64. Season Recap

On this episode of Community Difference Makers, Bankers Trust and United Way of Central Iowa recap the conversations we had throughout the season on food insecurity, housing, childcare, and safe and thriving youth.

Transcript

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Welcome back to Community Difference Makers, a podcast where we explore the people, partnerships, and ideas helping our community thrive. Over the past several episodes, we've taken a deeper look at four critical community issues in central Iowa: food security, affordable housing and homelessness, childcare access, and safe and thriving youth. Each of these conversations has been very powerful on their own. But what's become even clearer is how deeply connected all of them are. And we've talked about that this throughout our throughout our season. So today we're taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, especially through the lens of the 2026 community report that United Way of Central Iowa recently released. And we're going to see really just how many families are navigating or talk about how many families are navigating not just one of these issues, but all of these issues we've been talking about at the same time. So today, like I said, we're going to step back, we're going to connect the dots. I'm joined by Mary Sellers, president and CEO of United Way of Central Iowa. Mary, thanks for being here again. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Most uh most frequent guest. How about that? That's great. Do I get a sticker? You do. Okay. You get a difference maker shirt. Perfect. Another one. Another one. All right. So after listening to all these conversations, one thing that stood out is that none of these issues acts in isolation or happens in isolation. When we talk about food insecurity specifically or housing instability, any of these issues, what we're talking about, are not just issues, but systems. From your perspective, what really ties all of these things together? So, you know, when you when you think about each of those in isolation, then you're not addressing the holistic issue within the community. Because if anyone is suffering from food insecurity or they're unhoused, they are uh experiencing many other things in addition to that. So there isn't a magic wand on one issue. It really has to be taken holistically in the community for us to actually move the needle midterm and long term. And United Way is really the only organization that's looking at these in that holistic way. Yeah, you know, we occupy unique space in our community. We can scan the community, we can see the leverage points, we can see the gaps, and then we coalesce the community across sector to address it. Because in order to have traction and meaningful change, you need multi-sectors in the community. This isn't a health and human service organization issue in our community. We really need the private sector, the public sector, nonprofit sector, and those that are living that experience to come together to address it. Another thing that really stood out to me throughout our episodes this season and in your community report is the scale of what families are facing. We've shared this statistic many times. One in three central Iowa households struggle to afford basic needs. We call that Alice. Hopefully, all of our listeners now know what Alice is, but remind remind our listeners who Alice is and how you use this framework to explain what these households are really going through. Sure. So Alice is an acronym for households in our community, and it stands for asset limited, income-constrained employed. So most of the Alice population is employed. And when you think of one-third or roughly 90,000 households in central Iowa that are struggling to meet their basic needs, that's a lot of households in central Iowa. It's essentially the equivalent of Ankeny, Waukee, West Des Moines, and Urbendale. All combined. All combined. So now let's break apart these issues into four different ones quickly and explore them just a little bit deeper, starting with food security. In the community report, more than a third of Central Iowans reported worrying about running out of food this past year, this recent. What does that tell us about food security? So it tells us that we've got headwinds. And what we're learning from our partners in the food pantries is they're seeing increasing numbers of seniors going to food pantries, which is also a concern. I think one of the things that we've done as United Way is we're doing a pilot program that came out of the food security plan for the community. So if someone is going to a pantry for food, they clearly have other needs that they're facing. And so these we have community navigators in the pantries and trying to connect them with other services. Our hope through this pilot is to learn that if they have access to those other serv uh services, that maybe they won't be so reliant on food pantries and that'll help them move forward. And shout out to the navigators. We had to meet several of them. Yeah. They have made such an impact on the people that they get to help. And you can tell they've built just really strong relationships. That's right. Yeah. It's really been great. We need more navigators. We do. When it comes to housing and homelessness, a theme that came up again and again was that homelessness isn't just about a lack of housing. It's about a system, again, that just not working for everyone, connected to wages, to child care costs, to health issues. Again, that larger system. So what kind of collaboration is happening, happening to support these themes? So there's a lot that's happening. We had a strategic planner that deals in those that are unhoused in communities across the country. So we began two years ago with a gap analysis to understand what we have in terms of inventory as a community and where those gaps were. And then from that, we did a study, a community-wide study. As a result of that, we formed the Housing Solutions Alliance that has public officials and private companies as well as some nonprofits on that to try to understand from the data where it is we need to focus our attention to make impact on that particular demographic. And then childcare. So I think as you opened this, childcare is not much different than any other of the issues. They're all interconnected. We're doing, we're executing on two grants right now. One is a workforce issue. When you look at the average pay for a childcare provider, it's very low in our community. And in a lot of cases, the workforce issue is driving the number of slots that can be opened because they don't have stable employees. So one of our grants is to look at how do we create a career pathway and professionalize the workforce. The other piece that we're doing is looking at capital expenditures and how we invest in that for child care centers so that they don't have to spend their dollars on that, that they can focus on running the child care. So these two together we think will come out with some interesting findings at the end that potentially we can share with a broader community. And finally, safe