This week’s blogger is Julie Keel, Program Director at Mountain T.O.P. Julie works part time in the areas of recruiting and housing advocacy and is convinced that accessible and affordable housing is part of the flourishing life found in Jesus Christ here on this earth.
Cultivating Investment: Reducing Poverty
Earlier this summer Grundy County, the location of camp Cumberland Pines and the main office of Mountain T.O.P., moved off of the Appalachian Regional Commission’s list of distressed counties. For around 50 years Grundy County has been in the top 10% of economically challenged counties in the United States, touting higher rates of poverty, lower household incomes, and higher unemployment. Mountain T.O.P. has been in operation for a majority of that time.
The focus of Mountain T.O.P.’s long term outcomes is a reduction in poverty. While that has been hard to see, the last decade has brought a significant drop in the overall poverty rate, around 10 points in the last 10 years. That is significant and definitely something to celebrate!
It is hard to notice these community indicators shifting in the day-to-day grind of helping families who have nowhere else to turn in making their homes accessible and affordable…and all of the other related drivers of health. It takes a heavy lift to turn around decades of disinvestment that created the situation in which poverty blossomed on our little pocket of Appalachia.
But that’s what I see when I pass by a Youth Renewal Group hard at work or hear stories of the Day Camp field trip to the local farm. I see it when my neighbors post about their bike ride on the Mountain Goat Trail or when I sit in cross collaborative meetings about the intersection of housing, public transportation, and early childhood education. This is just a short list of how I see the making-things-whole power of Jesus Christ moving around me.
And while a decade of hard work across all sectors is paying off, I am still struck by the work to be done. Though our child poverty rate has dropped 12 points in the same 10 year period, it is still hovering more than 6 points above our overall poverty rate. I still feel audaciously passionate about the large amount of investment that is necessary to sustain our trajectory and confident that we are a place to receive that investment.
As Mountain T.O.P. is over here doing its normal thing it has been doing for decades, will you pray for us? Will you pray for our local leaders who have dedicated their lives and livelihoods to the vision of a flourishing place? Will you pray for those who have power and privilege, inside and outside of this area, to recognize how far we can make their investment go? Will you pray for wisdom for those of us who regularly think and plan and innovate about some of the most difficult social concerns of this area?
Will you pray with me?
