Listen: On Day 35 of 50 in Meet The Need, we get to know an organization that's busy meeting needs across the Milwaukee community, the Social Development Commission (SDC). For the past 45 years, SDC has worked tirelessly planning, coordinating, and implementing human service programs for low-income individuals and families in Milwaukee County, through their own programming and with community partners.
Neil Abrecht from the Social Development Foundation and Jennifer Gryniewicz from the SDC introduce their work:
-In this first piece we begin our discussion of how to move beyond poverty with Neil, who gives an overview of what poverty looks like in Milwaukee right now, followed by Jennifer, who begins to get into what the SDC does to address poverty:
-The SDC saw 100,000 non-duplicative people in the past year -- this could be viewed as overwhelming, but as Jennifer sees it, that sounds like a whole lot of success stories:
-The idea of "poverty" is easy to take as an undifferentiated monolith -- a problem that effects a population. However, when we move beyond poverty as an abstract problem and move to the individual or family level, poverty has a new face:
-Neil gets into the cyclical nature of poverty and Jennifer follows with a discussion of how they're focusing on whole family education to counter that complex problem:
-Jennifer offers some ways you can get involved with the SDC, including their Black Knowledge Bowl (on Feb. 25th) and as a tax preparer:
This year, we ask you to adopt one or two organizations that connect with you. Want to get involved with the Social Development Commission? Donate, volunteer, or check out their work yourself. And you can start with their website or the website of the Social Development Foundation.