October 2, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode, we're putting the spotlight on ALICE. Who is ALICE, you may wonder. Well, ALICE lives in every community and can be found working in a diverse range of careers, including essential workers, such as teachers, healthcare providers, and retail clerks. United Way describes A.L.I.C.E. households as those who have incomes above the Federal Poverty Level but do not earn enough money to afford a basic survival budget in their community, forcing them to make impossible choices between necessities like food, housing, child care, and healthcare. Let's learn more from the United Way Northern Shenandoah Valley.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. On this episode, we're putting the spotlight on Alice.
Who is Alice? You may wonder well. Alice lives in
every community and can be found working in a diverse
range of careers, including essential workers such as teachers, healthcare providers,
and retail clerks. United Way describes alice households as those
(00:27):
who have incomes above the poverty level, but do not
earn enough money to afford basic survival budget in their community,
forcing them to make impossible choices between necessities like food, housing, childcare,
and healthcare. Let's learn more. Welcome to the show. I'm
so glad you guys can make time for me today.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you for having it.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
It's always great to get the word out and explain
more about what the United Ways do throughout the commonwealth.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Definitely, so let's start there. Because we have two people
on the show today with your organization, why don't you
both introduce yourselves to the audience and kind of give
an idea of what your role is in United Way.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm Adie Gale and the President and CEO of the
United Way of Northern Shandoah Valley. We are one of
the seventeen United Ways throughout the Commonwealth. We cover the
city of Winchester, Frederick, Clark, Warren, Sheanandoa and Page Counties
in Virginia, sort of the top of the northern Shandoah Valley.
We work closely with the other sixteen United Ways and
the United Way of Virginia to sort of ensure that
our community and our state are doing well and our
(01:25):
citizens are able to live, work and live a happy life.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
And my name is Kimberly Wilt and I'm the director
of Impact and Advancement. And unlike Andy, I work a
little bit more just with the nonprofits directly within our
region and helps in hopes of making them have greater impact,
partner together and tackle problems using like pilot programs and
different things along those lines. We usually look at basic
needs and the needs of our community in order to
(01:52):
direct that funding.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I love that. That's a great intro. Thank you guys
so much. I know today what we're talking about is
we hear on the news all the headlines about tariffs
and how that's going to impact prices and the economy
and inflation and how that's going to impact low income people,
and those are all very important things to talk about.
But what I want to talk about are the ALICE families.
(02:14):
Would one of you be willing to explain to the
audience what ALICE families are and what that ALICE report is?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
So. ALICE is an acronym for asset limited, income constrained employed.
While the term can sound narrow and some may hear
it is sort of gendered or exclusive, the framework is
actually inclusionary. ALICE doesn't describe one group, but rather it's
a reality shared by families, seniors, young adults, and household
across every background in the whole state and especially in
our valley.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay, And what makes an ALICE family different from a
low income family.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So ALICE helps to see what the federal proverty level misses.
It's the families who work hard but aren't too much
to qualify for assistance and too little to really cover
the cost of living that we've seen increase month week
after week. It really helps make the invisible struggles visible
and drives us towards inclusive solutions that sort of help
the community as a whole.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Okay, how do you think that our current state of
the world is affecting these Alice families. Have you seen
increases in the number of Alice families or let's talk
about that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, we're seeing a lot. I mean really, if you
look at our six locality, sort of the top of Virginia,
four out of ten households and our regions live behold
sort of at that Alice threshold where they have enough
to cover three weeks of the month, but struggling that
fourth or some people can cover too. It's really just
seeing the cost of living, the cost of everything. That's
people that don't say qualify for the support programs, but
(03:35):
still are struggling to make that ends meet. We use
a lot of data in our work. Kim So been
really great at bringing that in and making it really
visible on our website for the communities, for other nonprofits.
One of those sources is two to one to one Virginia.
That's a helpline that the commonwealth in the United Ways
have come together to support. So all you have to
do on your phone is dial two one one. You'll
be connected to a resource navigation line that the state covers,
(03:55):
and we see that data each month in the last
quarter of the calls we've gotten in our region fifty
point nine percent we're for housing and shelter. That's rent assistance,
that's mortgage assistance, followed quickly by twenty one percent with utilities,
so a majority of that's electric. What we've seen since
we're in the summer, and we're probably going to in
that little transition now, we're going to start seeing that
shift towards heating and fuel oil.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
But we cover everything from food, utilities, healthcare, mental health,
employment and income, clothing and household needs, childcare, government and
legal support, transportation, education. There is a disaster preparedness mine,
but luckily Virginia has not had any of those sins
the happenings in Southwest last year. But really it's a
neat way for the community to reach out and get help.
(04:36):
It connects both to local organizations but also for some
of the state programs that many might not know exist.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Okay, and do you find that these Alice households maybe
are not aware that this is an option because maybe
they've seek you know, reached out for help in the
past and we're turned down because of their income level.
I mean, how are we seeing these programs changed to
include those people, and that might be a question for you,
kim Well.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
One of the things that we are seeing is more
and more nonprofits analyzing the individuals that they serve and
how they can broaden or expand their programs in order
to help Alice families. Alice families are making impossible choices
right now, and that is one of the truths. We
talk about this all the time. It's like the choice
between paying rent or paying for childcare. Their paychecks are
(05:24):
just not stretching far enough right now, and these choices
end up stripping away like the foundation families need for food,
shelter instability. That means that more and more of these
families are turning to things like food pantries to make
up for the cost of groceries, and that is one
of the things that we knowed Andy and I see
directly that the food pantries are disturbcing more and more people.
(05:46):
So that's one of the things that we can look
at directly. The other thing that we end up seeing
is that this has a ripple effect that not enough
people talk about. When Alice families struggle, basically, your community
has an inability to thrive, the families end up struggling
in school, they end up the small businesses end up
struggling because you're not investing in them. You're not going
(06:06):
to go and buy like a piece of art for
us on the downtown walking mall because hey, you can't
afford your groceries right now. So the little incidental things
that you might have purchased or at Tinker Toys or
something like that for your kid, you're not doing that
right now. And really, our whole valley's economy is weakened.
And so that's one of the things that Andy and
(06:26):
I are really trying to talk about more is how
do we talk about the economic impact that struggling families
are having on our community, because if there is an
issue with that, we can hopefully come together to have
a better solution. I do have a fact for us.
