Category Archives: Community

9/11 Memorial Stair Climb – First Leg of Pentathlon of Pain

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My buddy Bert Wray was kind enough to set me up to participate in the 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb that he helps put on at Proehlific Park in Greensboro. 110 sets of stairs (up and down = 1) and if you’re so inclined you can carry a fire hose while doing it. I did the 110, the last 10 with the hose. Great time and a great way to commemorate 9/11, raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project and for me to start my campaign for Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC. FYI, Bert and his crew raised hundreds of dollars for the Wounded Warrior Project!

Here’s a link to the GoFundMe page I set up for the Pentathlon of Pain:
Donate Here!

Here’s a few videos that Bert shot while I was torturing myself:

My Pentathlon of Pain for Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC

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JonTutuHeels
I’ve been talking about this for a while, but now I’ve finally decided to pull the trigger. From 9/11/15 to 10/11/15 I’m going to engage in what I’ve dubbed Jon’s Pentathlon of Pain to raise money and awareness for Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC. What exactly is it? Actually it’s pretty simple: it’s five physically trying or embarrassing activities that I will undertake to raise money on behalf of the food bank. Here’s how it will work:

  • Someone sponsors me for a certain amount of money and they get to pick the embarrassing or physically challenging thing I will do. For example I jumped in a pool last year wearing a tiara, tutu and high heals and with a slogan painted on my back. In exchange the Blue Ridge Companies gave hundreds of dollars to Second Harvest.
  • Another option is that I will do something trying and people will donate to the food bank after I complete the task. So if I run 15 miles then they’ll donate a dollar a mile – that kind of thing.

So how can you help? Well I’ve already signed up to do the 9/11 World Trade Center memorial stair climb. That’s 110 flights of stairs I will climb and descend on the morning of the 11th. You could agree to donate a certain amount per flight if you’d like. Or you can suggest an activity and have your company sponsor it. I’ll gladly promote your company in the process and every single dollar will go to Second Harvest.

If you want to simply make a donation just visit GoFundMe page I set up for the campaign. Or check out the schedule below and if you see an available slot and you have something crazy or challenging for me to do, then just reach out and see what we can work out!

Schedule of Events

  1. Sep 11, 2015: World Trade Center Memorial Stair climb – I’m gonna climb 100 stories!
  2. Sep 26, 2015: Salem Lake 30K Trail Race – I’ve never run more than 13.1 before and I have NOT been training beyond my normal routine so this is gonna hurt.
  3. To Be Determined. You can submit a proposal via email here.
  4. To Be Determined. You can submit a proposal via email here.
  5. To Be Determined. You can submit a proposal via email here.

Pamper Yourself (or Your Favorite Lady) and Help Feed the Hungry in the Process

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Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC has a great event coming up next Sunday that offers a unique opportunity to have some fun and help feed the hungry in the process. It’s called Wine, Women & Shoes and it will be held at Revolution Mills in Greensboro from 3-6 p.m. on Sunday, October 12, 2014. Details below and you can visit the website to order tickets.

Housing First

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An article in The New Yorker looks at a more effective approach to dealing with chronic homelessness:

In 2005, Utah set out to fix a problem that’s often thought of as unfixable: chronic homelessness. The state had almost two thousand chronically homeless people. Most of them had mental-health or substance-abuse issues, or both. At the time, the standard approach was to try to make homeless people “housing ready”: first, you got people into shelters or halfway houses and put them into treatment; only when they made progress could they get a chance at permanent housing. Utah, though, embraced a different strategy, called Housing First: it started by just giving the homeless homes…

…Housing First has saved the government money. Homeless people are not cheap to take care of. The cost of shelters, emergency-room visits, ambulances, police, and so on quickly piles up. Lloyd Pendleton, the director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, told me of one individual whose care one year cost nearly a million dollars, and said that, with the traditional approach, the average chronically homeless person used to cost Salt Lake City more than twenty thousand dollars a year. Putting someone into permanent housing costs the state just eight thousand dollars, and that’s after you include the cost of the case managers who work with the formerly homeless to help them adjust. The same is true elsewhere. A Colorado study found that the average homeless person cost the state forty-three thousand dollars a year, while housing that person would cost just seventeen thousand dollars.

