn't have the kids non-custodial parent and they have money and they refuse to pay child support. So we're going to take their license, we're going to put them in jail and we're going to make them pay. It's not designed for people like my ex-husband, jerry. When our marriage ended, he moved into a car that we had bought at an auction for $25.
Donna Beegle:Jerry had seven years of high poverty schooling. He couldn't read at all. And so what kind of jobs can he get? They're going to be temporary, seasonal, minimum wage kinds of jobs. And so get. They're going to be temporary, seasonal, minimum wage kinds of jobs. And so then they're taking a huge chunk of his wages which he already can't make it on minimum wage, and in fact minimum wage plus minimum wage equals still in poverty. So he can't live. So he ends up working in the gray economy under the table, going to work sites, construction sites, saying hey, I'll work for you, I'll work for you. And a lot of times people would say, well, I'll hire you, but we don't pay till the end of the job. So he'd go hungry. And then, when it came time for pay, I can't tell you how many times people said to Jerry you didn't work for me. He has nobody to tell who's he going to tell Yep.
Donna Beegle:So, jerry, when our marriage ended ended, I applied for welfare and they began billing him for child support. All that did was he ended up owing the state thirty thousand dollars and it pushed him into the gray economy. So in louisiana, being poverty informed, the support enforcement director goes back to his team after attending the institutes. They create a whole ability to pay and prior to that they had been primarily they had such. Their prison rates are just astronomical and high population of black men who were being caged for not paying their child support and not in any position to pay child support. So now they have an ability to pay program where they assess can you pay? And if they don't have skills and education to be able to earn a living to be able to pay, they strengthen their partnerships with employment services, internships, apprenticeships, education systems, training and skills opportunities so that people could access and get the skills that they need to be able to earn the money so that they could pay their child support. That's an example of what coaches can do. They can build those partnerships, strengthen partnerships.
Donna Beegle:Look at policy to say are these policies really setting people up for success? And I studied policy in my doctoral program. Policies are meant to serve. If policies exclude or punish, they're called bad policy. So we have to. I teach our coaches to be able to look at our policies and say who's the policy serving. And take the example of head lice.
Donna Beegle:Nationally, most kids are sent home if they get head lice. So let's look at that through the eyes of the kid. What's the message to the kid in poverty when they're sent home? You got bugs, you're dirty, we don't want you. So is that policy serving the child? It's not. Let's look at it through the eyes of the parent in poverty. We know from census data that two-thirds of the parents in poverty are working more than one job 1.9 jobs actually and they can't afford rent anywhere in the United States. So we tell them they got to buy an $18 bottle of lice shampoo. They got to vacuum their whole house even though they don't have a vacuum cleaner. They got to take all their bedding and stuffed animals to the laundromat $7 washing machines. Is that policy serving parents in the crisis of poverty? It's not for the parents. So who is the policy for?
Donna Beegle:And when you start doing that, you can then put sacred cows on the table Instead of doing this. Is the way we've always done it. It's the way we've got to do it. Now you can actually ask is it working? So our coaches will help with that. They will help with really looking at are we meeting people where they are?
Donna Beegle:One school district they changed their tardy slips to we're so glad you're here, because they began realizing you cannot punish people out of poverty conditions. You got people living in the back of their truck. You got people living in storage sheds. You got people so they just grab their arms around people, hug them so glad you're here. And then they find out why they're struggling to get there and they work together with the community and try to remove those barriers.
Donna Beegle:You cannot punish people out of poverty conditions. So the coaches can do interventions, poverty competency assessment. They do the action planning for those areas for growth, those places where people are falling through the cracks or being punished for poverty conditions, and they really do serve as a guide for the organization to make sure that we're fighting the poverty, not the people in it. And then we also coaches then become eligible to go on and become Beagle speakers and the Beagle speakers join the Communication Across Barriers team. Coaches aren't allowed to charge when they use my work. They can work within their school or hospital or faith-based organization, but they're not allowed to charge when they do trainings with my work. But the Beagle speakers are, so they work with us, actually with Communication Across Barriers. So we're creating an army to fight a war that I believe is worth fighting, and that's a war on poverty.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I was going to ask you about how do you communicate about systems level change, and you just gave so many great examples of systems level change. It's not even funny. So I just want to, as we wrap up here, I just want to thank you for coming on, for taking the time. I know how busy you are, so I just really appreciate you and I am dying to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?
Donna Beegle:You know when I do the opportunity. I designed the opportunity community really to move us away. Elizabeth Shore in her book Within Our Reach she talks about most of our programs to address poverty in the United States at best help people to cope with their poverty and I know that firsthand. I know here's a three-day box of emergency food, good luck and yeah. But I'm walking out the door and I've got an eviction notice. I know what that's like. So I want a comprehensive, community-wide poverty-informed approach.
Donna Beegle:So the opportunity community is a three-phase model. We train all the leaders in the community. We ask those leaders to give us a name of two people in their system who know their system, whether it's the hospital or a college or the chamber of commerce or the rotary or the business or the county or the K-12 system or the early learning system. Give us two people who know your system and we want them to serve as specialty navigators for their neighbors who are impacted by poverty. Then we train navigators. Navigators are people in the community who are right now not in poverty and they agree to go through poverty-informed training to gain communicating and relating more effectively across poverty barriers skill sets. And for one year they agreed to walk beside a neighbor on their journey to move out and stay out of poverty. The second phase is a prosperity summit where we train more frontline people with poverty competencies and they get engaged. We're really building a platform so that no matter what door people walk into, they're going to run into poverty-informed people who will walk beside them.
