The third class of InvestU graduates were celebrated Wednesday, July 25 during a ceremony at the Northwest Ice Arena.
The graduates completed a 16-week workshop series which addresses people with low incomes building resources and achieving goals on the path to stability.
Pictured from left to right are: Beth Jermaine, facilitator; Haydee Diaz, graduate; Yarina Castellano, graduate; Rebecca Spinler, graduate; Bernard DuPree, graduate and Raymond Pryce, 2021 graduate. Not pictured is Carmen Perez, graduate.
The "Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin'-By World" curriculum is a program aimed at helping people analyze the impacts of poverty on their lives and develop strategies to build resources for more prosperous lives and to improve our community.
Getting Ahead participants are called investigators. The course calls on them to explore how poverty affects them, then identify and develop resources that will enable them to get ahead in their lives. The local workshop is called Invest U because, by participating in the curriculum, investigators were investing in a better future for themselves and their families.
Their efforts also will improve their communities. This is because, as part of their coursework, investigators examined how community institutions measure in areas such as the economy, housing, health care, employment, education, and banking. Those stark assessments revealed where our community did not perform well, providing an opportunity for local leaders to address the gaps.
Terri Johnson, The Resource Center’s Director of Employment and Community-Based Services, was one of the people who helped bring the Getting Ahead curriculum to Chautauqua County. Johnson also served as a Getting Ahead Facilitator and has had this to say about the program:
"Each of the investigators have gone through a step-by-step discovery of themselves, how they got where they are and what it takes to build the life they want. They each have also investigated their own world and have identified societal barriers that could be keeping them in poverty. They have investigated the realities of conditions in their community and its impact, the hidden rules of the economic classes, how to build resources and make connections, and ways to deal with change and create stability in their lives. They have learned about debt-to-income ratios, building social capital, established smart goals, and so much more.”
United Way of Southern Chautauqua County provided a grant that made it possible for Getting Ahead to be offered locally.
United Way’s Executive Director, Amy Rohler, was the keynote speaker at the first class of graduates' graduation ceremony, and had this to say about those who progress through the program:
“You have confronted the cold, hard reality of not only your own, personal situation but of this community, too,” Rohler said. “There’s a reality to why people are in poverty and what systems exist that keep them there, and it’s messy and it’s hard and it’s not always pretty. But I suspect that in spite of that investigation, you emerged out of this experience with a gritty faith in the possibility of what you can do and what this community cam accomplish.”