Collective Impact for Child Wellbeing

Child poverty comes from many sources, with one of the biggest being debt from loans with high interest rates.

These loan interest rates have a disproportionate impact on the wellbeing of children and families. The recent law changes to put a cap on interest rates were not an overnight certainty but instead, the result of a long campaign led by FINCAP* in partnership with its 200 local free financial capability and budgeting services in New Zealand and the communities they support.

FINCAP used the Child Rich Community principles of collaboration, empowerment and relationship-focus to develop their submission on the Credit Contracts Legislation Amendment Bill and highlight the key policy issues for communities to also speak out on. They had three rounds of engagement with the 200 services in their network during 2018-19 which resulted in 110 organisations contributing submissions through that process. They also held 11 hui nationwide in early 2019 to inform local communities about the Bill, to prioritise key issues to campaign on for change, and to encourage budget service users to share their stories through the Select Committee submission process. Sarah Newham’s story is outlined below.

The Government made changes to the Credit Contracts Legislation Amendment Bill as a direct result of strong submissions at Select Committee stage and introduced a cap of 0.8% interest per day (still 24% in interest over a 30-day month). This sits alongside a new overall limit on the total cost of credit for high-cost loans, which means the interest charged can’t be more than twice the amount initially borrowed. This would mean if someone borrows $500 they won’t have to pay back any more than $1,000 over the lifetime of the loan.

Sarah’s story is below:

2018 was the first time I ever took a payday loan. I’m a solo mum, my kids have their birthdays really close together and the budget was tight. I’d tried to save for it but there’d been some unexpected costs. I didn’t want to let them down, so I borrowed $400. It was easy. I went online and had approval in a matter of minutes. I’d have to pay back nearly twice that but that was going to be OK once things picked up. I made the first couple of payments, they were big – nearly a quarter of my weekly income but then I missed one.

The penalties were bad but the rate they wanted repayment made at was worse – it was huge because the interest rate was huge. There were weeks where I was choosing between paying for electricity and paying for food. Meeting the loan repayments was the most important thing because having a bad debt against my record would have cost so much more in the long run.

In the end it got to the point where I was begging the lender to send the debt to a debt collector. The extra 20 or 30 percent added was worth it just to be able to pay it off over a longer period of time. They refused.

It only turned around when I finally got the local budgeting service involved and they made the lender send the debt to a collector. I’m almost debt free now, but it’s come at a real cost to me and my kids.

This year, on my birthday the loan shark I borrowed from sent me an email that said something like “Happy Birthday Sarah – how about you treat yourself with a loan”? I felt ill. I’ve looked at the changes this law will make, and I’ve put them up against my experience. They would have helped a bit, but they wouldn’t have made the total cost of the loan less than it was to start with. The payments I had to make wouldn’t have been any smaller. Maybe some of the penalties would have been smaller but I only just missed that third payment. If things had been a little different I could have paid it all back on time. Maybe at the cost of my kids’ breakfasts and a couple of disconnection threats. Lots of people do.

If I had, I don’t know if I would have said no when they offered me a new loan, or another after that. There’s always a bill that needs to be paid, especially when you’ve been tightening the belt to pay the last loan. What I do know is my family would be a lot worse off for it.

I also know that a lot of other people are hurt by this kind of lending too. That’s why I’m speaking out. It’s not easy to tell my story so publicly. Being “bad with money” is seen as a shameful thing in New Zealand, but it’s not as shameful as the way people like me are being preyed on by this industry. Please, make sure that this law change stops that.”

FINCAP emphasised that this experience has highlighted the power of authentic story-telling from members of the community through the law reform process. FINCAP CEO, Tim Barnett, advised that “these stories can move hearts and mountains, especially in politicians’ offices and select committee rooms.”

*FinCap (the National Building Financial Capability Charitable Trust) supports 200 services around New Zealand that provide financial mentoring support to people. These services see 70,000 people a year between them. Most people that visit these services have a number of expensive and unaffordable loans ranging from bank loans, personal loans, credit cards, car loans and high cost short term loans. The average debt is $10,000.

Enabling Change at Many Levels – Diana’s Story

Initiative: Good Cents Porirua.Theme: Leading in and Leaderful

With the Good Cents course now being run from the Community Link centre in Porirua, there are now more and more referrals directly from WINZ. This has sometimes been challenging at an organisational level, and also at an individual level. In several cases, WINZ clients have felt compelled to take part and do so only to achieve their aim of getting an advance. This is not how
Good Cents works and has led to some deeply challenging situations, and ultimately significant changes for some of these people.

