My Time at United Ways of California 

by Ro Gil (they/them), Policy Intern & First-Year Master Student at UC Berkeley

"I believe that the future towards ending child poverty is within policy advocacy focused on the voices of the people living and impacted by poverty."

^{Ro Gil (right) at the #UpsetTheSetup rally on June 21st, 2022 with Dr. Dawnté Early (left) President and CEO of United Way California Capital Region}

I want to start by sharing a little bit about myself. In 1984, my family migrated to the U.S., fleeing a civil war in El Salvador. As an immigrant family living in Compton, California, we faced the usual perils and obstacles that came with uprooting our lives, including language and cultural barriers and the inability to access resources. As the sole provider and the only one with legal status to work, my father carried the weight of the world to provide for us. Due to our immigration status, my family did not qualify for many resources, and the fear of deportation prevented us from accessing those available. Extreme poverty brought about isolation, parental substance abuse, and domestic violence throughout my childhood.

My personal experience with childhood poverty and its effects has fueled my passion for wanting to make a difference in the world of anti-poverty. Research shows that childhood poverty can almost guarantee childhood trauma and comes with life-long adverse effects; data also demonstrate that children living in impoverished communities are more susceptible to becoming victims or witnesses of violence and parental abuse or neglect.¹ Furthermore, living in poverty and unhealthy surroundings can overwhelm a child's stress response system, resulting in "toxic stress." Various studies have connected toxic stress with alterations in a child's brain architecture, raising the likelihood of physical, behavioral, socio-emotional, and cognitive problems.²

As a first-year master student at the Berkeley Master of Social Welfare (MSW) Program, University of California Berkeley I was very excited to kick off my graduate program experience with an agency like United Ways of California (UWCA) with such high regard for its policy advocacy work around financial stability. Throughout this placement, I collaborated with other passionate people within the CalEITC Coalition. People like Monica Lazo from Golden State Opportunity, a Salvi (a term used to describe Salvadorean roots) who is a kick a.. policy advocate from a similar background as me. Or Yesenia Jimenez, a policy advocate from End Child Poverty California, who took me under her wing while at the capitol lobbying. These two advocates were influential in my experience because they too came from communities impacted by poverty, and within them, I see someone who looks like me doing the work I aspire to do.

The California State Legislature comprises two houses: the Senate and the Assembly. There are 40 Senators and 80 Assembly Members representing the people of the State of California. During a two-year legislative session, each house will hear a bill in its designated committees. The bills sponsored by the CalEITC Coalition AB 1515 (Santiago), AB 2589 (Santiago), and SB 860 (Rubio) were heard by the Revenue & Tax, Appropriations, and Governance and Finance committees, as well as budget issues via Budget Subcommittees. My biggest takeaway from the California legislative process is that there are opportunities at every step along the way to gain support for your bill. Using tools such as social media, public comment, letters of support, rallies, and one on one meetings with legislators, our coalition ensured that the importance of the bills was at the forefront of the legislators' minds.

I believe that the future towards ending child poverty is within policy advocacy focused on the voices of the people living and impacted by poverty. I think that lived experience is one of the most critical assets an advocate can use. Unfortunately, we operate under a system where lived experience is not easily quantified. It was powerful to see partner agencies and UWCA elevate the voices of the impacted community by providing them with a platform at a rally on June 21st at the California Capitol in support of the Select Committee on Poverty and Economic Inclusion. The future toward ending child poverty should also include representation in all areas. Our vote matters, and by continuing to elect officials who carry their own lived experiences with poverty, we can guarantee more focus on the cause. Additionally, the representation will inspire others with similar backgrounds to seek leadership positions and inspire real change.

^{Ro Gil (right) with Michael Tubbs (left) founder of EPIC (End Poverty in California) and Former Stockton Mayor and Special Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom}

And now, I walk away from my first year of graduate school and UWCA with more knowledge about the legislative process, focus on where I wish to continue my career, and life-long connections. I want to thank Anna Hasselblad (Public Policy Director) for her patience, time, and vast knowledge throughout my journey. Jazmine Munoz (Public Policy Associate) and Jose Vargas (Public Policy Manager), for your support and guidance. Nalleli Sandoval (Senior Director of Programs) for keeping me grounded through a social work perspective. And all UWCA for making me feel welcomed and accepted from day one.

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<sup>1. Trauma and Poverty Effects on Children - Cliffside Malibu
2. The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress</sup>

We produce the Struggling to Move Up: The Real Cost Measure in order to enable communities to set a universal goal^* for all families – to afford a decent standard of living, to live with dignity and agency – and to see which families struggle, in which communities, so that we, our partners and policymakers can develop strategies targeted to their specific circumstances.
 
Once we have a clearer picture of which families struggle, the next question is what we can do to help them. How can communities put insights from the Real Cost Measure into action?
 
Our new brief, Building Economic Inclusion: Putting the Real Cost Measure into Action builds upon the Real Cost Measure by offering suggestions of areas we could  address individually and together to help improve the well-being of families below the Real Cost Measure.