The average Alice household falls short by almost thirty seven
(06:46):
thousand dollars a year based on their survival budget. So
that means what they're making and what their survival budget
needs to be. That's almost a forty thousand dollars gap,
which ends up adding almost like a one point three
billion dollar annual shortfall just across the order that and
shut into a valley and that means that the nonprofits
(07:08):
alone can't fix that gap. So we have to have larger,
more innovative solutions to help individuals.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And I love that you said that because that was
actually my next thought in my next question was I mean, obviously,
you know people especially we're talking lower middle class I'm
assuming and maybe some you know, upper lower class. The
charities can't support those people indefinitely. They can't continue to
help them with rental assistance and mortgage assistants and food
and utilities and all the bills that they're short on indefinitely.
(07:40):
That just is not something that's sustainable. Have you seen
anything in regards to lawmakers embracing the Alice Report, Because
this Alice Report has been out for a while, right,
but I haven't seen or heard any lawmakers talking about it.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
So we're getting the word out that's sort of the
work that all the United Ways, across the Commonwealth and
as well as the global network are working towards. The
Alice Report is updated. So the twenty twenty five report
just came out. We're pretty excited to use those numbers.
Look at what it means in district six hours alone,
if you look at just the rent. We were talking
about affording that and the rent subsidies. The fair market
(08:15):
rent for a two bedroom is it's almost seventeen hundred
a month, but the average renter's wage is like seventeen
dollars an hour, and the wage really needed to afford
that is almost thirty three dollars an hour. So the
workers have to work an average of seventy five point
four hours a week to just afford household a space
to live. It's not a matter of where do you
(08:36):
get groceries, childcare clothes, something happens to the car. It's
one emergency away from disaster, and it's really how we
want to tell that story when we get to the lawmakers.
We've done a lot of work with a nonprofit Advuracy
task Force that we're leading with others up here in
Winchester to have those conversations. Senator Kane actually came and
met with about seventeen of our nonprofit partners to talk
(08:58):
about the impacts of the big beautiful bit and how
those cuts the nonprofits ripple down. It wasn't a part
of an issue for us. We're really looking at those
those local effects. We've distilled it down to these cuts
are going to affect the ability for SEACAP to provide
food for family, promise to do rental assistance for Shando,
Alliance of Shelter, to help with housing vouchers, things like that.
(09:18):
So it's these little things that may not see it
in the big picture, but really are affecting everyone in
our communities.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, most definitely. And I read a statistic actually recently
that said, in the last ten years, we've seen the
one percenters, the most wealthy people on the planet, gain
an additional almost thirty four trillion dollars in wealth. And
I don't know about you, but I've watched multiple reports
(09:45):
of companies, you know, quarter after quarter, year after year
reporting oh, a new record revenue, new record revenue, new
record revenue, and profits and all these you know, we're
making more money, We're making more money, and yet no
one that I know of is seeing in changes to
their salary, They're not seeing changes to their benefits. Obviously,
we want to be careful when we ask lawmakers to
(10:07):
jump in on something like that, because those are the
kind of things that you know, you would hope the
person at the top has a conscious and cares about
people and would naturally allow those benefits to trickle down
because you don't want to force too much because then
you're forcing stuff that could be manipulated in a very
wrong way. But I mean, are you guys seeing an
increase in large corporations donating or individuals donating larger amounts
(10:31):
of money, you know, to help out with this situation.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
We're seeing a little bit of both.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I think if people hear the story and they're passionate
about it, they want to help. But also at the
same time, we're seeing those individual donors that have been
giving from their paychecks slightly decrease their giving because if
it's going to cost seven bucks to buy a twelve
pack of eggs, you got to make that decision of Okay,
do I feed my family or how do I help?
And they're giving back in other ways. We just had
our Day of Caring. We had over a thousand volunteers
(10:57):
working on seventy five projects across the valley. That really
made a big difference. So people can give their time,
their talents, or their treasures. It's really interesting. But we're
seeing companies want to step up. Some companies want to
focus on education, some want to focus on workforce, some
focus on basic needs. We actually had a funder reach
out and want to invest in the rural counties and
we were able to pass through one hundred thousand dollars
(11:19):
down to basic needs in Warren, Shanda and Page counties.
So we're seeing people step up. But I mean, meeting
immediate needs like food or rent relief is vital, but
it's never going to really be enough on its own.
Real resilience requires change in the systems that keep families
one paycheck away from crisis. So what we're trying to
do as a United Way here is connect services into
a stronger net by aligning nonprofits, schools, health providers, employers
(11:42):
so that we ensure that families don't really fall through
those gaps when support runs out. But we have to
do that by turning these big challenges into practical pilots.
We want to work with the state and local leaders
to funnel broad issues like housing abundance and to focus
attackable solutions that can be scaled across the valley and
hopefully across the commonwealth. So it's really going to be
a group effort to make those things, and really it's
(12:02):
uniting partners. So we can't do this alone. We can't
do this as just United Way. We can't do this
just as a community. It's going to take work of
all of us coming together with these shared priorities and
driving the accountability, collaboration and really this collective momentum to
make great change.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
And I always say that we're more than just a funder.
That's what United Way has often been viewed as as, Oh,
United Way just funds these issues. But Andy and I
want to approach it in a totally different way, and
so we always approach things from the idea that we
are more than just a funder. We like to bring
people together, we like to strategize, we like to build partnerships,
and these partnerships are starting to reimagine what stability looks
(12:38):
like in our region, and that's something that actually can
be replicated across the state of Virginia. So it moves
beyond like these household level fixes towards systemic solutions that
we can scale. And so that's really where we're trying
to tackle the issues at hand. Because this is going
to take a lot of and a lot of change.
(13:02):
People will resist naturally, so we have to make people
understand what the gaps are and what is the impact
of these gaps. So we're really trying to design a
shared commitment for everyone within our region to tackle these issues.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I love that, and I think we're seeing that in
things like I don't remember the statistic, but a large
percentage of people who work also have a side hustle.
But what you're describing, in my mind, the first thing
that comes to my mind is things like barn raisings.
Like back in the day, you know, when everyone was
agricultural and you needed a new barn. Maybe you provided
(13:40):
all the materials and maybe you even hosted a barn
dance after it was done, but you relied on your
community to kind of come together, even if you didn't
always agree on everything, to support you, to help you
build said barn so that you could continue your livelihood
to provide not only for your family but for your community.