Here in the Triad the Greensboro-based Partners Ending Homelessness started a Housing First initiative in February, 2014:

Partners Ending Homelessness, a partner agency of United Way of Greater Greensboro, says the “Housing First” initiative it launched in February is providing access to stable housing to 28 formerly homeless households.

The initiative by the agency, a collaborative effort that includes 80 community partners, was funded in 2013 with a $1 million grant from the Phillips Foundation to address the needs of the chronically homeless.

The agency says it needs to secure roughly $2.5 million over the next four years from public and private sources to expand the program.

The effort in Greensboro is already paying dividends:

The early results reflect the experiences of the first five participants in the year before joining the program and in the six months after joining program.

In addition to paying for a consultant who has worked with other communities, the money has been used to develop an Assertive Community Treatment Team for long-term housing support and case management, the highest level of mental health service available short of hospitalization.

“Although $1 million seems like we are spending a lot of money, the statistics are showing we are saving a lot of money,” said the Rev. Mike Aiken of Greensboro Urban Ministry, one of the partners in Ending Homelessness.

“People are being housed and supported. We were absolutely sold on it.”

The number of emergency room visits also dropped, from eight to none. The cost of housing these people dropped from $30,650 in shelters to $8,927 in rent for their new homes. And the number of nights spent in jail dropped from 28 to none.

Our Rapidly Changing Culture

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Making the social media rounds recently was this observation shared on Craigslist by the management of a New York City restaurant who were trying to figure out why service was so much slower in 2014 than in 2004 despite a simplified menu and increased staff size. They found security footage from 2004 and compared it to current footage. Some results they shared in their post:

Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone (sorry we have no clue what they are doing and do not monitor customer WIFI activity).

26 out of 45 customers spend an average of 3 minutes taking photos of the food.

14 out of 45 customers take pictures of each other with the food in front of them or as they are eating the food. This takes on average another 4 minutes as they must review and sometimes retake the photo.

9 out of 45 customers sent their food back to reheat. Obviously if they didn’t pause to do whatever on their phone the food wouldn’t have gotten cold.

27 out of 45 customers asked their waiter to take a group photo. 14 of those requested the waiter retake the photo as they were not pleased with the first photo. On average this entire process between the chit chatting and reviewing the photo taken added another 5 minutes and obviously caused the waiter not to be able to take care of other tables he/she was serving.

Given in most cases the customers are constantly busy on their phones it took an average of 20 minutes more from when they were done eating until they requested a check. Furthermore once the check was delivered it took 15 minutes longer than 10 years ago for them to pay and leave.

8 out of 45 customers bumped into other customers or in one case a waiter (texting while walking) as they were either walking in or out of the Restaurant. 

They studied 45 customers in both cases and found that, on average, the time spent in the restaurant went from 1:05 in 2004 to 1:55 in 2014. It’s fairly safe to assume that other service businesses are experiencing similar behavioral changes in their customers, and it’s stunning to think about how quickly it’s happened.

BTW, I’m a notorious food-porner, but I can’t imagine taking more than 10 or 15 seconds to snap a pic of my snapper. I like my food way too much to waste more time than necessary before I dig in.

Why We Help Second Harvest

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At the day job we’ve been running annual food drives for Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC for ten years. Every year we try to do better than the last and so I find myself doing what appear to be silly or crazy things to gin up publicity and interest for our efforts – things like wearing a pink tutu while jumping into a pool with the word EPIC painted on my back. You may wonder why someone would do something that odd, but when you read about some of the programs that Second Harvest supports it becomes clear that a little embarrassment is the least we can do for an organization that fills a vital role for our community. Scott Sexton’s column in today’s Winston-Salem Journal brings us the story of one of those programs:

In six short months, the H.O.P.E. truck has become a staple in neighborhoods where fresh food is often a rumor.

It is part of a larger project dreamed up by Tennille and his wife, Marty, a retired couple with hearts as big as their imaginations. When they learned that children in Winston-Salem are more likely to go hungry than kids in Detroit or Chicago, they were horrified.

