June 1, 2023 • 37 mins
In 2018, Aisha Nyandoro, the Founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, created the Magnolia Mother’s Trust – a new initiative that provides low-income, Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi $1,000 cash on a monthly basis for one year straight, no strings attached. Now, it's the country’s longest-running guaranteed income program, and the only one in the world to focus on Black women.
Aisha executes this work with whole hearted optimism, a sense of humor and so much humanity. I hope it’s contagious, and inspiring, and if nothing else, it helps open a conversation within yourself about our own privilege and how we determine deservedness.
In this episode, you will hear about Aisha’s work on shifting gendered and racialized narratives around poverty and deservedness, and how the success of Magnolio Mother’s Trust can be scaled nationally through Federal policies.
You can learn more about Aisha and Springboard to Opportunities from their website:
Connect with Springboard to Opportunities on Instagram @springboard_to
Cashing our Trillions is Hosted and Produced by Common Solutions Media and Yvonne So. You can connect with me on Instagram @yso_mom, LinkedIn @yvonnecot, or e-mail me at cashingourtrillions@gmail.com
Sound Engineering by Tiezheng Shen. You can reach him at dacapopresents@gmail.com
Cover artwork graphic design by Jessie Li. You can reach her at jessieli.pers@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hi, their family. Welcome back to Cashing our Trillions. I'm
your host, Yvon So I'm a full time Saint home
mom of three boys, and this podcast is a space
to value the trillion dollar economy of unpaid labor shouldered
by moms. This episode is so special. The work of
(00:40):
nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities is incredibly life changing, so getting
the opportunity to speak to founding CEO Aisha Yandaro was
the icing on the cake for me. She executes this
work with wholehearted optimism, a sense of humor, and so
much humanity. I hope it's contagious and inspiring and if
(01:06):
nothing else, it helps open a conversation within yourself about
our own privilege and how we determine deservedness. In twenty eighteen,
Aishould created the Magnolia Mother's Trust, a new initiative that
provided low income black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi, one thousand
(01:28):
dollars cash on a monthly basis, no strings attached, and
for twelve months straight. Now it's the country's longest running
guaranteed income program and the only one in the world
to focus on black women. Isha's expertise on economic, racial
(01:50):
and gender justice issues. Is regularly featured in outlets including
The Washington Post, an Unpoorn Company, s and Magazine, NBC
Nightly News, and CNN. She is a tedech speaker and
a fellow of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership
Network and ascend at the Aspen Institute. She holds a
(02:13):
BA from Tennessee State University and an M and PhD
from Michigan State University. She lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with
her husband and two very charming sons, who we will
speak about during our conversation. In this episode, you'll hear
about Aisha's work on shifting gendered and racialized narratives around
(02:34):
poverty and deservedness, and how the success of Magnolia Mother's
Trusts can be scaled nationally through federal policies. Eisha, I'm
so honored to have you here today to speak about
the impactful work that you do in your community. Can
we start by getting to know you personally a little bit.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, your life as
(02:57):
a mom of your two boys, and your work as
an aim and type poverty advocate.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Thank you so much, Eva, and thank you for having me,
and thank you for starting the conversation with asking me
about centering myself and my role as a mom. So
I am Aisha Yandoro. I am in Jackson, Mississippi. I'm
homegrown goodness. I'm from Mississippi, from Jackson, and I have
been back home doing the work of working in community
(03:22):
and I'm helping to bring about necessary change for about
the last fourteen years and keeping me grounded in this
work because you do have to stay grounded. It's my
loving husband, Joseph, who really hangs out in the background
and allows me to do my thing. My husband's an engineer,
so I tell people all the time that we know
(03:42):
just enough about what each other does to justify being married.
He's a structural engineer. I know he helps the building stand.
He knows I have community stand, so it works out.
And then I have two little boys. I have a
twelve year old and I have a four year old.
My twelve year old is working towards being pro golfer
as he wants to be a golfer, and my four
(04:03):
year old is the life of a party in any
room he goes into.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That's amazing. I have three boys myself, so I have ten, ten,
eight and four so I have I think we both
we both had twenty eighteen babies.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Those twenty eighteen babies are so magical and they're right
up there before the cuff of you know whatever, when
the whirl fell.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Apart for those few years.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And so it's so interesting now because my four year old,
when I compare him to my twelve year o, I'm like, Okay,
there's some things that my oldest was doing at four
that my youngest is not doing the Like I wonder
how much of that is COVID and the fact that
he was at.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Home with me for eight months. Yes, but yeah, my
four year old can run his zone meeting. And I'm
you know, that's right.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
He's so good virtually, but in person then he's like
hiding behind.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Me, you're the same, right, I'm like, you know, go
make cereal. He's like, I can't get my own cereal.
Of only four. I'm like, but I just saw you
run a whole meeting. What do you mean you can't
make your own cereal?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
So I really cannot wait until they're older so we
can really begin to understand what that two years actually meant.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, that's true. But at the same time, I feel
like they're super resilient too. In the beginning, he was
very precarious about getting it back into the real world,
but now he's definitely acclimated. I thought it'd be hard
to get him into preschool, but you know, he's ready
to leave the nest real talk. So let's talk about
(05:33):
your family history. You have deep roots to the Mississippi.
I watch your Ted talk and it was it was
so riveting, and in addition to your powerful and persuasive
message of investing in society's most vulnerable, my takeaway was
just how dedicated and committed generations of your family is
(05:55):
to Mississippi. I mean, starting with your granny, doctor Elsie Dorsey.
Because you all left to pursue higher education outside of Mississippi.
What brings you all back? Though?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I was really taught that you grow where you're planted,
and I was planted in Mississippi, and so I did
what I was taught to do. You go off, you
get the education, but when it's time to go about
the work that's necessary, you come home to do that work.
And I am very fortunate that that what's the narrative,
(06:27):
and that's been the reality in the arc of my life.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
And I also am very fortunate that I get to.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Do work that I am deeply committed to and deeply
in love with in the community that I love, and
then also have it to feed into my life in
a way that I never anticipated, and in a way
that my life is so well rounded and beautiful and
just my entire family gets to flourish here. And I
(06:53):
think it's such an interesting jaxtaposition to how we think
about Mississippi and the narrative that people often around Mississippi.
And you know, I always invite people to come to
my Mississippi because my Mississippi is beautiful. I have a
love love relationship with this place. There are some warts
and there are wards in every community. The reality is
(07:15):
that our awards are just a little more visible for
the world to see, and so people have fun actually
talking about and picking out our awards. But every community
has those. And so yeah, I've been like I've been
back home now about fourteen years, and it has been
It's a beautiful time doing the work that I love
and raising my boys here with my parents and you know,
(07:35):
great grandparents really close by.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
In those pieces, So.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Did you always envision yourself coming back to Mississippi then
about it.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, you know I did, but I don't if I'm
being totally honesty, but I don't think I pictured myself
coming back to Mississippi as early as I did. I
was maybe twenty seven twenty eight or so when I
moved back here, and I never, in my wildest dreams
thought I would be back here that early. I can
believe IM about to say this on my podcast, But anyway,
is that.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
How young and that Eva was?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, I had a whole vision of my life after
graduate school, as I went directly from undergrad to graduate school.