Can you give some examples of that is as far
(14:01):
as what you guys are working on now, because I mean,
we don't really need that many barns now.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
I mean really, Day of Caring was last Friday, so
we had those thousand volunteers across the valley doing everything
from gardening and clean up at the Evans Home in
Winchester to helping move into the Rescue Mission's new facility.
We had people working with Bright Futures to pack school
like sort of over the weekend lunch bags for the
kids that need it. Really, it was a neat way
(14:27):
for the community to come together, for corporations to come
together and take a day and make a difference. Those
volunteers working in all those projects, representing almost a two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars input into the community. If
they had to pay for those hours of volunteer hours,
almost thirty three dollars an hours what that average rate
is by the FEDS. So yeah, it's a really big
impact there. But also that goes back to sort of
(14:47):
what United Way was founded for back and we were
founded almost eighty years ago as the community chest where
community came together and said, here's the problem we want
to work on, here's the problem we want to tackle.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's sort of grown from there.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
We do a lot of grand we do a lot
of different things, but really I want to bring it
back to that really looking at what our community needs
and how we can bring the right people to the table.
Can vena group get a plan and work for it.
I mean, our theme this year is United is the
Way Together. We really can spark that change and transform
this research that we've done into solutions that'll really create
a stronger Northern Shandoah Valley but also a stronger commonwealth.
(15:20):
The Virginia and our United Away systems we're close. We
all meet once a month on Zoom and talk about
what's working in our regions, what's working in theirs, what's new,
what's different, and it's really nice to have that network.
And Angela, the CEO of United Wway Virginia, has been
a really great support to all of us to say, hey,
let me talk about this. How can we as a
state looked at this as sort of a network and
how can we all work together. We work closely with
(15:42):
the United Way of Greater Charlottesville doing their Ready Regions
work in the Northern Shandoah Valley. So it's a bunch
of us that have come together throughout it's all the
way from Winchester down to Stanton, over to Charlottesville working
to ensure that kids have an option for a strong start.
They have early childhood, they have head start, they have
a lot of work with the day with training and
coaching to keep those staffs up to breast with the
(16:03):
greatest trend so that kids really do have an ability
to jump in. We also are the hosts of the
campaign for Grade Level Reading here in Winchester, where it's
our goal to have over seventy five percent of the
third graders on grade level passing that SOL and it's
been a really great community effort with thirty partners to say, hey,
look if we can all come together and ensure these
kids can read. Third grade to that inflection point, it's
(16:24):
where kids stop learning to read and start reading to learn.
So if you can't read by then you're really at
a disadvantage going forward. So there's a lot of efforts
in the United Ways pillars of youth education and opportunity,
financial stability, health, and community resilience that really transcend from
our region to the whole state and that we all
work together on a daily basis to try to improve.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Okay, So I love what you're saying, and it sounds
very community oriented and it makes it sound like you
have a very close knit community. But you know, if
somebody listening to this doesn't live in your region and
they also have this, you know eye that everyone in
those communities that you're talking about are just the closest
friends and they just hang out all the time and
their besties, you know, and that's how they support each other.
(17:09):
Obviously that's not right. But how do we get through that,
you know, that barrier, that mental barrier that some people have.
I'm just gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps, you know,
I don't need help, you know, to get them to
accept a little bit of a hand up, not a handout.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
This has been a very hard thing. So we don't
want to talk about it like it's easy and everyone
pulls together, we are.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
To be great.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Yeah, that would be agree, That would be great. It
has been really hard. And that's where I said change
is always a struggle. And even for us the nonprofits
sometimes feel a little bit like, oh, I don't want
to step on somebody else's toes. But the idea really
comes down to if somebody wants to to make change,
I really think having a task force or some sort
(17:55):
of collaboration within their count or their community where they
tackle an issue. And I'm going to use the town
of Loray in Page County as an example. They have
a community Action team that comes together to tackle major
issues within its community, and so that was just organically
formed and recently they decided food and security was their
(18:17):
biggest issue that they were facing, and they have launched
a pilot program in their community to tackle food in security.
It's called Picked in Paige and they are doing boxes
of food that can be delivered to individuals who can't
get to the food pantries, and they're also trying to
do a social revenue model in which they're selling those
boxes of locally grown food and products so they can
(18:40):
help basically support this activity. That is a perfect example
of a community coming together to tackle a problem and
knowing that their multitude of problems going on, but deciding
this one problem is what we're going to tackle and
we're going to try to find a solution to it
and putting it in action. Andy and I have only been
here for a year and we saw that go from
(19:02):
the first talking point, the first meeting to actually being
executed now and that wasn't less than a year, and
that was thrilling.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That is thrilling. That sounds amazing. So it can be done.
It's like you said, it's gonna be hard, It's gonna
be very hard, and I think another one of those
things that we need to work on changing is those
that are in the upper middle class and even the
upper class. I don't know for sure, but I have
the tendency to think that they all are under the
(19:30):
opinion that it's poor decisions are what are leading to
these problems for Alice families in particular, and I don't
think that's necessarily true either, right, No.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
And that's one of the things that we're tackling as well,
is this preconceived notion of what a nonprofit is. And
one of the terms that we have been discussing a
lot is people have an antiquated view of what a
nonprofit is and they tie it to this charity model,
which is this idea of someone is going to come
down and provide funding and basically save this one individual
(20:03):
from whatever choices that they once made. And that is
an antiquated model and it actually does more harm than good.
Nonprofits are professional organizations that have professional individuals working to
help solve problems, and oftentimes they're not viewed as such.
And so I think one of the ways that we
can help from the perspective of our communities is the
(20:27):
communities and community leaders need to engage nonprofit professionals in
the discussions that they are having in their town. If
they are doing strategic planning, nonprofits should probably be engaged
in that strategic planning. Nonprofits should be helping advise if
there's major decisions being made, if they're talking about the
(20:47):
homeless problem, nonprofit providers should be included in those discussions.
So I think it really comes down to this idea
that we need to envision or re envision how we
look at nonprofits and how nonprofits are serving the individuals
that they work with. Many people do not know that.
You know, if a person is going to get financial
(21:08):
aid from a local nonprofit, they sometimes have to go
through financial classes to get that aid. That's not just
a handout, that is a hand up model. And a
lot of our nonprofits are doing that, and I don't
think enough people understand that they're trying to not just
band aid the situation, they're trying to fix the situation
in the long run.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, we're not charity.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
We're really that foundation of that architecture of community support.