At United Way, we believe everyone deserves an opportunity to achieve the building blocks of a good life - a quality education, financial stability, and good health – and we believe that expanding this opportunity is both a core objective and a key strategy to fulfilling our mission.  
 
Unfortunately, for far too many California families – over one in three households in California, representing 3.5 million families – even a modest level of security remains elusive.  These struggling families reflect the diversity of California; they come from every household composition, represent every racial and ethnic group, and they overwhelmingly already are working. More information on this and other results from Struggling to Move Up, our Real Cost Measure study, including an executive summary, interactive maps, dashboards, regional profiles and more are available here.

We produce the Real Cost Measure in order enable communities to set a universal goal for all families – to afford a decent standard of living, to live with dignity and agency – and to see which families struggle, in which communities, so that we, our partners and policymakers can develop strategies targeted to their specific circumstances.

So what can communities do to help these families? Philanthropy is a very important way to help our neighbors and improve our communities - volunteering, funding and providing charitable services to struggling families is one obvious way communities can help - but the highest impact we can create is to change the environment for families to increase the odds they can succeed.

With every release of our Real Cost Measure, from 2015 to the present, we have provided examples of possible options to change the odds at large scale, and now we’ve added more detail and pulled those suggestions into a companion document, Building Economic Inclusion, available here. We hope this document will assist community groups in making strategic decisions about how to help families move up. Building Economic Inclusion discusses the following major categories:

• Preserve and expand subsidized health coverage
• Provide childcare and preschool for struggling families
• Maximize current income supports such as the earned income tax credit (EITC) and CalFresh
• Help adults level up their education
• Smooth the decline of income supports
• Help families build assets and protect them from payday loans and other predatory financial services
• Integrate and naturalize immigrants
• Increase housing stock and prioritize support for renters
• Make work pay
• Adapt to the changing nature of work

^*Setting a universal goal for families of all types, no matter their starting point, a "targeted universalism" approach, is essential to advancing equity and dismantling systemic racial injustice. For more on targeted universalism, an approach pioneered by jon a. powell, founder and director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, see https://belonging.berkeley.edu/targeted-universalism.

We all at UWCA were heartbroken and devastated by the March 16 mass shooting incident involving the murder of 8 people in Atlanta, 6 of whom were women of Asian descent, and shocked again on Monday to see a 65-year-old woman of Asian descent knocked down, kicked and stomped as she walked to church, in an incident caught on video. We acknowledge these attacks and other acts of hate targeted at Asian communities has created an environment forcing many to feel unsafe in their own homes and fearful for lives of their friends and family. 

Sadly, violence and hate directed against Asian Americans have deep roots in in our history, from racist discrimination in the late 1800s under color of law in states like California and at the federal level under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the unconstitutional internment and dispossession of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast during World War II, to violent attacks such as mob violence against Filipino workers in Watsonville in 1930, the tragic murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, and more. This history makes the frequency with which we saw mentions of a “China-Virus” or “Kung Flu” from elected representatives and media personalities even more triggering for our communities, and those speakers more responsible.

This past week, Governor Newsome signed four new executive orders that will:

• Wage Garnishment & Student Loan Protections: Exempt garnishment for any individuals receiving federal, state or local government financial assistance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes recovery rebates under the CARES Act. Funds may still be garnished for child support, family support, spousal support or criminal restitution for victims. The Governor also announced a new initiative for students with commercially owned Federal Family Education Loan or privately held student loans who are struggling to make payments due to the COVID-19 pandemic which now may also be eligible for expanded relief. Relief options include providing a minimum of 90 days forbearance, waiving late payment fees, ensuring that no borrower is subject to negative credit reporting, and helping eligible borrowers enroll in other assistance programs.The text of the Governor’s executive order can be found here and a copy can be found here.
• School Transparency: Empower schools to focus on responding to COVID-19 and to provide transparency to their communities.The order extends the deadlines for local educational agencies to submit Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAP), which are multi-year planning documents tied to budget projections. By law, LCAPs must be developed in collaboration with parents, students, teachers, and community groups. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, school leaders are appropriately focused on managing the immediate needs of their students and families.

This past week Govenror Newsom signed 6 new executive, ranging from juvenile justice to the establishment of a new task force on economic recovery.  

• Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery: Bringing together leaders across California’s diverse, innovative economic and social sectors to chart a path forward on recovery in the wake of COVID-19, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the formation of a state Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. The Task Force will be co-chaired by Governor Newsom’s Chief of Staff Ann O’Leary and philanthropist, environmentalist and businessman Tom Steyer, who was also appointed Chief Advisor to the Governor on Business and Jobs Recovery. He will receive no compensation for his service.

• Members of the Task Force include Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Senate Minority Leader Shannon Grove, Assembly Minority Leader Marie Waldron, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Walt Disney Company Executive Chairman Bob Iger, former head of the Small Business Administration Aida Álvarez and dozens of prominent leaders in business, labor, health care, academia and philanthropy.