So I was like, you know, I'm sick of being responsible.
I am going to move to d C. I'm gonna
live in Adams Morgan with who I couldn't afford thee
and I don't even know if I could afford it.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I'm gonna get a purse dog and I'm gonna live
my best life.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I had a whole plan down to the first dog.
The first dog, I love it. I can kind of
relate to that because I had like this whole like
East Coast city girl thing in my mind too. I
went to school in d C. And then I met
(08:45):
my husband too quite early as well, and we ended
up just going all across America. So I know what
you talk about when you say like people. I mean,
I've lived in El Paso, I live in Tucson right now,
all considered like armpits of America.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So I hate that to analogy so much. It's horrible.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I know, unless you live there and you like kind
of thrive in the community, you don't. People don't really
get the full right.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yes, that's true.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I got that. So maybe let's talk about one of
your keystone programs at Springboard to Opportunities. It's the Magnolia
Mother's Trust. In your own words, can you please describe
this program to listeners and just walk us through how
you came up with this idea in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yeah, So the Magnillia Mother's Trust is my fourth baby.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
So I have my actual physical first baby, who is
Tandecai who's twelve. Have Springboards Opportunities, which I'm the founding
CEO of which we started. It'll be ten years ago
next year. That's my second baby. And then I started
really dreaming about what it would look like to give
like other's money in twenty and seventeen, and that all
(10:04):
came to fruition in twenty and eighteen with the Magnolia
Mother's Trust, and at the time I was actually physically
pregnant with my fourth baby. The Magnolia Mother's Trust is
the first guaranteed income project in this country to really
take a racial and gender approach to talking about income
inequity and really talking about how the systems has felled
(10:26):
the subset of our population. We provide one thousand dollars
attached for twelve months to black mothers that live in
federally subsidized affordable housing in Jackson, Mississippi. By providing twelve
thousand dollars annually, we are in essence, doubling the income
of the women that we work with. Because exactly, let
me break that, Let me break that down. We tell
(10:47):
ourselves this narrative that individuals who are poor choose to
be poor. And we tell ourselves that narrative because that
then absolves us of our guilt, and it absolves us
of actually being responsible for our neighbors and responsible for
the collective community. And so we say, oh, well, people
are poor because they want to natas should work harder. No,
people are poor because our systems have actually failed individuals.
(11:09):
Our federal minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty thousands
an hour. So what that means is that you can
work full time, which a lot of our women do,
and you still are only making about twelve thousand dollars annually.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
This is such an important point to drive home. Poverty
stems from structural barriers. There's a whole web of interrelated
systems and structures that drive disparities and access to education, childcare, healthcare,
high quality jobs, and affordable housing near work. And as
(11:42):
I should just mentioned, even if you work full time
at a federal minimum wage job, as many moms of
the Magnolia Mothers trust you, you're subsisting on twelve thousand
dollars per year, which I should points out doesn't give
you much bandwidth to dream of about our future or
come close to building generational wealth.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So the Magnolium Others trust is in essence, doubling your income.
And we also provide by twenty nine account and we
see those accounts with one thousand dollars for every kid
of a mother that we work with, because it is
about providing income stability in this moment for our moms
so that they have the bandwidth to dream about the future.
We'll also think about whatever the needs they have for
(12:25):
themselves immediately, but we're also investing in the future of
their kids and really talking about how do we build
wealth by investing in five twenty nine accounts. We started
this work in twenty eighteen. I remember when we first
started talking about it, people looking at me like, you're
going to do what you can't do that. You know,
in this country we do not operate in the space
(12:47):
of radical imagination.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
It's ridiculous. I'm like, yeah, you know, tap into your
imaginations more.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
But it's not even that radical of an imagination. Right
for somebody who's only making twelve thousand dollars a year,
what do you think they need most rights not? It's
not like a dream.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Or But I'm gonna push back on that because what
it is is who we believe is entitled to dream
and who we believe is entitled to not have to
worry about every day how they're going to pay their bills.
So you're right, it's not their radical But what is
You know, in this country, we have we have so
(13:23):
long attached ourselves to ideas of deservedness that we have
told ourselves that there's an entire subset who, like I said,
it's poor just because they choose to be poor. And
we've attached ourselves to those narratives, and I always want
to make sure that I give credit to the women,
because it's not as if I was a sitting around
saying like, oh, let me figure out how to give
y'all money.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Because I.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Was not.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You know, I eventually got there, but it was really What.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Happened in twenty seventeen is that as an organization with Springboard,
we have been providing all of these programs and services
for families that live in affordable housing, and we were
seeing that we were not moving the needle on poverty.
Whenever we have a question about something that's happening in
our community, we go to the residents and say, Okay,
what is it that we're missing, And in twenty seventeen,
(14:13):
we did just that. We said, Okay, we know that
we're providing all of these programs and services that you
and your family are participating in, but we're not seeing
people move out of affordable housing. We're not seeing you
move into home ownership or market rate housing. And that
was important because so many of our families indicated that
those were the goals that they had for themselves and
their families. That's what they wanted, and we were saying, Okay,
(14:35):
why isn't this actually happening. Every answer that we heard
was something that could be fixed with cash. They weren't
saying that, oh, we need another program. It was stories
after stories after stories, and when we sat down and listened,
I was like, Okay, every story that we're hearing is
a story that can be fixed if people just had money.
(14:55):
And so, since I'm a researcher by training, we began
to dig deeper into Okay, what is what's happening here?
And we began to look at our social safety net,
and particularly here in Mississippi and the way our cash
structure has worked on its designed within our welfare system,
is virtually impossible in Mississippi to get welfare or to
(15:15):
get temporary assistance for needy families, which is the cash
assistance that you and your family should be receiving. We
began to really look at, okay, the wealth gap or
the income gap as it relates to black women and
white women in this state, and it was this peace
after piece after piece, It's like, Okay, there are all
of these systematic barriers that exist that we have to address.
But while we are addressing those systematic barriers, how do
(15:39):
we really just provide our families with what it is
that they need right now, which is money. And so
that's when I started saying, okay, now, how do I
get Black women particularly money? And this is in twenty seventeen,
and I sat down with a round table of mothers
and I said, Okay, I don't know what this is.
I don't even know if we can do this, but
just come and dream with me about the possibility.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And they did.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
We had about six months of conversations that's really thinking
about what this could look like.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And then I went on maternity leave and had the baby.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's it's like it goes back and forth between the
thirty four thing like which came first, the chicken on
the egg. While I was maternity, I went through all
of the notes and that's where Magnolia Mother's Trust really
came from. That's when we really were like, Okay, it'll
be twelve months, it'd be one thousand dollars a month.
All of those pieces began to come into play, and
so in twenty eighteen, we lunch with twenty black mothers.
(16:31):
We have now supported over three hundred and twenty women.
We have opened over two hundred five twenty nine accounts
and seated those accounts with a thousand dollars. We have
not only impacted the lives of the women that we
work with, but we really have been changing the way
that we talk about poverty in this country and how
we talk about the need for cash and how we
really talk about centering that agency and dignity of individuals.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I love it. I love it because it's you know,
in this four years, you've done so much to move
the needle, and you spoke about, you know, the structural challenges.