The United Ways are unique because we take we do
collect money from so many in the communities. We are
the home of the small donor that leverage it all together.
So someone gives us five dollars a month, we can
leverage that with five hundred more people giving that, and
that that money is then taken and then when we
give out our impact grants. It's not Kim and I
(21:50):
sitting in the office going, oh, I like this idea,
I don't like that idea, and I.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Want to fund them.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's the community members coming together, evaluating those applications and
really making that decision. All we do is take, provide dinner,
and sign the checks at the end. It's really a
great process, but it's the community raising the money and
then deciding how it's funded. So it's really them addressing
the problems and the challenges that they see.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
And for us, we're seeing that.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
To be the basic needs a lot of I would
hope at some point when all the tariff things and
the cost of living goes down, hopefully we can look
at stronger issues. But right now we're really seeing that
the food shelter is our biggest needs. That people need
a place to live, they need food, they need utilities.
How do we provide that so that people can live
(22:35):
and make a difference and get back to their communities.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, most definitely, but I know there are online simulations
and things that can be done. It's specifically geared for
the wealthier people to do so that they understand how
what it is actually like. Do you guys have something
like that? Do you recommend something like that for people?
Speaker 4 (22:56):
We don't have it personally, but there are a lot
of United Ways sometimes. If you look up United Way
Poverties simulation, you can find examples all over Google that
have examples of that, And it's basically it's making hard choices.
Like we have done things like this in the past.
Before Andy and I both came to United Way, we
(23:17):
were in nonprofits in our region as well. And one
of the things that United Way used to do is
what we call this eminem game, where we would make
impossible choices. We'd have only a handful of eminem's and
we would have to make impossible choices based on what
if we were an Alice family. And the reality is
the majority of people are Alice families.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
If you have in.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
The state of Virginia right now, I think it's thirty
nine percent are Alice or below. So thirty nine percent
of the population in Virginia are making hard choices every day,
and I think this is where United Ways are really
coming together to try to discuss that that issue. If
you want to have a strong a strong workforce, you
(24:01):
have to have housing available. Andy and I have been
in discussions companies are discussing moving into an area and
one of the first questions they ask is what is
the housing, like, what is the housing? Will we be
able to have housing for our workers? And I think
now finally we're having discussions about housing abundance within the community.
(24:21):
What does that look like, what does that spectrum of
housing look like for everyone? And I think that once
you start having that discussion, it then feeds into other
discussions like well, what is the average salary in order
for my family afford to feed themselves, and then that
ends up impacting what the hourly pay is. So I
think we're at the beginning levels of having really, really
(24:42):
good discussions about how to solve this issue. And as
I said, this is a systemic problem, and systemic problems
end up having to have solutions that will create a
stronger Virginia. And I think we're kind of on the
cusp of doing that. From a United Way perspective.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, it's really about getting union members together. And as
you said earlier, if people are listening not in our region,
they can reach out to their local United Ways. They're covered,
We're covering the whole state. You also go to unitedway
dot org are the world wide website, and find your
local United Away, or honestly, just look at up nonprofits.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Near you find what you're passionate about.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I mean that I came from the corporate world after
ten years of doing that and realized I wanted to
give back and started on boards and getting involved and volunteering.
And Kim and I met through a community leadership program
and I was on her committee when she was at
Habitat and getting engaged, getting involved and asking those questions
is great. People might think, oh, I can't really do it.
I don't have Like I said earlier, if you if
you're worried about paying for groceries, you might not be
(25:39):
able to get back. Well, maybe you have an idea,
or you're crafty, or you're good at something. Reach out
to a nonprofit you're passionate about, get engaged, get involved.
We're never going to say no to help. Someone called
and said, hey, I'm really good at data entry. Would
you need to help, Yes, please come on in things
like that. You need everything from admin to we might
have an event that if you want to volunteer at.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Those are always great. Check out for Day of carings.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
They're all sort of around around the calendar to each
unit a wait does a different one and to do
it different ways. But it's a way to volunteer, meet
new nonprofits, get engaged, get out there and make a difference,
and just try to be a good human and improve
your community.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I love that, and we're coming up close to the
end of our time, but I wanted to ask you
this for people who are listening and maybe they themselves,
they're maybe in the Alice group, but they want to
encourage people who have resources to get involved. Obviously they
can reach out to their elected officials. How do we
approach corporate America and business owners and how do we
(26:37):
influence them to share more of the wealth from the
top down or their ideas about that, And.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I think it's really a conversation.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You have to look, we do a lot of research
coming from the corporate world and now doing a lot
of corporate grants. You have to understand how where their
missions are aligned. So many do have great corporate social responsibility.
The banks are legally required to do it. Other corporations
do it because they care. I mean, we have some
great ones in our reach that really do give and
give back both in dollars in time.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well, and I think that's I think that's where where
we misunderstood each other. I'm not talking about giving to
charities because obviously there's a lot of motivation for that
because there's tax right else. I'm talking about paying your
people more. How do we get the people at the
top to release more of their own incomes, their own profits, whatever,
to pay the people at the bottom more so that
(27:24):
we have less alice families. It's one thing to do charity,
but like we said, charitable things are not sustainable. What
we need is corporate America and those with the largest
buckets of money to not donate, but to pay their
employees more. Has there been discussion about that.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
And I think that it's really important for everyone to
get involved in their community. Easy ways to get involved
in start having those discussions is to get involved with
your chamber. You're like your local at chamber of commerce.
Because oftentimes those chamber of commerces have the ability to
talk about improving wages, how to stabilize you know, stabilize
(28:05):
the community, and the idea from the example of economic development.
You know, get engaged with your economic development committee or
your economic development department and start engaging in those conversations.
Engage with your local officials.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I really am.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Being able to set down and talk about the data
and what the data means economically in the community, I
think is one of the key elements to begin those discussions.
And as I said, structural change is always hard in
they're hard conversations that sometimes people don't really want to
engage in. But if you can start having those conversations
(28:44):
with individuals, or if you can get a task force
of people together to have those conversations, I think that's
one of the best ways to start. And so it's
a lot of what ends up happening is there's a
lot of trust building that ends up having to come
from the community members and elected officials. So that's a
(29:05):
hard thing to do, but it really comes from a
grassroots effort of trying to engage and again I am
a big proponent of starting to go to your chamber
and talking to your chamber about these things.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, it's gonna take collective voices to shift the needle.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yes, most definitely, and I apologize. I really actually have
just one more question, but I guess we'll have to
skip it for today. We'll have to talk again soon, though. Yeah,
we're up at the end of our time. Thank you
all so much for making time for me. I really
really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Thank you for having us always happy to chat.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News Network,
and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. On this episode, we're putting the spotlight on Alice.
