Chapter Thirteen

In the last chapter we outlined the various committees that a well organized family should have. Here we go into greater depth concerning one:

The Resources committee:

It's full name is The Resources Committee: Grants, Employment and Resources

It has several charges.

The first goal is to hire a grants writer. That person will survey from the internet working even from the library, foundations and private grants that will fund your project, including the Family Bank. It can be couched as “seed” money that will begin the project and have it run for about three years.

You can advertise in the local Craigslist for the grant writer and begin that simultaneously begin other resource protects. Here is a partial description of what the activities that group may undertake.

We have a large group of unskilled labor and the task of this group is to find employment for them after school or for the adults, full time employment.

First identify the resources available in your community.

Identify an office. Ask the local church to utilize a small office from which to work. Or you could work from a home or at the library for meetings.

Take a skills inventory of all of your young people and adults and use that skill list in upcoming matches you will make for these individuals in the community.

How To Proceed:

The Personnel Cadre

You will train an adult in office skills by first identifying those willing, then train them receiving training at a local office where the latest office equipment is being used. 
First you go to a local personnel temporary agency, ask what requirements a temp agency will test for in applicants, and match them to your pool skill sets. Next to a temp placement agency and ask them for volunteers to train individuals after work to pass the temporary agency test.

Fifty percent of temporary personnel eventually become permanent employees, and those that don't get permanently placed become eligible for other assignments.

Many of these candidates are mothers with small children and you will have to provide transportation, baby-sitting, and other supports. Include this in your grant application.

Local jobs:
Go to local union officials and ask them to take on your folks as unofficial apprentices, if not official ones. That way skills, in for example, house painting can be acquired.
This is part of your grant called “Direct Skill Acquisition Programs.”

In your state there are hundreds of professions which do not require licensing and you will have to familiarize yourself with those and thereafter contact folks or even begin to set up your folks, in a store front, even in homes to implement those skills.

Child care, barber shops, home schooling, lessons of various kinds are those that can be started informally and often held in homes, or in local churches. That is where the skill inventory list comes in handy to match those with interest and aptitude.

After school Programs

First you identify local businesses already battered by the Walmart's of the world, working with small margins and barely holding on. You approach them and offer them free labor {your kids} for a period of three months. You will, of course, screen these kids in advance. They can stock the local shelves, help the merchant, wash windows at the local gas station, load trucks, whatever the local merchant might need, and in exchange for an agreement to teach the person the outlines of the business. 

Skills like stocking, adding bills for customers, learning the cultural aspects of working everyday after school is what the person is learning. This is a three month contract, “skills for free labor program.” 

Our grant writer will have sought funds for this project. It is relatively inexpensive to operate and you can pay the folks in this after school project bus plus a stipend, arrange for transportation and pay them whatever the grant allows or get donations from the local church, or have parents add a small stipend, or have the Family Bank fund it as one of their projects.

Graduated from this project, these participants can move on to the Personnel Agency project described above and get a job down town, or at the local factory, or at the local university. New doors open.

Being A Personnel Assistant

Another job vector is being a Personnel Assistant. The PA, as the name implies, becomes a Personnel Assistant for a variety of clients at fifty dollars a month fee.

Largely an arranger, the PA will arrange for kids to be picked up, arrange dental appointments, arrange a myriad of items for very busy people. The latter include celebrities, or companies who need folks for making arrangements for VIP's, cities often use PA's for CEO;s and other individuals visiting from out town.
PA;s can arrange with social service agencies in other towns to look in on your older parents to see if they are OK, if they are taking their meds, if they need anything.

PA's check on your kids via security cams, on pets, and take messages from friends, neighbors, schools and others if you are tied up in meetings.
Some PA's can function as BFF, best friends, to go shopping with to select that interview outfit.

These PA's can do their work from the phone and many can do the work from home. 
Requirements to go out of the home where their presence is physically required is another job, which we will review later.

Chapter Fourteen

But first we should understand that public education is under attack today in this country from politicians who seemingly bend to the powers that be. But what should a parent do with young children who need effective education now?

Fighting back against national and state powers who seek to reduce public monies and to divert them into private charter schools, while public education is being starved for resources and funds to carry on their work, we need to ask what should be done?

Of course being active in your community is obvious. And in our chapter on upping your activism coming later, we urge your getting more involved in your community is a way to change this circumstance. More on activism later in this book.

 

For now we look at several approaches to providing education to yours and other children in your community.

First you advertise for a homeschooling teacher. Do this on your local Craigslist, in local papers, by word of mouth, and by other means, meeting at your local church, or in a spare library room or at a private home or meeting with the kids after school, make this program feasible..

The Family Bank, Grants and the Resource Committee can help in this project which is educating our kids to the highest standards.

If fifteen parents, donations from church and other sources, cobbled together we can pay the salary of our teacher or teachers, from per-school onward through high school.

You can apply for charter money itself and look to set up your own charter schools admitting kids from your neighborhood and not automatically forgo public money.

Within the Education Committee establish a curriculum committee to outline how and what ought to be taught in the new school, ask members to run for school board and begin to establish and get known in your community.

Curriculum established, we could establish a preschool program all the way to a special STEM program often hiring older teens to tutor younger children utilizing their knowledge to help younger children.

These resources come together to make the after school education program a realty.

The In-School Educational Program

The Education Committee establishes who and identifies mentors children in public schools are active; what their needs are and who is assigned to help.

Many children don't eat breakfast and often a meals program is needed to get them off to school. Donations from local merchants are often needed from the “free labor” program that already have some of our kids working for them.

Some children even in grade school are homeless and the education committee can intervene for them to help get them services, got to the local school, to the local welfare department, to DMV and in fact might have to establish a recently incarcerated program to integrate family looking to rebuild themselves.

A grant for this later kind of program is a project for the Resources Committee seeking grants in this area.

What will be presented with the overall Family Plan is an integrated, organized plan which funders like to see. It is organized, plans are drawn up, people appear motivated. That is what you have to present.

Thus we have achievable goals, potential personnel in the Education Effort, a plan and definite activities you can present to funders, to local corporations, to local businesses, viable candidates you have available and step by step goals you can lay out for these funders.

Next in addition to funders you want to recruit volunteers. Approach local groups and corporations and say you are not seeking donations, but they would be nice, but rather you are seeking volunteers for your various programs, and space in their monthly newsletter which goes out to their employees. This can generate incredible rewards because volunteers are worth their weight in gold, especially if you have work for them to do at home.

Let take some of these ideas and have them drawn up to an overall plan, reviewed by the Education Committee and then by the Family Planning group all together. It being approved, you are now ready to move.