Nothing has changed at the legislative level. Like, if anything,
we've probably gone back. We've been stripped of more rights.
And like it's not like anything's changed, you know, for
(17:15):
Family Leave Act or welfare or reform or anything like that.
But you just coming up with this idea to put
cash in women's hands. Like, look, now you're up to
three hundred families that you've helped and transform their lives.
I think it's it's an amazing story you're listening to
cashing our trillions. I think I also read on the
(17:37):
website that you said, like, oh, in twenty eighteen, I
had two babies, right, Magnolia Mothers Trust is one of them.
I'm sure just the juxtaposition of you going through your
pregnancy and motherhood and being able to provide for all
your baby's needs, contrasted against the path that these mothers
are on that who also live in your community, just
(17:57):
probably gave you a more a sound sounds like it
also gave you more of a sense of urgency to
get this started and then execute on it.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
You know, you know, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I don't know if I've ever thought about it in
relation to that part, but I will say this that
when you know, I said earlier that when we really
went out and had those conversations and we were listening,
it was a conversation with one of our moms who
had gone through a traumatic birthing experience. I remember I
was pregnant and she was having this conversation about her
pregnancy experience and it was a traumatic story, but she
(18:28):
was just telling the story, is if it was this
very matter.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Of fact, and she talked about how she.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Had went into the hospital and she ended up needing
to have an emergency cesarean section, and while she before
they prepped her for the cesarean section, the nurse asked
her if she wanted staples or stitches, and that she
advised that she gets staples because that was less expensive.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
And I was like, what, but.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You know, it's all of these it's all of these
pieces when you don't have insurance and you depended Medicaid,
so your you know, health care decisions are determined by
how much you can actually pay.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And she talked about how she felt like a bad
parent in that moment.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Their society makes you feel like a bad parent when
you've done nothing wrong. You had this traumatic experience and
it was all because you didn't have five hundred and
seventy dollars A footnote of your life should not be
trauma because of financial inabilities.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And we see that time.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And time again, or that you even had that conversation,
But that story really hits hits me because I had
an emergency C section two me too.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
And nobody and nobody asked me that you want or stenches.
I didn't even know. I didn't even know it was
an option. That's the one when she.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Said, I was like, what exactly I had to research,
and I was like, oh, they asked her that, because
staples are less expensive, your recovery time is greater in
all of those pieces. But yet with my first son,
I had any emergencies to sarian section. No, they just
did it.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
No one came to me.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And it made me, you know, make decisions about my chat,
my healthcare and all of that in a moment. So
you're right, the options that are provided to you, even
in some of your darkest moments, shift depending on your
financial abilities.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
In that moment, it's it's scary because you're thinking about
losing your baby or potentially losing your life. Like literally,
I didn't have much of a decision, Like they're like,
you're going in for emergency. We're going to cut you
open and and that's it. And so could you imagine
then having a discussion, oh, stables or stitches right, It's like, no, exactly,
(20:36):
get the baby out. We can talk about all that afterwards, right,
Oh my goodness. Maybe also speak about like the qualitative
aspects of this cash infusion on moms, like how does
this cash transform them personally and affect the way that
they show up as mothers?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
You know?
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yeah, I like to talk about it the joyous currency,
and that's what we see so many of our mother
so the first time is actually have joy and they're
able to dream about the future because they're just not
so focused on today because they know.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Today is taken care of.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
And that has been the most beautiful part of this
work for me quite personally, to see moms that I
know are just out there slaying as parents actually recognize
that they're a good parent for the first time and
actually see themselves as a good parent because they can
say yes to some of the things that their kids want,
not just the things that their kids need. How they
(21:28):
actually have the breathing room to actually think expansiveness and
not just work and operate in the space of scarcity.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
All of that has just been beautiful.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
When I talk about the work, I always make sure
that I say, Okay, we have to change the narrative
on poverty by changing the narrator. And that's where we
really do work to make sure that the women that
we work with and support and get the beauty of
working alongside that they are empowered to share whatever pieces
of their narrative that they want to share because it's theirs.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
So here's just one story pulled from spring Board to
Opportunities storytelling series. As the website states, these are human stories.
Too often the stories of low income women are mediated
through the perspective and assumptions of those writing articles or
our ads. Springboard to Opportunities goal is to let women
tell their stories in their own words. Here's Tamika.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
I'm Tamika Calm and I'm from Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I have five children.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
When I first received the first check, I wasn't working.
Then I had this when I had just lost my job.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I was able.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
To buy things that my children needed, and then their
birthdays had fallen around that time. I was able to
get them something that they wanted instead of, you know,
just kind of getting them what I felt like they
would be happy with. So it was able to provide
that for us, like I've never been able to.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Cause's five of.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Them, and they sometimes they want things that I know
I can't afford to give them. So that's what else
it provided for me. And I was able to pay
my bills, so that was helpful. To have no strings
felt like a blessing. There's always some kind of stipulation,
(23:21):
like you have to do X y Z in order
to receive it and you have to spend it on ABC,
So that was a blessing.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
More programs should do that.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
I guess they think people are gonna take advantage of it,
and they want to have more control over If they're
the ones providing this to you, they want to have
control over what you do with it. So I know
I speak for a lot of people. We appreciate the
being able to spend.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
It on whatever we want at this point in juncture,
in twenty twenty two, after all that we all have
collectively been through. If you still don't understand how poverty
works within this country, and you still don't understand that
race and gender and geography and all of those pieces
actually do play a significant role or in the haves
(24:16):
and the have.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Nots, that you are just being woefully ignorant at this point.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I think that's what you're asking people to do. Look
at yourself in this right, that's right. Try to put
yourself in these shoes and feel the humanity of being
in this situation. And what would help you.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Not even put yourself in those shoes? Look at your life,
put this up in your.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Own shoes, and have an honest conversation and reflection about
the beautiful life that you have and all of the
supports and systems and policies that have helped you get
that beautiful life.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
So yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
How do you uplift other people and help them?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And even if you don't want to uplift other people,
how do you just not be a barrier.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
To help people?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
The helping may be too far for you to go, Well,
that'll be a barrier.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Just get out the way structurally and emotionally.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I know.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Oh my god. You know that's a conversation over wine.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So and I think you talked a little bit about
it before, but you're halfway through your fourth cohort, right,
so maybe talk about how your project has just exponentially
grown because you started with twenty women and now you
have a couple hundred.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I think that there are so many different layers and
ways in which this project is exponentially grown. So we
started with twenty women, and people always ask me like,
oh my goodness, why at you start with twenty women?
And I always laugh because I'm like, oh my goodness,
stop playing. Let's just be honest about thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'm twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, when we started this work, we really were like said,
we were talking about giving black women in extreme poverty
money without strings to do whatever you want to with it.
We trust you don't have to report back in all
those things, and individuals were like, you cannot do that.
Time and time again we heard that. But not only that.