Who is Alice? You may wonder well. Alice lives in
every community and can be found working in a diverse
range of careers, including essential workers such as teachers, healthcare providers,
and retail clerks. United Way describes alice households as those
(00:27):
who have incomes above the poverty level, but do not
earn enough money to afford basic survival budget in their community,
forcing them to make impossible choices between necessities like food, housing, childcare,
and healthcare. Let's learn more. Welcome to the show. I'm
so glad you guys can make time for me today.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you for having it.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
It's always great to get the word out and explain
more about what the United Ways do throughout the commonwealth.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Definitely, so let's start there. Because we have two people
on the show today with your organization, why don't you
both introduce yourselves to the audience and kind of give
an idea of what your role is in United Way.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm Adie Gale and the President and CEO of the
United Way of Northern Shandoah Valley. We are one of
the seventeen United Ways throughout the Commonwealth. We cover the
city of Winchester, Frederick, Clark, Warren, Sheanandoa and Page Counties
in Virginia, sort of the top of the northern Shandoah Valley.
We work closely with the other sixteen United Ways and
the United Way of Virginia to sort of ensure that
our community and our state are doing well and our
(01:25):
citizens are able to live, work and live a happy life.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
And my name is Kimberly Wilt and I'm the director
of Impact and Advancement. And unlike Andy, I work a
little bit more just with the nonprofits directly within our
region and helps in hopes of making them have greater impact,
partner together and tackle problems using like pilot programs and
different things along those lines. We usually look at basic
needs and the needs of our community in order to
(01:52):
direct that funding.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I love that. That's a great intro. Thank you guys
so much. I know today what we're talking about is
we hear on the news all the headlines about tariffs
and how that's going to impact prices and the economy
and inflation and how that's going to impact low income people,
and those are all very important things to talk about.
But what I want to talk about are the ALICE families.
(02:14):
Would one of you be willing to explain to the
audience what ALICE families are and what that ALICE report is?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
So. ALICE is an acronym for asset limited, income constrained employed.
While the term can sound narrow and some may hear
it is sort of gendered or exclusive, the framework is
actually inclusionary. ALICE doesn't describe one group, but rather it's
a reality shared by families, seniors, young adults, and household
across every background in the whole state and especially in
our valley.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay, And what makes an ALICE family different from a
low income family.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So ALICE helps to see what the federal proverty level misses.
It's the families who work hard but aren't too much
to qualify for assistance and too little to really cover
the cost of living that we've seen increase month week
after week. It really helps make the invisible struggles visible
and drives us towards inclusive solutions that sort of help
the community as a whole.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Okay, how do you think that our current state of
the world is affecting these Alice families. Have you seen
increases in the number of Alice families or let's talk
about that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, we're seeing a lot. I mean really, if you
look at our six locality, sort of the top of Virginia,
four out of ten households and our regions live behold
sort of at that Alice threshold where they have enough
to cover three weeks of the month, but struggling that
fourth or some people can cover too. It's really just
seeing the cost of living, the cost of everything. That's
people that don't say qualify for the support programs, but
(03:35):
still are struggling to make that ends meet. We use
a lot of data in our work. Kim So been
really great at bringing that in and making it really
visible on our website for the communities, for other nonprofits.
One of those sources is two to one to one Virginia.
That's a helpline that the commonwealth in the United Ways
have come together to support. So all you have to
do on your phone is dial two one one. You'll
be connected to a resource navigation line that the state covers,
(03:55):
and we see that data each month in the last
quarter of the calls we've gotten in our region fifty
point nine percent we're for housing and shelter. That's rent assistance,
that's mortgage assistance, followed quickly by twenty one percent with utilities,
so a majority of that's electric. What we've seen since
we're in the summer, and we're probably going to in
that little transition now, we're going to start seeing that
shift towards heating and fuel oil.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
But we cover everything from food, utilities, healthcare, mental health,
employment and income, clothing and household needs, childcare, government and
legal support, transportation, education. There is a disaster preparedness mine,
but luckily Virginia has not had any of those sins
the happenings in Southwest last year. But really it's a
neat way for the community to reach out and get help.
(04:36):
It connects both to local organizations but also for some
of the state programs that many might not know exist.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Okay, and do you find that these Alice households maybe
are not aware that this is an option because maybe
they've seek you know, reached out for help in the
past and we're turned down because of their income level.
I mean, how are we seeing these programs changed to
include those people, and that might be a question for you,
kim Well.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
One of the things that we are seeing is more
and more nonprofits analyzing the individuals that they serve and
how they can broaden or expand their programs in order
to help Alice families. Alice families are making impossible choices
right now, and that is one of the truths. We
talk about this all the time. It's like the choice
between paying rent or paying for childcare. Their paychecks are
(05:24):
just not stretching far enough right now, and these choices
end up stripping away like the foundation families need for food,
shelter instability. That means that more and more of these
families are turning to things like food pantries to make
up for the cost of groceries, and that is one
of the things that we knowed Andy and I see
directly that the food pantries are disturbcing more and more people.
(05:46):
So that's one of the things that we can look
at directly. The other thing that we end up seeing
is that this has a ripple effect that not enough
people talk about. When Alice families struggle, basically, your community
has an inability to thrive, the families end up struggling
in school, they end up the small businesses end up
struggling because you're not investing in them. You're not going
(06:06):
to go and buy like a piece of art for
us on the downtown walking mall because hey, you can't
afford your groceries right now. So the little incidental things
that you might have purchased or at Tinker Toys or
something like that for your kid, you're not doing that
right now. And really, our whole valley's economy is weakened.
And so that's one of the things that Andy and
(06:26):
I are really trying to talk about more is how
do we talk about the economic impact that struggling families
are having on our community, because if there is an
issue with that, we can hopefully come together to have
a better solution. I do have a fact for us.