But instead of wringing their hands, stamping their feet in protest or simply writing a check, they decided to do something about it…

Since it started rolling in January, H.O.P.E. of Winston-Salem has mushroomed into something of which the entire community should be proud.

The Tennilles pick up items from the Second Harvest Food Bank and 50-pound bags of fresh food donated by the Vernon Produce Co. during the week.

A small group of volunteers meets every Saturday in a retreat center at the Children’s Home, where they set up an assembly line to make healthy bag lunches for kids and to box up fresh produce for adults who come with them. Groups from a variety of churches assemble lunches at their buildings, too, and pack them into giant coolers so a volunteer can pick them up later.

Around noon on Sundays, more volunteers start to trickle in at The Children’s Home to load the truck and a similarly painted minivan. The entire operation runs like Swiss trains; it stops at the same places every Sunday at the same time. By the time it finishes, more than 700 children get to eat and a few dozen food boxes are distributed.

By the way if you want to help us support Second Harvest you can do so by making a donation at helpsecondharvest.com. Also, if you want to see me embarrass myself yet again you can drive by the Robinhood Court Apartments and Villas this Thursday (July 10) from 4-5 p.m. where I’ll be part of “Two Guys Wearing Prom Dresses” to raise funds for Second Harvest. You guessed it: I’ll be wearing a dress. Here’s a handy map for you find us:

PTAA Food Drive for Second Harvest

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Each year my employer, the Piedmont Triad Apartment Association, puts on a food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC. The folks at WPTI were kind enough to have Dale Holder, our food drive committee chair, and yours truly on their Triad View Points show to talk about it. Here’s the interview:

A Revival of Compassion, Part II

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Earlier this week I wrote a post that was prompted by Rev. Mike Aiken's letter to the editor that calls into question our elected leaders' compassion for the poor. In that letter he wrote:

Congress continues to debate proposed massive cuts to the food stamp program. As a result of a computer glitch at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, the demand for emergency food bags more than doubled overnight. With the decision not to extend unemployment benefits, 12,000 Triad families are facing homelessness. In July, Urban Ministry assisted many of these families with more than $52,000 in direct assistance. The decision of our legislature not to accept federal Medicaid funding that would cover an additional 500,000 North Carolina medically indigent residents was a major factor in the decision to close the HealthServe Medical Clinic at the end of August.

Rev. Aiken is the Executive Director of Greensboro Urban Ministry and thus has an up close and personal view of the effects these cuts in government programs are having. His organization is being stretched thin trying to keep up with the increased need, and his isn't the only one. From an opinion piece in yesterday's Winston-Salem Journal written by David Heinen, director of public policy and advocacy for the NC Center for Nonprofits, and Holly Welch Stubbing, senior vice president and in-house counsel for Foundation for the Carolinas:

Sequestration spending cuts may cause members of Congress to assume nonprofits in our communities will always be able to fill the gaps in providing basic safety net programs. The reality, however, is that the ongoing effects of the recession have placed such a strain on nonprofits that many lack the capacity to take on this added responsibility.

The workload of many nonprofits has increased as the number of North Carolinians living in poverty has jumped to nearly 18 percent. In 2011, 93 percent of North Carolina nonprofits experienced an increased need for services, and 58 percent were unable to meet these needs. Two out of every five nonprofits operated at a deficit last year, and one-third had to cut programs or services.

The main point of Heinen and Stubbing's piece was to stress the importance of state and federal governments fully preserving the deduction for charitable contributions as they work on tax reform. They pointed out the stress being felt by nonprofits is extreme due to the increased demand for their services prompted by a still rough employment situation and a reduction in government aid, and they argued that if states and the federal government were to eliminate or reduce deductions for charitable contributions it would truly put the nonprofits in an even more tenuous position. 

