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"You just have to look at the YWCA of San Antonio's Facebook page to get an idea about its bandwidth. Along with rejoicing the Supreme Court's ruling on LGBTQ civil rights protections and its reprieve to young undocumented Dreamers, the YWCA drove home the importance of answering the 2020 census. It high-fived a sister organization in Baton Rouge for raising money for a Juneteenth bail-out fund for jailed Black Lives Matter protesters. Its page also has quoted the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., and the hashtags #EliminateRacism and #EmpowerWomen have been oft-repeated. They reflect the national organization's century-old mission. The YWCA, the only one in San Antonio, can multitask. But its core strength rests on providing a myriad of services, from teen programs to breast cancer awareness and childcare to front-line health workers, most of them women, too. A new project just got tacked on to its agenda. It's a $100,000 grant from the Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge, sponsored by several philanthropies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The YWCA was one of 28 nonprofit agencies that received a grant. The grant asks that the YWCA counter the inaccurate narratives about U.S. poverty. No matter how many studies say otherwise, a great many see the poor as lazy, idle and more willing to depend on handouts than not. They're blamed for being poor. The reality is quite different. People in poverty are often unable to get out of low-paying jobs. They're kept there by economic structures that weigh them down. They have no bootstraps to pull themselves up. The grant will underwrite a series of videos produced by San Antonio women who know poverty first-hand. Their video journals will capture their realities. Over the next 18 months, the YWCA will be part of a national cohort of grant winners that will exchange ideas and best practices as they develop their projects. Their first electronic gathering was Friday. The local Y's CEO Francesca Rattray isn't a newcomer to this sort of undertaking. She deals with misconceptions about the poor all the time. She explains that women in poverty can't just go back to school or get another job to get out of poverty. They face complication after complication. They may not have cars to get to and from work or job interviews, to school and doctor's appointments. To get anywhere, they must take two or three buses. They congregate in low-wage, service-industry jobs that San Antonio long ago welcomed as economic development. Big payoffs materialized for only the very few. The poor made the mistake of being born in certain zip codes. They went to low-performing schools that didn't always view them with high expectations. Their jobs don't provide benefits, such as health insurance, paid sick leave and maternity leave. Domestic violence places more obstacles before them. There's no \"silver bullet,\" Rattray said. \"It's not as easy as doing A, B and C. I haven't been able to convince my friends on the North Side of that.\" Because it's one of the most ethnically and economically segregated cities in the United States, she said, \"You can live on the North Side of San Antonio and never know about poverty in San Antonio.\" The grant application was a long shot, but the Y's approach made a difference, Gates Foundation officials said. In an interview, senior program officer Caira Woods said the YWCA made clear that poverty was structurally designed into the city's geography a century ago, making economic advancement and opportunity all but impossible. Ryan Rippel, the foundation's director of U.S. economic mobility and opportunity, said powerful misconceptions around poverty obstruct understanding. The YWCA's videos can make a dent on those misconceptions. \"We don't think that this work is going to solve the problems of racism or poverty in America,\" Rippel said in a blog post. \"But it might catalyze systems change by causing the people who perpetuate those systems to see things with more humanity and insight.\" In March, the YWCA was facing daily decisions on how to deal with the coronavirus. When its staff heard news of the grant, it was emotionally overwhelming, Rattray said. It gave them hope at a time in which the country has been responding to change, and when changing the narratives around poverty has become more important than ever. eayala@express-news.net"
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