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SEPTEMBER 24, 2008 | THE MEREDITH HERALD
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X£fri:?''''EER TO FIGHT LOCAL POVERTY
SLIFE
By Morgan Ericson
Staff Writer
In the past two issues, I explored domestic violence, water scarcity, and
poverty on a national and global level. This week, however, T gained a lo
cal perspective on poverty upon interviewing Urban Ministry’s Operation
Manager, Aaron Finley, and Case Manager for the Helen Wright Center for
Women, Christa Fagnant.
As stated on its website. Urban Ministries is a non-profit, government
funded organization that seeks to alleviate the effects of poverty on Wake
County citizens by providing shelter, medical services, food, and prescrip
tion assistance. Similar to Church Worldwide Service’s commitment to
“mak[ing] poverty history,” Urban Ministries devotes itself to “renewing
lives [and] restoring hope.” The agency depends heavily on volunteers and
lies within a five mile radius of Meredith College.
We must first consider the severity of homelessness and poverty in Wake
County. Wake County’s 10 Year Action Plan of 2006 provides helpfiil sta
tistics: About 29,000 people in Raleigh live in poverty. In the same report,
15,000 people living with fnends or family were deemed at risk for home
lessness. Wake County suggested that one of the greatest causes of home
lessness is the fact that many people cannot afford to purchase secure living
establishments in Raleigh’s housing market. The closing of Dorothea Dix
Hospital also has contributed to the problem.
Urban Ministries seeks to alleviate the effects of poverty and educate
Wake County citizens regarding these issues. The HWCW provided assis
tance for 220 women last year and prepared more than $107,000 worth of
meals. Urban Ministries’ Open Door Clinic operates four days per week
and three times daily; they have one staff doctor and volunteer physicians,
nurses, and lab techs that are kept on a consistent rotation.
Last year alone the ODC filled 35,000 prescriptions in its pharmacy
Md had 8,400 patient visits; to qualify, they had to meet several eligibil
ity requirements—income level, proof of residence and household size are
all considered. Urban Ministries also offers a food pantiy which provides
short-term relief to people in a crisis; last year they distributed 463,000
pounds of food for over 6,500 households in Wake County.
PMo courtesy mnr.uitianinln.offf
The goal in distributing food is to help the individual offset his or her
problem with non-financial assistance. As Finley explains, “No one should
ever have to come home and tell a child that there is no food so they cannot
have dinner, and for basically my entire lifetime, we have been working
to make sure that doesn’t happen, one person at a time. The 43% one time
utilization rate is a good number, but it isn’t the indicator of our success...
Our success is best seen in the fact that for 27 years we have been a constant
resource for people in need.”
Since February, I have served as a volunteer interpreter and eligibility
screener for Urban Ministries’ Open Door Clinic. I have very much enjoyed
getting to know Finley and the other volunteers; they have an openness and
authenticity that encouraged me to keep serving there.
It is rewarding to interpret for physicians and patients with language bar
riers between them and to interview patients for the ODC, even though I
sometimes wonder what I actually contribute. I ultimately leave the facil
ity feeling like we really do address the problems of poverty by providing
long ^d short-term help to people. Knowing Finley and the patients has
given me a broader picture on the issues of poverty, domestic violence, and
situations that lie beyond our control. We could all learn something from
volunteering there. ■
LOOKING BACK: PART TWO
By Terri Jones
Contributing Writer
The musty Victorian sensibilities
that cast a furtive shadow over the
brassy exterior of the Jazz Age of
the 1920’s, when Meredith College
expanded its boundaries by moving
out to the outskirts of Raleigh, drove
many disillusioned souls to counter
act the oppression that resulted from
the overly zealous moral authority
of the time. As new forms of cen
sorship sought to control and inhibit
human behavior in the United States
during the aftermath of World War I,
self-exiled artists such as Scott and
Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Heming
way and Isadora Duncan, dubbed
“the Lost Generation” by fellow
refugee Gertrude Stein, migrated
toward the effervescent cultural cli
mate of Paris in' search for personal
freedom.
Others chose to remain behind
and transform major cities in Amer
ica by wielding their determined
resistance to create such cultural ex
plosions as the Harlem Renaissance
in New York, and the jazz and blues
scenes in Chicago and New Orleans.
A more sinister backlash of the time
was connected with the passage of
the Volstead Act in 1920 that insti
gated Prohibition, giving birth to the
era of organized crime in the mod
em world. However, as individuals
possessed with such fervent passion
and determination fueled a sense of
rebellion in the arts, fashion, and so
ciety that added to the paradoxical
nature of the decade, many young
Americans on college campuses
still existed in a puritanical vacuum
lodged in a parallel world that strug
gled to keep such impure, impetu
ous, and impious tendencies safely
guarded within the carefully con
structed ivory watchtower that had
survived the nineteenth century.
In 1953, when members of the
student body at Meredith College
were sufficiently disgruntled about
unwelcome restrictions imposed on
their “new age” of social progres
siveness to openly complain, the
school paper, The Twig, ran a well-
intentioned reality check, based on
the college’s 1924-25 school hand
book that was written in the heart of
the Jazz Age. Although by the mid-
I920’s, many of these rules had been
somewhat modified since the first
decade of the new century in a ges
ture to remain somewhat relevant to
See LOOKING, PAGE 8
Photo courtesy UanOHh Archives
Meredith College dorm in the early 1900s