The average Alice household falls short by almost thirty seven
(06:46):
thousand dollars a year based on their survival budget. So
that means what they're making and what their survival budget
needs to be. That's almost a forty thousand dollars gap,
which ends up adding almost like a one point three
billion dollar annual shortfall just across the order that and
shut into a valley and that means that the nonprofits
(07:08):
alone can't fix that gap. So we have to have larger,
more innovative solutions to help individuals.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And I love that you said that because that was
actually my next thought in my next question was I mean, obviously,
you know people especially we're talking lower middle class I'm
assuming and maybe some you know, upper lower class. The
charities can't support those people indefinitely. They can't continue to
help them with rental assistance and mortgage assistants and food
and utilities and all the bills that they're short on indefinitely.
(07:40):
That just is not something that's sustainable. Have you seen
anything in regards to lawmakers embracing the Alice Report, Because
this Alice Report has been out for a while, right,
but I haven't seen or heard any lawmakers talking about it.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
So we're getting the word out that's sort of the
work that all the United Ways, across the Commonwealth and
as well as the global network are working towards. The
Alice Report is updated. So the twenty twenty five report
just came out. We're pretty excited to use those numbers.
Look at what it means in district six hours alone,
if you look at just the rent. We were talking
about affording that and the rent subsidies. The fair market
(08:15):
rent for a two bedroom is it's almost seventeen hundred
a month, but the average renter's wage is like seventeen
dollars an hour, and the wage really needed to afford
that is almost thirty three dollars an hour. So the
workers have to work an average of seventy five point
four hours a week to just afford household a space
to live. It's not a matter of where do you
(08:36):
get groceries, childcare clothes, something happens to the car. It's
one emergency away from disaster, and it's really how we
want to tell that story when we get to the lawmakers.
We've done a lot of work with a nonprofit Advuracy
task Force that we're leading with others up here in
Winchester to have those conversations. Senator Kane actually came and
met with about seventeen of our nonprofit partners to talk
(08:58):
about the impacts of the big beautiful bit and how
those cuts the nonprofits ripple down. It wasn't a part
of an issue for us. We're really looking at those
those local effects. We've distilled it down to these cuts
are going to affect the ability for SEACAP to provide
food for family, promise to do rental assistance for Shando,
Alliance of Shelter, to help with housing vouchers, things like that.
(09:18):
So it's these little things that may not see it
in the big picture, but really are affecting everyone in
our communities.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, most definitely. And I read a statistic actually recently
that said, in the last ten years, we've seen the
one percenters, the most wealthy people on the planet, gain
an additional almost thirty four trillion dollars in wealth. And
I don't know about you, but I've watched multiple reports
(09:45):
of companies, you know, quarter after quarter, year after year
reporting oh, a new record revenue, new record revenue, new
record revenue, and profits and all these you know, we're
making more money, We're making more money, and yet no
one that I know of is seeing in changes to
their salary, They're not seeing changes to their benefits. Obviously,
we want to be careful when we ask lawmakers to
(10:07):
jump in on something like that, because those are the
kind of things that you know, you would hope the
person at the top has a conscious and cares about
people and would naturally allow those benefits to trickle down
because you don't want to force too much because then
you're forcing stuff that could be manipulated in a very
wrong way. But I mean, are you guys seeing an
increase in large corporations donating or individuals donating larger amounts
(10:31):
of money, you know, to help out with this situation.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
We're seeing a little bit of both.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I think if people hear the story and they're passionate
about it, they want to help. But also at the
same time, we're seeing those individual donors that have been
giving from their paychecks slightly decrease their giving because if
it's going to cost seven bucks to buy a twelve
pack of eggs, you got to make that decision of Okay,
do I feed my family or how do I help?
And they're giving back in other ways. We just had
our Day of Caring. We had over a thousand volunteers
(10:57):
working on seventy five projects across the valley. That really
made a big difference. So people can give their time,
their talents, or their treasures. It's really interesting. But we're
seeing companies want to step up. Some companies want to
focus on education, some want to focus on workforce, some
focus on basic needs. We actually had a funder reach
out and want to invest in the rural counties and
we were able to pass through one hundred thousand dollars
(11:19):
down to basic needs in Warren, Shanda and Page counties.
So we're seeing people step up. But I mean, meeting
immediate needs like food or rent relief is vital, but
it's never going to really be enough on its own.
Real resilience requires change in the systems that keep families
one paycheck away from crisis. So what we're trying to
do as a United Way here is connect services into
a stronger net by aligning nonprofits, schools, health providers, employers
(11:42):
so that we ensure that families don't really fall through
those gaps when support runs out. But we have to
do that by turning these big challenges into practical pilots.
We want to work with the state and local leaders
to funnel broad issues like housing abundance and to focus
attackable solutions that can be scaled across the valley and
hopefully across the commonwealth. So it's really going to be
a group effort to make those things, and really it's
(12:02):
uniting partners. So we can't do this alone. We can't
do this as just United Way. We can't do this
just as a community. It's going to take work of
all of us coming together with these shared priorities and
driving the accountability, collaboration and really this collective momentum to
make great change.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
And I always say that we're more than just a funder.
That's what United Way has often been viewed as as, Oh,
United Way just funds these issues. But Andy and I
want to approach it in a totally different way, and
so we always approach things from the idea that we
are more than just a funder. We like to bring
people together, we like to strategize, we like to build partnerships,
and these partnerships are starting to reimagine what stability looks
(12:38):
like in our region, and that's something that actually can
be replicated across the state of Virginia. So it moves
beyond like these household level fixes towards systemic solutions that
we can scale. And so that's really where we're trying
to tackle the issues at hand. Because this is going
to take a lot of and a lot of change.
(13:02):
People will resist naturally, so we have to make people
understand what the gaps are and what is the impact
of these gaps. So we're really trying to design a
shared commitment for everyone within our region to tackle these issues.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I love that, and I think we're seeing that in
things like I don't remember the statistic, but a large
percentage of people who work also have a side hustle.
But what you're describing, in my mind, the first thing
that comes to my mind is things like barn raisings.
Like back in the day, you know, when everyone was
agricultural and you needed a new barn. Maybe you provided
(13:40):
all the materials and maybe you even hosted a barn
dance after it was done, but you relied on your
community to kind of come together, even if you didn't
always agree on everything, to support you, to help you
build said barn so that you could continue your livelihood
to provide not only for your family but for your community.
Can you give some examples of that is as far
(14:01):
as what you guys are working on now, because I mean,
we don't really need that many barns now.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
I mean really, Day of Caring was last Friday, so
we had those thousand volunteers across the valley doing everything
from gardening and clean up at the Evans Home in
Winchester to helping move into the Rescue Mission's new facility.
