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Pomona
pair creates community organization to help the poor;
their high-tech approach helps low-income people.
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By
Allison Don '05
Fasting during his sophomore year, Michael Gechter ’05 was
feeling disillusioned about his ability to make a difference
as a college student. The fast called for peace in Iraq, but
Gechter felt frustrated. While the action had some symbolic
importance, it was doing very little to effect change. “What
was exciting to me was realizing that people are willing to
make this big commitment, and I was frustrated to see that
go to waste,” says Gechter.
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Pomona College juniors David
Henderson and Michael Gechter
started their own organization to
help low-income people. They
developed software to direct
people to the right services. |
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That evening, on the deck near his room
in Athearn Court,
Gechter expressed his frustration to neighbor David
Henderson ’05. “Being my cynical self, [I] was like ‘you’re
damn right it’s not doing anything,’” Henderson says. “So we
moved the conversation inside my room, and it was right then
and there that we decided, ‘let’s do something.’”
From that decision, Pomona Valley Low-Income Services was
born, a group that has worked to increase the incomes of
more than 200 people in the greater Pomona Valley—averaging
an additional $400 per month per client.
PVLIS is a volunteer organization with more than 30 students
and community members helping out. The group’s mission is to
help people who are either homeless or at risk of being
homeless reach economic self-sufficiency. With their “PVLIS:
Case Manager” software, volunteers steer clients toward
significant resources that are available yet unknown to many
who are unemployed, homeless or struggling to make it. PVLIS
caseworkers visit six meeting locations, helping clients
find employment, housing, legal assistance and the like.
Although employment is the primary aim of the group,
Henderson points out, “Our commitment has been to being
holistic; to really trying to get at what is going to help
this person the most."
The software is a key piece in explaining the group's
effectiveness. Every caseworker goes to his or her location with
a laptop and the PVLIS software. The client’s information is
then taken and input into the program. The program has
hundreds of questions, discovering whether the client needs
counseling, legal referrals, different types of employment,
child support, and more. If a single man is looking for a
sober living home, for example, the program will pull up a
list of those types of homes in the area, screening out ones
that are for women or people with dependents.
Sustaining an idealistic enterprise isn't always easy for
college students who are juggling classes and other
obligations. But Gechter and Henderson are determined. “Just
as someone plays a sport and they are really committed to it
– this is our sport,” explains Henderson. “We’re passionate
about it. We will go out of our way to find the time, to
make the time, to sleep less. It’s what we’re obsessed
with.”
Pomona resident Josephine Baca has been coming to the
Wheeler Computer Lab to utilize the PVLIS resources since
last fall. The lab, situated in Claremont’s Wheeler Park,
will fool you with its cement façade. Inside it is a
brightly decorated preschool room that is used at night for
computing by the City of Claremont, Healthy Start and PVLIS.
Baca, who is a single mother, brings her two children with
her on her visits to Wheeler so they can use the computers
and access the Internet to do their homework.
Caseworker Julia Ornelas ’06 has helped Baca find housing,
additional work, legal guidance for divorce procedures,
build a resume and attain tutoring for her son. “They have
so much help with all different kinds of resources,” Baca
says. “Almost anything I ask for, it’s like, ‘okay, I can
look it up for you.’” On this visit, Baca works with
caseworker Ellen Moody ’06 to find additional work hours for
her job as a substitute preschool teacher. “I haven’t found
anything they can’t do,” says Baca.
Though the City of Claremont has its own services to help
the homeless and jobless, namely through its partnership
with the Claremont Healthy Start Program, officials are
appreciative of PVLIS’s helping hands and have offered the
organization its own office space.
Dick Guthrie, the director of Human Services for the city of
Claremont, has provided the group with funding and has been
one of its closest allies as it has grown, according to
Henderson.
Sonia Fuentes, a community worker for both Healthy Start and
the Claremont Unified School District, says she has worked
with Henderson and Gechter from the beginning. “I do almost
the same thing [as PVLIS] but I have so many adults and kids
I work with,” she says.
At one point Fuentes had 40 parents she was meeting with,
and she attributes PVLIS’s ability to give individual
attention and to utilize Internet resources for decreasing
this number. “I’m amazed because they’re so young and
they’re so nice. They never make anyone feel uncomfortable,”
says Fuentes. The city is so appreciative, in fact, that the
PVLIS organization will receive its own office space in
April.
Gechter and Henderson, both graduating seniors, aren’t sure
where they will be next year, but it would be reasonable to
assume that helping low-income people will be a part of what
they will do. The two have already been an active and vocal
part of a contentious effort to build affordable housing
units in Northwest Claremont. They also have visions of
expanding and professionalizing their software so that the
services PVLIS provides to people of the Inland Empire could
be accessible to low-income people all across the country.
“The College, really any college, can turn into a social
service—at no cost and at incredible benefit to the students
and to the community,” says Henderson, who applauds the
student volunteers who have “done incredible things for
their clients that I would never have thought to do.”
Volunteer Karen Wong ’05, whose clientele consists solely of
single mothers, says the experience: “makes me realize how
sheltered I am. I’m not upper-middle class, but I’ve never
lived in a situation where my family is financially
unstable. I think it’s good to be exposed to the way you’ve
lived and the privilege that you’ve had.”
Success is not a word you will hear from either Gechter or
Henderson any time soon. “[Gechter] and I made an agreement
that we were going to end poverty,” says Henderson. “But we
haven’t done that, so we haven’t succeeded.” Gechter adds:
“But [the goal] is there. I think that it’s important to
never say ‘okay, I’ve done enough.’”
Visit the group’s Web site at www.pvlis.org
for
additional information.
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