You know, I am also situated in the South, and
(26:11):
less than one percent of private philanthropy comes to the South,
and of that less than one percent, I am a
black woman running an organization in the South. Less than
one percent of that one percent goes to black women.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
A twenty twenty research report released by Echoing Green and
the Bridge Span Group shows that race remains a defining
factor when looking at which organizations get funded and how
much they receive. People of color, the leaders who intimately
understand the experiences and unique challenges of the communities they serve,
(26:46):
are time and time again underfunded as a proportion of
their population. So Aisha's story of a herculean task to
overcome these funding barriers is sadly more the norm than anxiety.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
This was a difficult task, even raising the money to
get to where we are, and I remember the first
year of the Magnolia mother's trust. Every time I could
go to a conference, take a meeting, whatever I could do,
I was there. My now four year old was a baby.
Really was not even enough to believe that I had
to do was a proof of concept. Once we actually
(27:21):
do prove that you can give people money and that
they will go about the business of taking care of
themselves and their families, that individuals would just release the
capital and it would be great. I know, I was naive,
you know, it was I was like, oh my god,
you know, I think the money's gonna right now.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I'm like, man I from heaven.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
It did not, because that first year I was constantly
having to push back on the narrative of how black
mothers in this country are viewed. And I was constantly
having to make people try to see the humanity and
the population that I work with. And that was very
hard from an emotional standpoint.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Well, because it's personal for you, because.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
So yeah, exactly, because yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It's like you can't feel that that's not how people
look at you.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah, all of.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
The things, all the respectability politics aside, so yeah, all
of that, so I don't So that was a lot,
and that would be very honest, had it not been
from COVID, I don't know if we would have the success.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
That we had. COVID happened in twenty twenty, and we all.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Were forced to have empathy collectively as a country. Oh crap,
poverty or income instability is not just something that happens
to those people. It happens to me too.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And then you're right, because the pandemic came on, there
were so many government assistant programs at that time to
help families kind of get through that financial hardship that
people are a little bit more open to helping their neighbors.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
That's exactly right. The stimulus checks, tax credit, all.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Of that are cash based policy exactly that the federal
government implemented without streams, you know. So it's not as
if anyone had to go report how they used their
stimulus checks or how they use their child tax credit dollars.
So I think the federal government really has demonstrated that
number one, we know how to do it, and number two,
we can't afford it. So as individuals continue to push
(29:15):
back on this idea, le Okay, oh we really can't
afford to do that, we actually can. We spend billions
of dollars on poverty alleviation in this country annually, and
we have not alleviated anything but what we did see
last year, and that in the six months that the
child tax credit, where the majority of families within this
country received a check based on the number of kids
(29:36):
that they had within their house, we cut child poverty
in half in six months. Why did we not make
impermit it?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Study after study backs up ice statistic. One of the
reasons these monthly payments had such a significant impact on
child poverty is because the expansion closed a large hole
in the child tax credit. It's a bit counterintuitive. Before
a two parent, two child household needed to earn at
(30:04):
least thirty six thousand dollars a year to qualify for
the full benefits, so essentially the children who needed the
most help got the least. Besides the precipitous drop in
child poverty, their long term qualitative benefits to making the
pandemic child tax credits permanent. In March of this year,
(30:25):
the Brooking Institute published a research report delving into the
anti poverty effects of expanded child tax Credit. Their research
shows that child poverty fell immediately and substantially when families
have income stability and can meet their basic needs, children
(30:46):
flourish for life. Specifically, cash and near cash assistance programs
have been shown to promote stronger educational, emotional, and health
outcomes in children that follow them through life. According to
the Tax Policy Center, to make the pandemic era child
(31:08):
text credits permanent would cost just a little over two
hundred and twenty five billion dollars. That's a high price tag, yes,
but given women and mom standing as one point five
trillion dollar creditors to our nation, it's something we could
afford if we cashed are trillions. I should continues by
speaking exactly to these long reaching and long term benefits
(31:32):
of cash assistance.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
To people money without restrictions.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
I don't have any set outcomes of what I expect
people to do with the money.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
But what I will say is that I know that
twenty years from now.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
There will be some baby graduating and given a valid
Victorian speech at their college, their medical school, their law school,
or whatever, and they are going to mention this program
their mom got. They're going to be like, I don't
know the name of it, I don't know any of that,
but I know for a year my mom got one
thousand dollars every month, and how that changed my family's life.
(32:07):
And I know it's going to happen because I've seen
it happen in my life. Like you know, you started
with talking about my granny, doctor ls Dorsey. My granny
got pregnant with my mom when she was seventeen and
she had to drop out of high school because that's
what you did in the Mississippi Delta.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Well, fast forward with.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Some program somewhere that allowed her to get college credit
for life experiences. And then it was some program somewhere
that allowed her to take that and do a dual
bachelor's and master's program at Sunny College in New York.
And how that changed the trajectory of our family.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And so I don't know what the question was.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Some kid that I was going to say, because that
back kid too is going to be at that school
paying their tuition from that five twenty nine. I love
it that part, I feel like because that's like that
really gets to the core of investing in moms. And
(33:11):
you invest in moms, you invest in the future, and
putting that money in that five twenty nine just really
ensures the kids that the next generation are going to
be taken care of and have a future.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
No, thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And let me almost a plug about five twenty nine
because people are always like, oh, it's only a thousand
dollars house.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Dollars today, but you have eighteen years to grow it.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
But not only that. I'm like, you know, it's so
much privilege.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
When you say only in front of a thousand dollars,
I'm like, oh my god, this show just show me
your privilege without showing me your privilege. Also, there's data
that shows that for kids from low income communities that
if they have as little as five hundred dollars in
a five twenty nine account, there are four times more
likely to go to college and to be successful. It's
not about the amount of money, it's the fact that
(33:57):
someone actually invested in their future, even them enough.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
That the account is open. That's something that if they
get a job, a side job, they could put money
into it. Because the account is there, there's more likelihood
they try to fund that account no matter how much.
And it's time value of money. It's like because they
have eighteen years to grow it. So yeah, that's that's
one of me. That's one of my favorite parts of
them program. And I really get this from talking to
(34:24):
you too, and I've picked it up from watching your
ted talk. You talk about being blessed with your grinding
sense of optimism. How does that and I definitely got
it this entire time we're talking. How does this optimism
like drive your work and your mission and maybe paint
us a picture of your most optimistic vision of Magnolia
(34:45):
Mothers Trust.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Oh gosh, so optimism fews my work. And so that's
what optimism does for me is the north star. My
vision for Magnolium Distrust is that Magnolium Distrust doesn't have
to exist.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I won't permanency.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
When we started Magnolia Mother's Trust, it was not to
operate this program in perpetuity.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
That would be a failure for me. It really, yeah,
it really was.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
How do we go about changing Number one, how we
talk about poverty as it realates specifically to black mothers
in this country, and how do we change our system
so that our systems are actually giving families to financial
resources that they need to be successful. I feel like
we have done those pieces that we needed to do,
and so now it is time for the federal government
(35:33):
to step in and provide permanency for this work.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
We need structural change.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
We do because it's not just about the three hundred
and twenty mothers that we have supported.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
It's about the millions of families that will benefit from America.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Exactly, that will benefit from a guaranteed income. That's exactly right.
That will be a win. And I will retire and
go sit with Oprah under her tree.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I should for president, and I want to be retired.