We had people working with Bright Futures to pack school
like sort of over the weekend lunch bags for the
kids that need it. Really, it was a neat way
(14:27):
for the community to come together, for corporations to come
together and take a day and make a difference. Those
volunteers working in all those projects, representing almost a two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars input into the community. If
they had to pay for those hours of volunteer hours,
almost thirty three dollars an hours what that average rate
is by the FEDS. So yeah, it's a really big
impact there. But also that goes back to sort of
(14:47):
what United Way was founded for back and we were
founded almost eighty years ago as the community chest where
community came together and said, here's the problem we want
to work on, here's the problem we want to tackle.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's sort of grown from there.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
We do a lot of grand we do a lot
of different things, but really I want to bring it
back to that really looking at what our community needs
and how we can bring the right people to the table.
Can vena group get a plan and work for it.
I mean, our theme this year is United is the
Way Together. We really can spark that change and transform
this research that we've done into solutions that'll really create
a stronger Northern Shandoah Valley but also a stronger commonwealth.
(15:20):
The Virginia and our United Away systems we're close. We
all meet once a month on Zoom and talk about
what's working in our regions, what's working in theirs, what's new,
what's different, and it's really nice to have that network.
And Angela, the CEO of United Wway Virginia, has been
a really great support to all of us to say, hey,
let me talk about this. How can we as a
state looked at this as sort of a network and
how can we all work together. We work closely with
(15:42):
the United Way of Greater Charlottesville doing their Ready Regions
work in the Northern Shandoah Valley. So it's a bunch
of us that have come together throughout it's all the
way from Winchester down to Stanton, over to Charlottesville working
to ensure that kids have an option for a strong start.
They have early childhood, they have head start, they have
a lot of work with the day with training and
coaching to keep those staffs up to breast with the
(16:03):
greatest trend so that kids really do have an ability
to jump in. We also are the hosts of the
campaign for Grade Level Reading here in Winchester, where it's
our goal to have over seventy five percent of the
third graders on grade level passing that SOL and it's
been a really great community effort with thirty partners to say, hey,
look if we can all come together and ensure these
kids can read. Third grade to that inflection point, it's
(16:24):
where kids stop learning to read and start reading to learn.
So if you can't read by then you're really at
a disadvantage going forward. So there's a lot of efforts
in the United Ways pillars of youth education and opportunity,
financial stability, health, and community resilience that really transcend from
our region to the whole state and that we all
work together on a daily basis to try to improve.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Okay, So I love what you're saying, and it sounds
very community oriented and it makes it sound like you
have a very close knit community. But you know, if
somebody listening to this doesn't live in your region and
they also have this, you know eye that everyone in
those communities that you're talking about are just the closest
friends and they just hang out all the time and
their besties, you know, and that's how they support each other.
(17:09):
Obviously that's not right. But how do we get through that,
you know, that barrier, that mental barrier that some people have.
I'm just gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps, you know,
I don't need help, you know, to get them to
accept a little bit of a hand up, not a handout.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
This has been a very hard thing. So we don't
want to talk about it like it's easy and everyone
pulls together, we are.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
To be great.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Yeah, that would be agree, That would be great. It
has been really hard. And that's where I said change
is always a struggle. And even for us the nonprofits
sometimes feel a little bit like, oh, I don't want
to step on somebody else's toes. But the idea really
comes down to if somebody wants to to make change,
I really think having a task force or some sort
(17:55):
of collaboration within their count or their community where they
tackle an issue. And I'm going to use the town
of Loray in Page County as an example. They have
a community Action team that comes together to tackle major
issues within its community, and so that was just organically
formed and recently they decided food and security was their
(18:17):
biggest issue that they were facing, and they have launched
a pilot program in their community to tackle food in security.
It's called Picked in Paige and they are doing boxes
of food that can be delivered to individuals who can't
get to the food pantries, and they're also trying to
do a social revenue model in which they're selling those
boxes of locally grown food and products so they can
(18:40):
help basically support this activity. That is a perfect example
of a community coming together to tackle a problem and
knowing that their multitude of problems going on, but deciding
this one problem is what we're going to tackle and
we're going to try to find a solution to it
and putting it in action. Andy and I have only been
here for a year and we saw that go from
(19:02):
the first talking point, the first meeting to actually being
executed now and that wasn't less than a year, and
that was thrilling.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That is thrilling. That sounds amazing. So it can be done.
It's like you said, it's gonna be hard, It's gonna
be very hard, and I think another one of those
things that we need to work on changing is those
that are in the upper middle class and even the
upper class. I don't know for sure, but I have
the tendency to think that they all are under the
(19:30):
opinion that it's poor decisions are what are leading to
these problems for Alice families in particular, and I don't
think that's necessarily true either, right, No.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
And that's one of the things that we're tackling as well,
is this preconceived notion of what a nonprofit is. And
one of the terms that we have been discussing a
lot is people have an antiquated view of what a
nonprofit is and they tie it to this charity model,
which is this idea of someone is going to come
down and provide funding and basically save this one individual
(20:03):
from whatever choices that they once made. And that is
an antiquated model and it actually does more harm than good.
Nonprofits are professional organizations that have professional individuals working to
help solve problems, and oftentimes they're not viewed as such.
And so I think one of the ways that we
can help from the perspective of our communities is the
(20:27):
communities and community leaders need to engage nonprofit professionals in
the discussions that they are having in their town. If
they are doing strategic planning, nonprofits should probably be engaged
in that strategic planning. Nonprofits should be helping advise if
there's major decisions being made, if they're talking about the
(20:47):
homeless problem, nonprofit providers should be included in those discussions.
So I think it really comes down to this idea
that we need to envision or re envision how we
look at nonprofits and how nonprofits are serving the individuals
that they work with. Many people do not know that.
You know, if a person is going to get financial
(21:08):
aid from a local nonprofit, they sometimes have to go
through financial classes to get that aid. That's not just
a handout, that is a hand up model. And a
lot of our nonprofits are doing that, and I don't
think enough people understand that they're trying to not just
band aid the situation, they're trying to fix the situation
in the long run.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, we're not charity.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
We're really that foundation of that architecture of community support.
The United Ways are unique because we take we do
collect money from so many in the communities. We are
the home of the small donor that leverage it all together.