Many WINZ clients in Porirua are now directed to enrol in Good Cents courses instead of doing traditional budgeting. Recent regulation changes mean that should a WINZ client apply for an advance, they must complete the ‘budgeting activities’ as required by law. Essentially this means that they need to show how they are spending their money with a view to understanding why they have no money. Good Cents, on the other hand, assists course participants to develop strategies for managing their money and reducing their debt, including learning about creating their own budget. These are quite different approaches and can mean that some people arrive on day one of the Good Cents course without completely understanding what the Good Cents course does.

In fact, some individuals are irritated by the requirement to provide WINZ with a budget at all – what they are wanting is a quick fix to what is often a stressful situation, and producing a budget slows this process down. This irritation can be very much amplified when they also find out that Good Cents will not develop a budget for them, and that they have to do it themselves. Further adding fuel to that fire of irritation is that sometimes it is not until day one of the course that WINZ clients realise that the course will take 8 sessions to complete. Clearly, what Good Cents offers is not a quick fix.

From what can be a highly emotional start, however, some participants truly shine. For example, when Diane (not her real name) started the Good Cents course in early 2012 and realised all of these things she was mightily annoyed. Even so, she grumpily knuckled down to preparing her budget. In that process, and with Good Cents help, she discovered she had power to change a lot about her situation and that she could make these changes herself, instead of blaming others. Several alternative ways of managing her financial situation became apparent as Diane began to work on better understanding her situation herself. For example, she realised that instead of paying off fines, she could possibly work them off. She could certainly create the time required far easier than creating the repayment money. She then asked Good Cents if she could do those hours with the Wesley Community Action in the Porirua office (where Good Cents is also based). Good Cents did not offer Diane a place to complete her community service; she had to ask for it herself. Since then Dana has begun to repay her fines by working in the food bank and will soon also complete community service hours by providing support on the next Good Cents course.

The key shift here is that Diane is now taking responsibility for her own situation and has learnt or realised that she always had skills that have enabled her to change that. From a space of annoyance and distrust, Diane now feels believed in and empowered to take action for herself. This also means that she respects both herself and others more too.

This space is deliberately constructed – Good Cents takes a ‘light touch’ approach (Blake and Pasteur, undated; Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007) in order to create space in which course participants can learn to do things for themselves around their money and wider lives. The course strongly links with each participant’s wider life experiences and aspirations so as to sustain the learnings achieved on the course over a much longer period. By being firm about what the Good Cents course will do and flexible about how this might play out with individual participants, different styles of personal leadership are allowed to emerge and these in turn contribute to wider lifestyle changes.

In Diane’s case, her personal changes with regard to her finances have contributed to other changes in her household. Undertaking community service to pay off her fines initially contributed to an increased chaos in her home because her partner had to care for their young son and do more household related tasks than previously. With Diane’s growing confidence, these issues were worked out and her partner has begun to grow in confidence too. He is now more confident as a parent and is very supportive of her looking for paid employment as well. Both of them now have more aspiration and are actively involved in the creation of their own future.

Intent: The Good Cents course assists course participants to create their own budget in order to develop strategies for managing their money and reducing their debt

Key Learnings:

 Even when the course content has not been fully described, those who chose to participate are already making an active choice. Taking a light touch approach throughout the course means that from the get-go participants make their own decision about participating. This underpins the subsequent decisions they make about significant changes in their lives.

 By not providing easy solutions, course participants must step into their own power, and this is critical for sustaining changes.

 Changes in one person can influence wider changes in their lives, such as with others in their households and this helps create supportive and empowering contexts hat also help to sustain new ways of living.

Key Outcomes:

 Good Cents courses utilise the emotional situations that accompany some of the WINZ-referred participants to help those people move beyond a blaming mentality and into a space of self-empowerment and respect for both self and others.

 Increased confidence to imagine a different and more self determined future and begin working towards it for course graduates.

Key Contact person:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents Coordinator
Wesley Community Action
Email: goodcents@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph: 04 237 7923

References:
Blake, R. and Pasteur, K (undated). Learning from practice. Empowering community organisations: A ‘light touch’ approach for long term impact. http://practicalaction.org/docs/ia1/empowering-community-organizations.pdf

Taylor, M., Wilson, M., Purdue, D., and Wilde, P. (2007). Changing neighbourhoods: The impact of ‘light touch’ support in 20 communities. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/changing-neighbourhoods-impact-light-touch-support-20-communities

Story written by Denise Bijoux and Matt Crawshaw.