Quite frankly we as a society are currently in the position of having to choose between negative options when it comes to the poor and needy: do we help them via government programs, nonprofit programs or some combination of the two? These are negative options because they are reactionary in nature and do nothing to address the root causes of poverty and hunger. Until we address those root issues – jobs, education, out-of-control health care expenses, etc. – our government/non-profit programs will continue to be needed by too many people instead of serving their proper role as a safety net of last resort for the very unfortunate who have hit rough times due to unforeseen circumstances.  Here's the crucial part though: until we do address and resolve those root problems then we must find away to keep people off the streets and my fear is that the programs we have in place won't be able to do it.

Library of the Future? 3D Printing, Books on Demand, Oh My!

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The Washington Post has an article about DC's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library that shows a glimpse of many public libraries' future:

…D.C. Public Library system, which today is opening theDigital Commons at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The new facility, in a renovated 11,000-square foot section of the library's ground floor, contains a 3-D printer, an Espresso Book Machine that churns out tomes on-demand, an array of tablet devices, rows of computer terminals, and several meeting spaces outfitted with some of the newest productivity technology…

Next to the 3-D printer is a countertop full of tablet computers and ebook readers, devices on which DCPL finds an increasing percentage of its membership. Every major brand is represented—Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft—in what Cooper bills as something of a test counter. More and more, library members are loaning volumes on their devices rather using software like Overdrive for books or Zinio for periodicals. (Cooper says over 5,000 library members are using Zinio for public magazine subscriptions; the most popular title is The Economist.)…

Then there is the Espresso Book Machine. Printing books or magazines is not an inexpensive venture, but for the hopeful self-publisher, or someone desperate to obtain a tactile version of an out-of-print volume (sorry,Dream City won't enter the public domain for many more decades), this small press is an affordable solution. Cooper envisions school classes printing books of essays, people compiling family recipe books, or just aspiring authors yearning to see themselves in print…

The Digital Commons' other major component is what DCPL calls the "Dream Lab." About one-third of the space is carved up into meeting spaces and cubicles outfitted with various devices for collaborative work. Cooper is expecting to attract a long list of startup companies and community organizations that might not have permanent offices of their own, but still need resources like wireless Internet access, DVD players, visual projectors, and Smart Boards, interactive whiteboards that feature speakers, projectors, and, niftiest of all, styluses that leave trails of digital ink the way one would use a dry-erase marker on an analog board.

It's this kind of service that will help libraries continue to fulfill their vital role in the community. We may not see this level of service in our smaller branches any time soon, but I could definitely see something like this at the central libraries of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point.

 

We’re Talking Downtown

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Over at the NC Legal Landscapes blog attorney Tom Terrell writes about the changes proposed for High Point by consultant Andres Duany:

Duany described High Point’s furniture market as “the most complete monoculture I’ve ever seen,” adding that all it is good for is “fame and tax base.” The town is designed and constructed to support a semi-annual economic event that, in itself, causes High Point to exist on statistical ledge, waiting against an unexpected event – any event – to topple it to the canyon floor below. “If the monoculture sneezes,” Duany noted, “there is no Plan B.”

In both standing-room-only public presentations, Duany expressed amazement at the obstacle created by the “market.” “When the market is gone, the entire downtown hibernates. . . . I’ve been to many places but never to a place where all the storefronts hibernate.”

In economic terms, Duany explained that the market is a “spike,” and spikes are terrible for commerce because businesses must continually “staff up and staff down.” High Point, he marveled, has the “Everest of spikes.”

Duany’s antidote is to create a mixed use town anchored by one “hot destination” district. Since the historic downtown is unavailable for that, he recommended another area several blocks north. “All it takes is two and a half blocks to create a famous destination,” citing examples of 2-3 block famous areas all of us had heard of.

High Point also must plant trees along that stretch and engage in “road dieting,” something he described as a non-negotiable aspect of the plan. Road dieting eliminates the hostile experience of speeding traffic, creates places for parking and landscaping, and nurtures a friendly, desirable place to visit.

For those of us working on Lewisville's downtown we don't need to worry about a hibernating downtown, but we do need to worry about how a bedroom community like ours can develop a downtown that hasn't really existed before. It's amazing how similar our concerns are to High Point's, especially our desire to create an environment that "nurtures a friendly, desirable place to visit."