S Dawg is an organizer who will be keeping up on poverty issues and on low wage worker issues and i promise too keep u informed.

In August 2009, the Poverty Scholars Program will convene a week-long Leadership School to be held in Charleston, WV and to be coordinated in collaboration with the Direct Action Welfare Group (DAWG). The Leadership School marks the foundation of a modern Poor People’s Campaign.

Leaders who have participated in preparatory Strategic Dialogues will be joined by an additional 100 select emerging leaders from partner organizations to participate in a variety of training sessions, arts and cultural events, and campaign planning.

Goals Include:

Training a core of leaders in the movement to end poverty;

Networking poor leaders/organizations from diverse communities across the country;

Beginning to lay the groundwork for reigniting the Poor People’s Campaign;

Formally integrating Poverty Scholars into the leadership of the Poverty Scholars Program and its activities.

via Poverty Scholars Program | Poverty Initiative.

We are very excited to be a part of this and look forward to sharing this experience with leaders within DAWG and in the larger community.

Poverty Scholars Pictures March 2008

The office is finaly ready.  I have jumped through all the hoops, fixed all the issues (hopefully), and moved most of the stuff in.  Saturday was our Open House.  It was a big success.  Around 60 people from the community stopped by to share some food and find out what our new office looked like.   We had some great food donated by Kemba Federal Credit Union and our new VISTA, Terri – bbq, spanish rice, tortillas, baked beans, cookies, and other snacks.  Several of the volunteers that helped with the office – laying the carpet, moving the furniture, etc – were on hand to see the public enjoy their handy work.  All in all it was a great Open House and I can’t wait to officailly open for business when we return from NYC on April first …….yes we are opening for business on April Fool’s Day.

Today the building inspector and the fire inspector came out.  It wasn’t as bad as I thought.  There are a few minor fixes and one major – a heating system.  But they signed off on the paper so now on Monday, I am off to the zoning board and the city.  Hopefully by Tuesday we will have whatever that piece of paper is that says we can open for business.  Opening a business in Charleston is a lot more complicated then I thought.

It has been a while since anyone blogged so I thought I would catch you up a little on everything that is happening. 

DAWG has a new office.  We rented it in December, were planning on being in and open by early January but …..   the roof collapsed. We were just able to move in this week.  So excited but… we found out before we can officially open we have to do a business application with the City of Charleston and have a bunch of different departments come out and certify the building before we can actually open for business.  Why doesn’t anyone tell you this stuff? 

Our VISTA, Patty left in December so it kind of put all the projects she was working on on hold for a while.  Terri came on as our VISTA the beginning of January but we have been dealing with the office so some of the VISTA projects are still on hold.

Hopefully by March we will have everything in order and be able to open the office and get the VISTA projects back on track.  Keep your fingers crossed!

We have big plans for the new office space. We are planing several trainings, pot luck dinners, movie nights, book discussion groups and loads more.  We will even have computers that people can come in and use to apply for benefits.  We will have tons of opportunities for volunteers to get involved so stay tuned to the blog and the website to find out more.

I’m not going to promise but I will try to be better at keeping up the blog.  There’s just not enough time in the day. If you have a few hours to spare let me know.

I want to give a thank you to all the people who donated to our Office Fund so we could get the office and to the AFL-CIO, St. Andrews United Methodist, NASW, and our great friends for helping us get the office furnished.  Now if we can just jump through the hoops for the city we will be all set………maybe.

I just returned from the second convening of the Poverty Scholars program at the Povety Initiative at Union Theological Seminary in New York. We had the honor of being joined by Bertha Burres, the Queen of he Mule Train.  She organized the Mule Train after Dr. King’s death as part of the the Poor People’s Campaign. Miss Bertha, her six children, and many other women, children, and men traveled by mule wagons 1000 miles from Marks Mississippi to Washington DC to join with thousands of other poor blacks, poor appalachian whites, and indeginous people at Resurection City.  I recorded her speach in two parts and hope to have it uploaded here as soon as I figure out how to do it.

The webiste is back online, just barely.  We don’t have very much content up right now but I will be working on that over the next couple of weeks (more likely months). :)   For those of you brave enough to click on the blog after seeing the website in such a state, I figured out how to get the survey file in our blog. Mountain Health Choices Survey Report  If this doesn’t work you can still email us and we can send it to you.

While were we upgrading our website, blog, etc. we were hacked.  Someone, I wish I knew who, hacked int0 our site and hijacked it for phishing.  You know they turned our site into a fake Bank of America and were trying to get people’s account information.  So to make a long story short, our site www.wvdawg.org is down for a while so we can get it all cleaned out and I can rebuild the entire website.   

So, in the mean time while I am trying to fix our website and rebuild it.  I will post here to our blog so you can see what we are up to.

You are probably wondering where our really cleaver categories went.  Well, I’m not sure where they are off to, so if you see them send them back.

We are currently upgrading all our Internet stuff(blog,website,etc) and it will take a little while for it to be the way we want.  Especially since I am the tech person,as well as, Executive Director.  So if you want a good laugh visit the website in the middle of the night when I am changing everything around.  If your lucky you will visit the website on one of the nights when I have clicked the wrong button and everything is in Russian or Chinese font. 

If you have any suggestions for our DAWG website let me know.

I wanted to introduce everyone to our new VISTA Patty Wray.  She comes to us from the Lifebridge/United Way Americorps* Vista program.  She will be working with DAWG for the next year on three projects.

1) Hope In Hard Times a collaborative project of the Media Mobilizing Project (Philadelphia), Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary (New York), WV Headstart Association, and DAWG that will produce a documentary and a discussion guide that will focus on the value of Headstart to children and families in poverty in West Virginia. 

2)Leadership Development identifies and supports leaders within their communities.  DAWG has divided the state into 12 regions and is working to identify volunteer leaders in each region that will receive intensive training that they can in turn share with their communities.  Often the language the state uses regarding public assistance benefits is not understandable by people with low reading levels.  The

VISTA will develop a curriculum that will utilize adult literacy outreach to understand public assistance policies and application processes. 

3)My Life: Literacy through writing your story.   The idea behind this project is to hold regular workshops where people in poverty will learn literacy skills by writing their own personal stories that will then be compiled into an annual journal.  The workshops will be offered to teens, adults, and entire families as a way to share their experiences while developing their reading and writing skills.

If you are interested in working with Patty on any of these projects you can contact her.  Patty Wray