Speaking of which shall how will you cash your trillions?
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I will use my I will use my trillions.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I would invest it so that my trillion stay trillions,
and I will provide a guaranteed income for every individual
in this country that needs it.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I wouldn't expect any different OVID answer.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And then I will retire myself.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
This episode was produced by Me and sound edited by Shen.
Cashing our Trillions is part of the Seneca Women's Podcast
Network and iHeartRadio. If you have a story to share,
please email us at Cashing our Trillions at gmail dot com.
Make sure you subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you
(37:00):
liked what you heard Please take a moment to rate
and review it. It would really mean so much to me.
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I
Hi, their family. Welcome back to Cashing our Trillions. I'm
your host, Yvon So I'm a full time Saint home
mom of three boys, and this podcast is a space
to value the trillion dollar economy of unpaid labor shouldered
by moms. This episode is so special. The work of
(00:40):
nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities is incredibly life changing, so getting
the opportunity to speak to founding CEO Aisha Yandaro was
the icing on the cake for me. She executes this
work with wholehearted optimism, a sense of humor, and so
much humanity. I hope it's contagious and inspiring and if
(01:06):
nothing else, it helps open a conversation within yourself about
our own privilege and how we determine deservedness. In twenty eighteen,
Aishould created the Magnolia Mother's Trust, a new initiative that
provided low income black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi, one thousand
(01:28):
dollars cash on a monthly basis, no strings attached, and
for twelve months straight. Now it's the country's longest running
guaranteed income program and the only one in the world
to focus on black women. Isha's expertise on economic, racial
(01:50):
and gender justice issues. Is regularly featured in outlets including
The Washington Post, an Unpoorn Company, s and Magazine, NBC
Nightly News, and CNN. She is a tedech speaker and
a fellow of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership
Network and ascend at the Aspen Institute. She holds a
(02:13):
BA from Tennessee State University and an M and PhD
from Michigan State University. She lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with
her husband and two very charming sons, who we will
speak about during our conversation. In this episode, you'll hear
about Aisha's work on shifting gendered and racialized narratives around
(02:34):
poverty and deservedness, and how the success of Magnolia Mother's
Trusts can be scaled nationally through federal policies. Eisha, I'm
so honored to have you here today to speak about
the impactful work that you do in your community. Can
we start by getting to know you personally a little bit.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, your life as
(02:57):
a mom of your two boys, and your work as
an aim and type poverty advocate.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Thank you so much, Eva, and thank you for having me,
and thank you for starting the conversation with asking me
about centering myself and my role as a mom. So
I am Aisha Yandoro. I am in Jackson, Mississippi. I'm
homegrown goodness. I'm from Mississippi, from Jackson, and I have
been back home doing the work of working in community
(03:22):
and I'm helping to bring about necessary change for about
the last fourteen years and keeping me grounded in this
work because you do have to stay grounded. It's my
loving husband, Joseph, who really hangs out in the background
and allows me to do my thing. My husband's an engineer,
so I tell people all the time that we know
(03:42):
just enough about what each other does to justify being married.
He's a structural engineer. I know he helps the building stand.
He knows I have community stand, so it works out.
And then I have two little boys. I have a
twelve year old and I have a four year old.
My twelve year old is working towards being pro golfer
as he wants to be a golfer, and my four
(04:03):
year old is the life of a party in any
room he goes into.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That's amazing. I have three boys myself, so I have ten, ten,
eight and four so I have I think we both
we both had twenty eighteen babies.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Those twenty eighteen babies are so magical and they're right
up there before the cuff of you know whatever, when
the whirl fell.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Apart for those few years.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And so it's so interesting now because my four year old,
when I compare him to my twelve year o, I'm like, Okay,
there's some things that my oldest was doing at four
that my youngest is not doing the Like I wonder
how much of that is COVID and the fact that
he was at.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Home with me for eight months. Yes, but yeah, my
four year old can run his zone meeting. And I'm
you know, that's right.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
He's so good virtually, but in person then he's like
hiding behind.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Me, you're the same, right, I'm like, you know, go
make cereal. He's like, I can't get my own cereal.
Of only four. I'm like, but I just saw you
run a whole meeting. What do you mean you can't
make your own cereal?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
So I really cannot wait until they're older so we
can really begin to understand what that two years actually meant.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, that's true. But at the same time, I feel
like they're super resilient too. In the beginning, he was
very precarious about getting it back into the real world,
but now he's definitely acclimated. I thought it'd be hard
to get him into preschool, but you know, he's ready
to leave the nest real talk. So let's talk about
(05:33):
your family history. You have deep roots to the Mississippi.
I watch your Ted talk and it was it was
so riveting, and in addition to your powerful and persuasive
message of investing in society's most vulnerable, my takeaway was
just how dedicated and committed generations of your family is
(05:55):
to Mississippi. I mean, starting with your granny, doctor Elsie Dorsey.
Because you all left to pursue higher education outside of Mississippi.
What brings you all back? Though?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I was really taught that you grow where you're planted,
and I was planted in Mississippi, and so I did
what I was taught to do. You go off, you
get the education, but when it's time to go about
the work that's necessary, you come home to do that work.
And I am very fortunate that that what's the narrative,
(06:27):
and that's been the reality in the arc of my life.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
And I also am very fortunate that I get to.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Do work that I am deeply committed to and deeply
in love with in the community that I love, and
then also have it to feed into my life in
a way that I never anticipated, and in a way
that my life is so well rounded and beautiful and
just my entire family gets to flourish here. And I
(06:53):
think it's such an interesting jaxtaposition to how we think
about Mississippi and the narrative that people often around Mississippi.
And you know, I always invite people to come to
my Mississippi because my Mississippi is beautiful. I have a
love love relationship with this place. There are some warts
and there are wards in every community. The reality is
(07:15):
that our awards are just a little more visible for
the world to see, and so people have fun actually
talking about and picking out our awards. But every community
has those. And so yeah, I've been like I've been
back home now about fourteen years, and it has been
It's a beautiful time doing the work that I love
and raising my boys here with my parents and you know,
(07:35):
great grandparents really close by.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
In those pieces, So.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Did you always envision yourself coming back to Mississippi then
about it.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, you know I did, but I don't if I'm
being totally honesty, but I don't think I pictured myself
coming back to Mississippi as early as I did. I
was maybe twenty seven twenty eight or so when I
moved back here, and I never, in my wildest dreams
thought I would be back here that early. I can
believe IM about to say this on my podcast, But anyway,
is that.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
How young and that Eva was?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, I had a whole vision of my life after
graduate school, as I went directly from undergrad to graduate school.
So I was like, you know, I'm sick of being responsible.
I am going to move to d C. I'm gonna
live in Adams Morgan with who I couldn't afford thee
and I don't even know if I could afford it.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I'm gonna get a purse dog and I'm gonna live
my best life.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I had a whole plan down to the first dog.