So someone gives us five dollars a month, we can
leverage that with five hundred more people giving that, and
that that money is then taken and then when we
give out our impact grants. It's not Kim and I
(21:50):
sitting in the office going, oh, I like this idea,
I don't like that idea, and I.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Want to fund them.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's the community members coming together, evaluating those applications and
really making that decision. All we do is take, provide dinner,
and sign the checks at the end. It's really a
great process, but it's the community raising the money and
then deciding how it's funded. So it's really them addressing
the problems and the challenges that they see.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
And for us, we're seeing that.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
To be the basic needs a lot of I would
hope at some point when all the tariff things and
the cost of living goes down, hopefully we can look
at stronger issues. But right now we're really seeing that
the food shelter is our biggest needs. That people need
a place to live, they need food, they need utilities.
How do we provide that so that people can live
(22:35):
and make a difference and get back to their communities.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, most definitely, but I know there are online simulations
and things that can be done. It's specifically geared for
the wealthier people to do so that they understand how
what it is actually like. Do you guys have something
like that? Do you recommend something like that for people?
Speaker 4 (22:56):
We don't have it personally, but there are a lot
of United Ways sometimes. If you look up United Way
Poverties simulation, you can find examples all over Google that
have examples of that, And it's basically it's making hard choices.
Like we have done things like this in the past.
Before Andy and I both came to United Way, we
(23:17):
were in nonprofits in our region as well. And one
of the things that United Way used to do is
what we call this eminem game, where we would make
impossible choices. We'd have only a handful of eminem's and
we would have to make impossible choices based on what
if we were an Alice family. And the reality is
the majority of people are Alice families.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
If you have in.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
The state of Virginia right now, I think it's thirty
nine percent are Alice or below. So thirty nine percent
of the population in Virginia are making hard choices every day,
and I think this is where United Ways are really
coming together to try to discuss that that issue. If
you want to have a strong a strong workforce, you
(24:01):
have to have housing available. Andy and I have been
in discussions companies are discussing moving into an area and
one of the first questions they ask is what is
the housing, like, what is the housing? Will we be
able to have housing for our workers? And I think
now finally we're having discussions about housing abundance within the community.
(24:21):
What does that look like, what does that spectrum of
housing look like for everyone? And I think that once
you start having that discussion, it then feeds into other
discussions like well, what is the average salary in order
for my family afford to feed themselves, and then that
ends up impacting what the hourly pay is. So I
think we're at the beginning levels of having really, really
(24:42):
good discussions about how to solve this issue. And as
I said, this is a systemic problem, and systemic problems
end up having to have solutions that will create a
stronger Virginia. And I think we're kind of on the
cusp of doing that. From a United Way perspective.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, it's really about getting union members together. And as
you said earlier, if people are listening not in our region,
they can reach out to their local United Ways. They're covered,
We're covering the whole state. You also go to unitedway
dot org are the world wide website, and find your
local United Away, or honestly, just look at up nonprofits.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Near you find what you're passionate about.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I mean that I came from the corporate world after
ten years of doing that and realized I wanted to
give back and started on boards and getting involved and volunteering.
And Kim and I met through a community leadership program
and I was on her committee when she was at
Habitat and getting engaged, getting involved and asking those questions
is great. People might think, oh, I can't really do it.
I don't have Like I said earlier, if you if
you're worried about paying for groceries, you might not be
(25:39):
able to get back. Well, maybe you have an idea,
or you're crafty, or you're good at something. Reach out
to a nonprofit you're passionate about, get engaged, get involved.
We're never going to say no to help. Someone called
and said, hey, I'm really good at data entry. Would
you need to help, Yes, please come on in things
like that. You need everything from admin to we might
have an event that if you want to volunteer at.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Those are always great. Check out for Day of carings.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
They're all sort of around around the calendar to each
unit a wait does a different one and to do
it different ways. But it's a way to volunteer, meet
new nonprofits, get engaged, get out there and make a difference,
and just try to be a good human and improve
your community.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I love that, and we're coming up close to the
end of our time, but I wanted to ask you
this for people who are listening and maybe they themselves,
they're maybe in the Alice group, but they want to
encourage people who have resources to get involved. Obviously they
can reach out to their elected officials. How do we
approach corporate America and business owners and how do we
(26:37):
influence them to share more of the wealth from the
top down or their ideas about that, And.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I think it's really a conversation.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You have to look, we do a lot of research
coming from the corporate world and now doing a lot
of corporate grants. You have to understand how where their
missions are aligned. So many do have great corporate social responsibility.
The banks are legally required to do it. Other corporations
do it because they care. I mean, we have some
great ones in our reach that really do give and
give back both in dollars in time.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well, and I think that's I think that's where where
we misunderstood each other. I'm not talking about giving to
charities because obviously there's a lot of motivation for that
because there's tax right else. I'm talking about paying your
people more. How do we get the people at the
top to release more of their own incomes, their own profits, whatever,
to pay the people at the bottom more so that
(27:24):
we have less alice families. It's one thing to do charity,
but like we said, charitable things are not sustainable. What
we need is corporate America and those with the largest
buckets of money to not donate, but to pay their
employees more. Has there been discussion about that.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
And I think that it's really important for everyone to
get involved in their community. Easy ways to get involved
in start having those discussions is to get involved with
your chamber. You're like your local at chamber of commerce.
Because oftentimes those chamber of commerces have the ability to
talk about improving wages, how to stabilize you know, stabilize
(28:05):
the community, and the idea from the example of economic development.
You know, get engaged with your economic development committee or
your economic development department and start engaging in those conversations.
Engage with your local officials.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I really am.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Being able to set down and talk about the data
and what the data means economically in the community, I
think is one of the key elements to begin those discussions.
And as I said, structural change is always hard in
they're hard conversations that sometimes people don't really want to
engage in. But if you can start having those conversations
(28:44):
with individuals, or if you can get a task force
of people together to have those conversations, I think that's
one of the best ways to start. And so it's
a lot of what ends up happening is there's a
lot of trust building that ends up having to come
from the community members and elected officials. So that's a
(29:05):
hard thing to do, but it really comes from a
grassroots effort of trying to engage and again I am
a big proponent of starting to go to your chamber
and talking to your chamber about these things.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, it's gonna take collective voices to shift the needle.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yes, most definitely, and I apologize. I really actually have
just one more question, but I guess we'll have to
skip it for today. We'll have to talk again soon, though. Yeah,
we're up at the end of our time. Thank you
all so much for making time for me. I really
really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Thank you for having us always happy to chat.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News Network,
and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus
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