June 2012.

Making Good Cents in Porirua

Completing a Good Cents course has had many benefits for Kay (not her real name.)  A $2,000 debt with the IRD has been cancelled; she has managed to repay outstanding debts with two loan companies that were costing her $110 per week; and, perhaps the main benefit, she has regained confidence in herself.
Wesley Porirua Team Leader, Makerita Makapelu noted that when Kay started the 8 week programme, she was by far the quietest in the group.

Life had not been easy for Kay.  Her mother died when she was 12 years old, and although her working father could sustain the family financially, Kay chose to leave home at the age of 14 to go and live with a sister.  Leaving home and learning to cope on her own was a huge ‘wake-up call’ for Kay and she found herself struggling.  A brief attempt to return to school at 15 was unsuccessful, and by the age of 16 she found herself ‘on the benefit’.  By 18 she was pregnant and living with another sister to make ends meet.

Sharing accommodation with others is not something that a much wiser Kay now recommends, “I won’t share my home again.  I like to do my own thing.”  Sharing accommodation back in those days often meant loaning money to help friends and family.  It was perhaps during this time, that Kay developed a habit for loaning and borrowing money, without being fully aware of the consequences.

“I remember on occasions being asked by a friend for money, so I would give it to them even though I was often in debt myself,” recalls Kay.  However, as Kay later realized, her friends’ money worries often occurred because their partners were “playing the pokies, or drinking,” and Kay’s loan money only served to encourage these bad habits.  Kay now recognises that her priority is looking after herself and her two sons, and that loaning or borrowing money is not as easy as it seems.  There are repercussions.

Over the years Kay had approached Wesley Community Action in Porirua on several occasions, either for counselling assistance, or more recently for food bank assistance.  On one of these visits in 2009, she was asked if she would like to participate in the Good Cents course, and decided to take up the opportunity.

One of the first exercises she completed on the programme was to record every item she was spending money on, for a whole week.  She had never done this exercise before, and was amazed at what she learned.  “It really opened my eyes. I had got into the habit of short term loans and was in debt with three different loan companies,” recalls Kay.  It wasn’t big debt, but she was borrowing money to spend on things like video games for her oldest son.  Her loans were costing her $202 per week.

The exercise also showed her how to cut back on her unnecessary expenses, and she quickly began to pay off two of the loan companies.  However it wasn’t easy to turn her back on the comparative ‘easy money’ provided by the loan companies and, during a weak moment, she re-borrowed from one of the very companies she had just paid off.

The short term joy of having ready money again was followed by the realisation that she was back on the treadmill, struggling to pay debts.  This learning was shared with others in her Good Cents group, and Kay moved quickly to repay the money she had just borrowed.

Part of Kay’s Good Cents programme involved learning to communicate and to talk about the issues of debt.  The focus is on participants taking greater ownership and control of their journey to improved financial stability rather than traditional models of a professional budget advisor who decodes a person’s financial chaos for them.  There’s also a strong emphasis on understanding the underlying ‘drivers’ of their difficulties – these drivers are frequently bound up with social and emotional issues.  These were skills Kay put to good use when debt collector BayCorp rang her demanding payment of overdue school fees for her son’s education; armed with her ‘good sense’ skills, Kay quickly realized BayCorp were requesting weekly repayments that were well beyond her means, and negotiated a better outcome.

In the same way Kay faced up to an old debt with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) that had been ticking away for 16 years and had now grown to a debt of over $2,000.  Negotiations with the IRD followed and eventually the debt was cancelled on hardship grounds.

Kay’s leader qualities are illustrated throughout her story.  She is strong in her decision making yet reflective. She can admit mistakes and do something about them.  She was able to ‘fail forward’ (Maxwell, 2000) on her journey – staying focused on the destination even when faced with disappointing experiences.  These leader qualities may not have always led her onto pathways that were straight forward but they have certainly helped her to learn from her experiences, and create new pathways for herself on several occasions.  Leader qualities are also evident in how Kay talks about the Good Cents programme: what she liked about the programme was that, “while other courses tell you what to do; Good Cents helped to put me in charge of my money, so it was me making the decisions, not someone else.”