Donna Beegle:And the third phase is an actual conference that I do for people who are in poverty right now. They come in. There's a red carpet, there's red velvet ropes. At the end of the carpet they're going to be handed a gift wrap present. That present is an address book and that's partially to get at. The isolation of poverty perpetuates it. I teach people in poverty you don't have to get rid of the people you love, but for every person in your life you have, that's fighting that evil villain, poverty. You need one who's not, because those are the people who know how to navigate middle class resources and opportunities. They get a hot breakfast, there's round tables, there's centerpieces, there's balloons. It's a conference you would all want to come to.
Donna Beegle:We do a resource and opportunity fair and I always insist on both. I think too many communities get focused on just putting out the fires. Here we'll help you with your utilities. We got to do both. People in poverty constantly say to me yeah, they helped me with my lights, but I had no opportunity. We have to do both. So in the morning I'm doing activities. Remove the shame, rebuild the hope.
Donna Beegle:Scholar Paulo Freire says the United States is the only country in the world that teaches its people. They are the cause of poverty because we don't have honest dialogue about the housing affordability crisis, the child care affordability crisis, the transportation crisis, the hunger crisis with one in five children going hungry, the lack of access to preventative care, so people in poverty die on average 15 years younger. We don't have honest dialogue about real causes of poverty, so we tend to blame the people and we tend to want to fix the people instead of fixing the root causes. So a lot of people come to believe they don't have anything to offer. They lose hope, they lose confidence. In about 90 minutes in the morning activities I can change body posture from that shrunken spirit where they can't look you in the eye to sitting up taller.
Donna Beegle:In my doctoral research I interviewed people from generations of poverty who were able to get bachelor's degrees. The number two variable that helped them was learning. They weren't the cause of poverty. And I tell people, I tell people in poverty, your choices, your personality is not the cause of poverty. If it were, you wouldn't be the only. You would be the only one in it instead of 43 million. And that's just what we count with the faulty federal poverty guideline. I validate, I say to people how many of you have attitude, how many of you have smart mouth, and they'll be like you, damn right. And I'm like good, because watching your grandma do without medicine and your mom do without food, you should have an attitude. But how does it work when you smart off to the judge or your teacher, then I'd say let me teach you how to use it. But first I validate that that's a normal behavior, reaction in their context.
Donna Beegle:So in the afternoon we do a grassroots economic development. What would you do Now? They know they're not the cause of poverty, they know there are real causes and they know they have strengths. Because in the morning we also identify their strengths Cause I'll say stand up. If you can fix cars, stand up. If you're good with babies, pretty soon I got everybody standing their body'll say stand up. If you can fix cars, stand up. You're good with babies. Pretty soon. I got everybody standing Uh, their body posture shifts. They're sitting up taller In the afternoon. They'll say things like you know, there's nowhere to take babies in our downtown area. If, if I had my uh business, I I would take care of babies there's. I love babies, um, and we go through. I wrote an economic development plan for people in poverty and they go through that.
Donna Beegle:And then I play the song Lean On Me and I ask the navigators to come forward. They've been there all day but nobody knows who's a neighbor, who's a navigator. The navigators come up and they share their name, their wisdom and something people wouldn't know about them. So they'll say things like my name's John Jones and I'm an attorney. And something you wouldn't know about me is I have 18 grandkids. And you could see the neighbors go oh, you're a grandpa, okay, I can talk to you, we're building common ground. And inevitably, the end of that day, navigators will come over to me and they'll say Dr Beagle, you know, I met my neighbor and she's just a person. And the neighbors will come over and they'll say Donna, I met my navigator, he's just a guy. And that's the point where I go home happy. And I know because when we see people.
Donna Beegle:We treat them differently. We treat them differently.
Ann Price:Yeah, absolutely, Dr Beagle. I assume the best place for people to get in contact with you and your team is through the website. Is that correct?
Donna Beegle:Yes, there is a information at Communication Across Barriers. Our office phone number is on there. You can Google Donna Beagle and it takes you to my website. There's a contact Donna button on there. It comes straight to me. We're pretty easy to find.
Ann Price:Yeah, well, donna, I really want to again thank you for your time. Thank you for all the work you do. You are a blessing to so many. Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate you. I will tell you.
Donna Beegle:I want to tell people this Two of my brothers now have bachelor's degrees. My son dad, dropped out of seventh grade, I dropped out of ninth and not too long ago he said, mom, it should be about 14 years I'll have a doctorate. I have so many cousins who grew up living in cars with parents who couldn't read and write, who were entering grad school. One of my cousins came to live with me at 15, unable to read by 19,. She had her associate's, she got her bachelor's, master's. Then she texts me yikes. I've been accepted into the doctoral program. My other son he's the first in the history of our family to get a real high school diploma, not a GED.
Donna Beegle:I have two grandbabies now, luna, bella and Sam, and you know generational poverty doesn't have to be. These babies have never been hungry. They are getting to develop. They've never been evicted, and that's what I want for everyone to have authentic opportunities to develop to their fullest potential. Because when people get to develop, guess what they do? They give back to our communities, and we have communities we all want to live in.
Ann Price:Yeah, yeah, and they give back to your families and their families, and that's a perfect example of just that. Will you enjoy those glam babies?
Donna Beegle:I'm on that. I'm on that. All right. Luna Bella came up to me last night and she put a plastic tiara on my head and gave me a big old kiss. She doesn't have words yet, but that was enough. That carries me.
Ann Price:That's awesome.
Donna Beegle:All right, have a great day. Thank you everyone.
Ann Price:Bye-bye, hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. Please like and share the episode. Share it with a community leader you know and love, or just someone who needs a little boost today. If you could take an extra minute or two and leave a review, that would be so helpful. Now I just want to remind you that my course, powerful Evidence Evaluation for Non-Evaluators, is live. We are offering a 50% discount as a pilot. Thank you to the first 10 folks who register for the course.
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