The first dog, I love it. I can kind of
relate to that because I had like this whole like
East Coast city girl thing in my mind too. I
went to school in d C. And then I met
(08:45):
my husband too quite early as well, and we ended
up just going all across America. So I know what
you talk about when you say like people. I mean,
I've lived in El Paso, I live in Tucson right now,
all considered like armpits of America.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So I hate that to analogy so much. It's horrible.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I know, unless you live there and you like kind
of thrive in the community, you don't. People don't really
get the full right.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yes, that's true.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
I got that. So maybe let's talk about one of
your keystone programs at Springboard to Opportunities. It's the Magnolia
Mother's Trust. In your own words, can you please describe
this program to listeners and just walk us through how
you came up with this idea in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yeah, So the Magnillia Mother's Trust is my fourth baby.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
So I have my actual physical first baby, who is
Tandecai who's twelve. Have Springboards Opportunities, which I'm the founding
CEO of which we started. It'll be ten years ago
next year. That's my second baby. And then I started
really dreaming about what it would look like to give
like other's money in twenty and seventeen, and that all
(10:04):
came to fruition in twenty and eighteen with the Magnolia
Mother's Trust, and at the time I was actually physically
pregnant with my fourth baby. The Magnolia Mother's Trust is
the first guaranteed income project in this country to really
take a racial and gender approach to talking about income
inequity and really talking about how the systems has felled
(10:26):
the subset of our population. We provide one thousand dollars
attached for twelve months to black mothers that live in
federally subsidized affordable housing in Jackson, Mississippi. By providing twelve
thousand dollars annually, we are in essence, doubling the income
of the women that we work with. Because exactly, let
me break that, Let me break that down. We tell
(10:47):
ourselves this narrative that individuals who are poor choose to
be poor. And we tell ourselves that narrative because that
then absolves us of our guilt, and it absolves us
of actually being responsible for our neighbors and responsible for
the collective community. And so we say, oh, well, people
are poor because they want to natas should work harder. No,
people are poor because our systems have actually failed individuals.
(11:09):
Our federal minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty thousands
an hour. So what that means is that you can
work full time, which a lot of our women do,
and you still are only making about twelve thousand dollars annually.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
This is such an important point to drive home. Poverty
stems from structural barriers. There's a whole web of interrelated
systems and structures that drive disparities and access to education, childcare, healthcare,
high quality jobs, and affordable housing near work. And as
(11:42):
I should just mentioned, even if you work full time
at a federal minimum wage job, as many moms of
the Magnolia Mothers trust you, you're subsisting on twelve thousand
dollars per year, which I should points out doesn't give
you much bandwidth to dream of about our future or
come close to building generational wealth.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So the Magnolium Others trust is in essence, doubling your income.
And we also provide by twenty nine account and we
see those accounts with one thousand dollars for every kid
of a mother that we work with, because it is
about providing income stability in this moment for our moms
so that they have the bandwidth to dream about the future.
We'll also think about whatever the needs they have for
(12:25):
themselves immediately, but we're also investing in the future of
their kids and really talking about how do we build
wealth by investing in five twenty nine accounts. We started
this work in twenty eighteen. I remember when we first
started talking about it, people looking at me like, you're
going to do what you can't do that. You know,
in this country we do not operate in the space
(12:47):
of radical imagination.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
It's ridiculous. I'm like, yeah, you know, tap into your
imaginations more.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
But it's not even that radical of an imagination. Right
for somebody who's only making twelve thousand dollars a year,
what do you think they need most rights not? It's
not like a dream.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Or But I'm gonna push back on that because what
it is is who we believe is entitled to dream
and who we believe is entitled to not have to
worry about every day how they're going to pay their bills.
So you're right, it's not their radical But what is
You know, in this country, we have we have so
(13:23):
long attached ourselves to ideas of deservedness that we have
told ourselves that there's an entire subset who, like I said,
it's poor just because they choose to be poor. And
we've attached ourselves to those narratives, and I always want
to make sure that I give credit to the women,
because it's not as if I was a sitting around
saying like, oh, let me figure out how to give
y'all money.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Because I.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Was not.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You know, I eventually got there, but it was really What.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Happened in twenty seventeen is that as an organization with Springboard,
we have been providing all of these programs and services
for families that live in affordable housing, and we were
seeing that we were not moving the needle on poverty.
Whenever we have a question about something that's happening in
our community, we go to the residents and say, Okay,
what is it that we're missing, And in twenty seventeen,
(14:13):
we did just that. We said, Okay, we know that
we're providing all of these programs and services that you
and your family are participating in, but we're not seeing
people move out of affordable housing. We're not seeing you
move into home ownership or market rate housing. And that
was important because so many of our families indicated that
those were the goals that they had for themselves and
their families. That's what they wanted, and we were saying, Okay,
(14:35):
why isn't this actually happening. Every answer that we heard
was something that could be fixed with cash. They weren't
saying that, oh, we need another program. It was stories
after stories after stories, and when we sat down and listened,
I was like, Okay, every story that we're hearing is
a story that can be fixed if people just had money.
(14:55):
And so, since I'm a researcher by training, we began
to dig deeper into Okay, what is what's happening here?
And we began to look at our social safety net,
and particularly here in Mississippi and the way our cash
structure has worked on its designed within our welfare system,
is virtually impossible in Mississippi to get welfare or to
(15:15):
get temporary assistance for needy families, which is the cash
assistance that you and your family should be receiving. We
began to really look at, okay, the wealth gap or
the income gap as it relates to black women and
white women in this state, and it was this peace
after piece after piece, It's like, Okay, there are all
of these systematic barriers that exist that we have to address.
But while we are addressing those systematic barriers, how do
(15:39):
we really just provide our families with what it is
that they need right now, which is money. And so
that's when I started saying, okay, now, how do I
get Black women particularly money? And this is in twenty seventeen,
and I sat down with a round table of mothers
and I said, Okay, I don't know what this is.
I don't even know if we can do this, but
just come and dream with me about the possibility.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And they did.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
We had about six months of conversations that's really thinking
about what this could look like.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And then I went on maternity leave and had the baby.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's it's like it goes back and forth between the
thirty four thing like which came first, the chicken on
the egg. While I was maternity, I went through all
of the notes and that's where Magnolia Mother's Trust really
came from. That's when we really were like, Okay, it'll
be twelve months, it'd be one thousand dollars a month.
All of those pieces began to come into play, and
so in twenty eighteen, we lunch with twenty black mothers.
(16:31):
We have now supported over three hundred and twenty women.
We have opened over two hundred five twenty nine accounts
and seated those accounts with a thousand dollars. We have
not only impacted the lives of the women that we
work with, but we really have been changing the way
that we talk about poverty in this country and how
we talk about the need for cash and how we
really talk about centering that agency and dignity of individuals.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I love it. I love it because it's you know,
in this four years, you've done so much to move
the needle, and you spoke about, you know, the structural challenges.
Nothing has changed at the legislative level. Like, if anything,
we've probably gone back. We've been stripped of more rights.
And like it's not like anything's changed, you know, for
(17:15):
Family Leave Act or welfare or reform or anything like that.
But you just coming up with this idea to put
cash in women's hands. Like, look, now you're up to
three hundred families that you've helped and transform their lives.
I think it's it's an amazing story you're listening to
cashing our trillions. I think I also read on the
(17:37):
website that you said, like, oh, in twenty eighteen, I
had two babies, right, Magnolia Mothers Trust is one of them.
