What sounds better to me is a kind of "Salvation Army" rooted in nutrion rather than drug abuse! ;^)
Not another. A different. What I'm talking about is a fundamental rethinking of the government's approach to poverty -- initiatives that come from the ground up, rather than from social engineers in DC down. Something like, wait, I can't put my finger on it ...
What sounds better to me is a kind of "Salvation Army" rooted in nutrion rather than drug abuse! ;^)
Yeah, actually, very much like that. If communities can make it work without any government funds, so much the better; but I wouldn't have any objection to shifting government funds from programs that don't work to programs that do.
Churches, and synagogues are closer to the problem -- they're in and of the community, The creative and innovative solutions seem to come from there. For example, St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta has a great outreach program for the homeless - they don't have room to hose a shelter, but they offer storage lockers so folks can go to a shelter without worrying about being robbed. They have showers and laundry machines and donated presentable clothes.
And -- this is the part that I thought this part was especially clever, and obvious once I heard it, but I hadn't thought of it before: mailboxes. A tiny simple thing, but think about it -- how can you apply for aid, or a job, if you don't have an address where you can receive a reply?
It would have taken a government agency ten years and millions of dollars to come up with that. The church came up with it by being in the community (St. Luke's is downtown, in a neighborhood with one of the larger homeless populations) and, I'm guessing, from sitting down and talking to people.
The office of faith-based initiatives was kind of a nifty idea, but it seems to have been more of a political gesture than anything meaningful Change the name to the office of community-based initiatives, and bring in non-sectarian groups the Scouts, 4-H, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, and the YMCA (which despite the word "Christian" in its name, is pretty much non-sectarian in its present-day direction and role in the community)
Address today's problems, not the problems of 40 years ago. Shift resources from the programs that don't work to the programs that so -- for starters. If, by some miracle, the problems actually start to get solved, then you drop the funding altogether. I'm all or smaller government, but first Im for more effective and efficient government. When it can do more with less, it'll be easier to shrink it.
The government's approach to the "War on Poverty" is like using maps of Germany to plan the war in Iraq.