and thriving youth. We talked about how early support matters. Gosh, it makes such a difference, especially when we know that outcomes like education success can shape that long-term opportunity. What metrics are the best indicators of where we need to focus more when it comes to safe and thriving youth? So the number one uh correlation uh to safe and thriving youth or those um kids that would pick up a gun or those that might be a victim of somebody picking up a gun is youth disengagement. So for those kids that are 16 to 19, if they are disengaged, meaning they're not in school and they're not working, that is where the biggest propensity is to be engaged in violence. So really giving those kids early on opportunities to be engaged and then stay engaged during those critical years. It really feels like we're at a moment when the need is increasing across all of these themes and all of these areas. Why is now such a critical time for our community to come together? Well, um, you know, United Way has been around for 109 years and helped navigate this community through world wars, through financial crisis. And it seems as though if you go back in history, there's always times when United Way is called upon, and our community, frankly, is called upon. And although the issues are, a lot of the issues are increasing in their severity, so their acuity right now. And I think it's because of um the effects that we've been talking about. It's not just one issue, it's all of the other issues are also um creating challenges, which accentuates the issues we're focused on. And at the same time, a highlight throughout each conversation or another theme was strong collaboration. Um, and we're seeing that throughout this community and throughout these episodes and the people that have joined us, um, and hope. So we're seeing collaboration and we're seeing hope. And we talked a lot about hope. How do those realities exist with this timing of needing our community to come together? I think that um I think that you're seeing the collaboration and the hope as a result of the acuity of what the community is facing. So there's no one individual, there's no one organization that can address these critical community issues. We must come together. And I think the realization of that is really impacting the broader community, and people want to join in and be a part of the solution. Hopefully, another thing our listeners have learned throughout this is how United Way doesn't provide direct services, but really serves as a convener. Um, explain again, just one more time to make everyone clear what United Way's role is in Central Iowa. So United Way has a unique role as I've already described, but we also, you know, we have hundreds of corporate partners that we engage with through our campaign and through volunteerism. We have, you know, close to a hundred nonprofit partners and we fund close to 200 programs. So we also have an on-the-ground understanding, even though we're not delivering the service. We have an on-the-ground understanding of the issues and what our funded partners are facing. And so bringing those together gives us a unique vantage point of resources and needs in the community. So hopefully, and our goal here was to spark conversation, to educate for listeners who are now moved to do something more. They want to help, they want to be involved. What advice would you give them or where would you direct them? So, you know, my advice is always give, advocate, volunteer. So if people may not have time, they can support through resources the efforts that are going on in the community. If they have time, they can volunteer and get engaged. That's something that matches or aligns with their uh passion. And if they care deeply about a particular issue, they can lend their voice toward that issue. So those are three distinct ways that people can get engaged. And if they want to, they can go to our website and find out the ways specifically that they can get engaged. So let's end the way we always have. We talked about hope. After all of this learning and all of this conversation that's come together, what gives you hope? Uh what gives me hope are the bright spots, and there are always bright spots. If you look at our 2026 community report, you'll see that chronic absenteeism across the 20 school districts in Polk, Dallas, and Warren is going down. You will see that those students that do not have stable housing has gone down. You will see, and maybe you saw it in the news, that DMPS increase their graduation rate by 5%. We are making a difference and we are making progress. It's just this type of progress is a lot longitudinal effort. It is not an immediate effort. So that comes from years of effort and years of collaboration, and we just need to continue to do that as we go forward. So if there's one takeaway from this season of Community Difference Makers, it's this these issues may be complex, but they're not disconnected. And when we start to see the full picture, we can bit begin to build solutions that actually last, but that takes us doing this all together, right? So today we more had a summary and recap. Uh hopefully, if any listeners have only or jumping in at this point or have heard just bits and pieces along the way, we've sparked some interest to go back. We've got four episodes on each of these topics, and we would love for you to go back, listen to those, share them with others, and help us continue to educate our community about this work that really matters. And thank you, Mary, for all you've done to participate. Thank you for all you do to our community. Thank you for saying yes when we decided to partner on this podcast between Bankers Trust and United Way of Central Iowa. Um, you've helped us really connect and put those pieces of the puzzle together. Um, and I just think we we should celebrate and thank everyone who joined us. We had so many wonderful guests and so many wonderful people share their stories. Um, and that takes a lot for them to step up, and you always step up too. So thank you. Well, thank you. And I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that Bankers Trust was one of two companies that founded United Way back in 1917. And so uh our partnership goes back a long way, and we're eternally grateful for all that Bankers Trust does, and I'm personally grateful for all you do. Well, thank you. That brought back a fun memory of when we both celebrated our centennial years back in 2017. That's right. So if you'd like to learn more, I'll tell you one last time visit unitedwaydm.org. Uh, we'll be back with a whole new season of podcast episodes this fall. Stay tuned to learn more. Um, but we're still in this fight together, and we're gonna keep tackling hard issues, and we're gonna keep bringing you information and hopefully um getting people ready again to step up, stand up, give, advocate, volunteer, do everything they can to make Central Iowa a better place. So until next time, remember we like to end with this saying when we come together, we're not just addressing individual challenges. We're building a community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.