I'm sure just the juxtaposition of you going through your
pregnancy and motherhood and being able to provide for all
your baby's needs, contrasted against the path that these mothers
are on that who also live in your community, just
(17:57):
probably gave you a more a sound sounds like it
also gave you more of a sense of urgency to
get this started and then execute on it.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
You know, you know, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I don't know if I've ever thought about it in
relation to that part, but I will say this that
when you know, I said earlier that when we really
went out and had those conversations and we were listening,
it was a conversation with one of our moms who
had gone through a traumatic birthing experience. I remember I
was pregnant and she was having this conversation about her
pregnancy experience and it was a traumatic story, but she
(18:28):
was just telling the story, is if it was this
very matter.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Of fact, and she talked about how she.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Had went into the hospital and she ended up needing
to have an emergency cesarean section, and while she before
they prepped her for the cesarean section, the nurse asked
her if she wanted staples or stitches, and that she
advised that she gets staples because that was less expensive.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
And I was like, what, but.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You know, it's all of these it's all of these
pieces when you don't have insurance and you depended Medicaid,
so your you know, health care decisions are determined by
how much you can actually pay.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And she talked about how she felt like a bad
parent in that moment.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Their society makes you feel like a bad parent when
you've done nothing wrong. You had this traumatic experience and
it was all because you didn't have five hundred and
seventy dollars A footnote of your life should not be
trauma because of financial inabilities.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And we see that time.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And time again, or that you even had that conversation,
But that story really hits hits me because I had
an emergency C section two me too.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
And nobody and nobody asked me that you want or stenches.
I didn't even know. I didn't even know it was
an option. That's the one when she.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Said, I was like, what exactly I had to research,
and I was like, oh, they asked her that, because
staples are less expensive, your recovery time is greater in
all of those pieces. But yet with my first son,
I had any emergencies to sarian section. No, they just
did it.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
No one came to me.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And it made me, you know, make decisions about my chat,
my healthcare and all of that in a moment. So
you're right, the options that are provided to you, even
in some of your darkest moments, shift depending on your
financial abilities.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
In that moment, it's it's scary because you're thinking about
losing your baby or potentially losing your life. Like literally,
I didn't have much of a decision, Like they're like,
you're going in for emergency. We're going to cut you
open and and that's it. And so could you imagine
then having a discussion, oh, stables or stitches right, It's like, no, exactly,
(20:36):
get the baby out. We can talk about all that afterwards, right,
Oh my goodness. Maybe also speak about like the qualitative
aspects of this cash infusion on moms, like how does
this cash transform them personally and affect the way that
they show up as mothers?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
You know?
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yeah, I like to talk about it the joyous currency,
and that's what we see so many of our mother
so the first time is actually have joy and they're
able to dream about the future because they're just not
so focused on today because they know.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Today is taken care of.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
And that has been the most beautiful part of this
work for me quite personally, to see moms that I
know are just out there slaying as parents actually recognize
that they're a good parent for the first time and
actually see themselves as a good parent because they can
say yes to some of the things that their kids want,
not just the things that their kids need. How they
(21:28):
actually have the breathing room to actually think expansiveness and
not just work and operate in the space of scarcity.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
All of that has just been beautiful.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
When I talk about the work, I always make sure
that I say, Okay, we have to change the narrative
on poverty by changing the narrator. And that's where we
really do work to make sure that the women that
we work with and support and get the beauty of
working alongside that they are empowered to share whatever pieces
of their narrative that they want to share because it's theirs.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
So here's just one story pulled from spring Board to
Opportunities storytelling series. As the website states, these are human stories.
Too often the stories of low income women are mediated
through the perspective and assumptions of those writing articles or
our ads. Springboard to Opportunities goal is to let women
tell their stories in their own words. Here's Tamika.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
I'm Tamika Calm and I'm from Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I have five children.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
When I first received the first check, I wasn't working.
Then I had this when I had just lost my job.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I was able.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
To buy things that my children needed, and then their
birthdays had fallen around that time. I was able to
get them something that they wanted instead of, you know,
just kind of getting them what I felt like they
would be happy with. So it was able to provide
that for us, like I've never been able to.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Cause's five of.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
Them, and they sometimes they want things that I know
I can't afford to give them. So that's what else
it provided for me. And I was able to pay
my bills, so that was helpful. To have no strings
felt like a blessing. There's always some kind of stipulation,
(23:21):
like you have to do X y Z in order
to receive it and you have to spend it on ABC,
So that was a blessing.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
More programs should do that.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
I guess they think people are gonna take advantage of it,
and they want to have more control over If they're
the ones providing this to you, they want to have
control over what you do with it. So I know
I speak for a lot of people. We appreciate the
being able to spend.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
It on whatever we want at this point in juncture,
in twenty twenty two, after all that we all have
collectively been through. If you still don't understand how poverty
works within this country, and you still don't understand that
race and gender and geography and all of those pieces
actually do play a significant role or in the haves
(24:16):
and the have.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Nots, that you are just being woefully ignorant at this point.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I think that's what you're asking people to do. Look
at yourself in this right, that's right. Try to put
yourself in these shoes and feel the humanity of being
in this situation. And what would help you.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Not even put yourself in those shoes? Look at your life,
put this up in your.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Own shoes, and have an honest conversation and reflection about
the beautiful life that you have and all of the
supports and systems and policies that have helped you get
that beautiful life.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
So yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
How do you uplift other people and help them?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And even if you don't want to uplift other people,
how do you just not be a barrier.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
To help people?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
The helping may be too far for you to go, Well,
that'll be a barrier.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Just get out the way structurally and emotionally.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I know.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Oh my god. You know that's a conversation over wine.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So and I think you talked a little bit about
it before, but you're halfway through your fourth cohort, right,
so maybe talk about how your project has just exponentially
grown because you started with twenty women and now you
have a couple hundred.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I think that there are so many different layers and
ways in which this project is exponentially grown. So we
started with twenty women, and people always ask me like,
oh my goodness, why at you start with twenty women?
And I always laugh because I'm like, oh my goodness,
stop playing. Let's just be honest about thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'm twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, when we started this work, we really were like said,
we were talking about giving black women in extreme poverty
money without strings to do whatever you want to with it.
We trust you don't have to report back in all
those things, and individuals were like, you cannot do that.
Time and time again we heard that. But not only that.
You know, I am also situated in the South, and
(26:11):
less than one percent of private philanthropy comes to the South,
and of that less than one percent, I am a
black woman running an organization in the South. Less than
one percent of that one percent goes to black women.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
A twenty twenty research report released by Echoing Green and
the Bridge Span Group shows that race remains a defining
factor when looking at which organizations get funded and how
much they receive. People of color, the leaders who intimately
understand the experiences and unique challenges of the communities they serve,
(26:46):
are time and time again underfunded as a proportion of
their population. So Aisha's story of a herculean task to
overcome these funding barriers is sadly more the norm than anxiety.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
This was a difficult task, even raising the money to
get to where we are, and I remember the first
year of the Magnolia mother's trust. Every time I could
go to a conference, take a meeting, whatever I could do,
I was there. My now four year old was a baby.
Really was not even enough to believe that I had
to do was a proof of concept. Once we actually
(27:21):
do prove that you can give people money and that
they will go about the business of taking care of
themselves and their families, that individuals would just release the
capital and it would be great. I know, I was naive,
you know, it was I was like, oh my god,
you know, I think the money's gonna right now.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
I'm like, man I from heaven.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
It did not, because that first year I was constantly
having to push back on the narrative of how black
mothers in this country are viewed. And I was constantly
having to make people try to see the humanity and
the population that I work with. And that was very
hard from an emotional standpoint.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Well, because it's personal for you, because.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
So yeah, exactly, because yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It's like you can't feel that that's not how people
look at you.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah, all of.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
The things, all the respectability politics aside, so yeah, all
of that, so I don't So that was a lot,
and that would be very honest, had it not been
from COVID, I don't know if we would have the success.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
That we had. COVID happened in twenty twenty, and we all.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Were forced to have empathy collectively as a country. Oh crap,
poverty or income instability is not just something that happens
to those people. It happens to me too.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And then you're right, because the pandemic came on, there
were so many government assistant programs at that time to
help families kind of get through that financial hardship that
people are a little bit more open to helping their neighbors.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
That's exactly right. The stimulus checks, tax credit, all.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Of that are cash based policy exactly that the federal
government implemented without streams, you know. So it's not as
if anyone had to go report how they used their
stimulus checks or how they use their child tax credit dollars.
So I think the federal government really has demonstrated that
number one, we know how to do it, and number two,
we can't afford it. So as individuals continue to push
(29:15):
back on this idea, le Okay, oh we really can't
afford to do that, we actually can. We spend billions
of dollars on poverty alleviation in this country annually, and
we have not alleviated anything but what we did see
last year, and that in the six months that the
child tax credit, where the majority of families within this
country received a check based on the number of kids
(29:36):
that they had within their house, we cut child poverty
in half in six months. Why did we not make
impermit it?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Study after study backs up ice statistic. One of the
reasons these monthly payments had such a significant impact on
child poverty is because the expansion closed a large hole
in the child tax credit. It's a bit counterintuitive. Before
a two parent, two child household needed to earn at
(30:04):
least thirty six thousand dollars a year to qualify for
the full benefits, so essentially the children who needed the
most help got the least. Besides the precipitous drop in
child poverty, their long term qualitative benefits to making the
pandemic child tax credits permanent. In March of this year,
(30:25):
the Brooking Institute published a research report delving into the
anti poverty effects of expanded child tax Credit. Their research
shows that child poverty fell immediately and substantially when families
have income stability and can meet their basic needs, children
(30:46):
flourish for life. Specifically, cash and near cash assistance programs
have been shown to promote stronger educational, emotional, and health
outcomes in children that follow them through life. According to
the Tax Policy Center, to make the pandemic era child
(31:08):
text credits permanent would cost just a little over two
hundred and twenty five billion dollars. That's a high price tag, yes,
but given women and mom standing as one point five
trillion dollar creditors to our nation, it's something we could
afford if we cashed are trillions. I should continues by
speaking exactly to these long reaching and long term benefits
(31:32):
of cash assistance.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
To people money without restrictions.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
I don't have any set outcomes of what I expect
people to do with the money.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
But what I will say is that I know that
twenty years from now.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
There will be some baby graduating and given a valid
Victorian speech at their college, their medical school, their law school,
or whatever, and they are going to mention this program
their mom got. They're going to be like, I don't
know the name of it, I don't know any of that,
but I know for a year my mom got one
thousand dollars every month, and how that changed my family's life.
(32:07):
And I know it's going to happen because I've seen
it happen in my life. Like you know, you started
with talking about my granny, doctor ls Dorsey. My granny
got pregnant with my mom when she was seventeen and
she had to drop out of high school because that's
what you did in the Mississippi Delta.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Well, fast forward with.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Some program somewhere that allowed her to get college credit
for life experiences. And then it was some program somewhere
that allowed her to take that and do a dual
bachelor's and master's program at Sunny College in New York.
And how that changed the trajectory of our family.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And so I don't know what the question was.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Some kid that I was going to say, because that
back kid too is going to be at that school
paying their tuition from that five twenty nine. I love
it that part, I feel like because that's like that
really gets to the core of investing in moms. And
(33:11):
you invest in moms, you invest in the future, and
putting that money in that five twenty nine just really
ensures the kids that the next generation are going to
be taken care of and have a future.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
No, thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And let me almost a plug about five twenty nine
because people are always like, oh, it's only a thousand
dollars house.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Dollars today, but you have eighteen years to grow it.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
But not only that. I'm like, you know, it's so
much privilege.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
When you say only in front of a thousand dollars,
I'm like, oh my god, this show just show me
your privilege without showing me your privilege. Also, there's data
that shows that for kids from low income communities that
if they have as little as five hundred dollars in
a five twenty nine account, there are four times more
likely to go to college and to be successful. It's
not about the amount of money, it's the fact that
(33:57):
someone actually invested in their future, even them enough.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
That the account is open. That's something that if they
get a job, a side job, they could put money
into it. Because the account is there, there's more likelihood
they try to fund that account no matter how much.
And it's time value of money. It's like because they
have eighteen years to grow it. So yeah, that's that's
one of me. That's one of my favorite parts of
them program. And I really get this from talking to
(34:24):
you too, and I've picked it up from watching your
ted talk. You talk about being blessed with your grinding
sense of optimism. How does that and I definitely got
it this entire time we're talking. How does this optimism
like drive your work and your mission and maybe paint
us a picture of your most optimistic vision of Magnolia
(34:45):
Mothers Trust.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Oh gosh, so optimism fews my work. And so that's
what optimism does for me is the north star. My
vision for Magnolium Distrust is that Magnolium Distrust doesn't have
to exist.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I won't permanency.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
When we started Magnolia Mother's Trust, it was not to
operate this program in perpetuity.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
That would be a failure for me. It really, yeah,
it really was.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
How do we go about changing Number one, how we
talk about poverty as it realates specifically to black mothers
in this country, and how do we change our system
so that our systems are actually giving families to financial
resources that they need to be successful. I feel like
we have done those pieces that we needed to do,
and so now it is time for the federal government
(35:33):
to step in and provide permanency for this work.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
We need structural change.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
We do because it's not just about the three hundred
and twenty mothers that we have supported.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
It's about the millions of families that will benefit from America.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Exactly, that will benefit from a guaranteed income. That's exactly right.
That will be a win. And I will retire and
go sit with Oprah under her tree.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I should for president, and I want to be retired.
Speaking of which shall how will you cash your trillions?
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I will use my I will use my trillions.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I would invest it so that my trillion stay trillions,
and I will provide a guaranteed income for every individual
in this country that needs it.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I wouldn't expect any different OVID answer.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And then I will retire myself.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
This episode was produced by Me and sound edited by Shen.
Cashing our Trillions is part of the Seneca Women's Podcast
Network and iHeartRadio. If you have a story to share,
please email us at Cashing our Trillions at gmail dot com.
Make sure you subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you
(37:00):
liked what you heard Please take a moment to rate
and review it. It would really mean so much to me.
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I
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