In the process, Kay has found her confidence, and is clearly proud of her achievements.  She has regular work in a local supermarket, her family is eating cheaper and more healthy food, and life is good.  Looking ahead, her first priority is paying off the remaining loan, and beyond that she plans to save enough to take her family on holiday.

Given Kay’s new found confidence and her Good Cents skills, there is little doubt she will achieve her goals.

July 2012

Changing the Common Story around Debt: Collective and individual financial transformation in Porirua.

changingthecommonstory

 

Helping people to help themselves also helps communities grow resilience, especially when many diverse members of a community work together to create new opportunities and new ways of doing things.

At Wesley Community Action in Porirua, there has always been a strong focus and value placed on giving people respect and empowering and enabling them to take control in their own situations.  This means there is a keen focus on how we can avoid creating “dependence on a social service” and instead growing support structures that help people to create new opportunities for themselves.

It was out of this value that a conversation around the food bank arose: “Why do people still need to use our food bank, even when times are good?”  From speaking with people that accessed the food bank the answer was at least partly found in the fact that approximately 80% had debt that they were not managing to keep up with.  For a whole variety of reasons people were finding themselves “borrowing money from their future to pay for today” leading to an inevitable downward spiral which they struggled to stop.

This situation means that wealth and potential are being drained out of the local communities. Concerned about this, Wesley began a community-led enquiring process to understand how and where transformation could come from.  This process later became the Good Cents initiative.  Early on in the initiative’s development, it became clear that people tended to favour a range of proposed solutions to the problem of debt.  Some said financial literacy needs to be improved or school banking reintroduced, some said that minimum wages need to be increased, while others said that churches play a key role in causing hardship or that “loan sharks” need to be regulated and interest rates capped.  Yet, while none of these solutions are entirely wrong, neither are any of them entirely accurate or right.  Good Cents staff observed that while pointing the finger at others may highlight aspects of the wider issue, it tends to absolve personal responsibility and ownership of the issue, and doesn’t often actually change the situation.

So, in 2007, Good Cents set out to tackle high interest indebtedness from a community-led development perspective, driven by the stories of indebted people themselves and working to engage the wider community and business interests.  The course is embedded in a philosophy that encourages people to look at their own contribution to their financial situation and works to enable course participants to identify the positive actions they can take to reduce or eliminate their dependency on debt and grow their investment in their future.

At the same time, as Peter Block (2008) writes, an aggregation of significant personal changes does not lead to community transformation and, in fact, personal changes are very difficult to sustain without environmental changes too.  To move towards community transformation, Good Cents needed to bring many different individuals and small diverse groups who are doing the same thing, even when they are from very different positions and walks of life, together.  As Block also notes, the value of purposeful connection with others is the beginning of the future we want to create together. From such a place, action and problem solving will follow.

And so it has been for Good Cents, both within the courses as participants learn that others are in similar situations and in how the Good Cents course engages with the wider ‘system’ and environment.  This wider engagement was demonstrated in April 2010 when Wesley Community Action was supported by Porirua City Council, the Todd Foundation and Inspiring Communities to host a Beyond the Cycles of Debt: What would it look like? Forum in Porirua.  At this gathering, the whole system was in the room.  High paid executives, bankers and government people rubbed shoulders and shared ideas with beneficiaries, local cultural leaders and some of the local lenders: these were people who were scared of one another at the outset.  Then, at mixed tables, they considered ‘What is it that we could create together for our future that we can’t create alone?’ by listening to the wide range of experiences in the room.  This was accompanied by the drawings and talking and creative energy as they worked together on ideas of a community where there wasn’t a high level of debt crippling the community.   And out of it all was born a core leadership group dedicated to working out ways of how to move forward together, focusing on the things in common and the goal of being beyond cycles of debt.  These people were already no longer scared of one another.

Bringing many perspectives to the table means learning to rely on one another’s different strengths and builds interdependencies around what diverse parts of the community have in common.  For Good Cents, this has focused particularly on the common vision of a community that is free from a spiral of uncontrolled debt and able to build a future.  Such a process can lead to a change in community direction that builds power and resilience because, after all, those who have the power to bring the possible future into existence are those who create its social fabric and interdependent social capital.  Just like the successful churches in the area, the possibility of community transformation around debt lies in the organisation of engagement and structure of belonging by and for local people.  The belief is that by working together as a community in ways that respect diversity, communities in Porirua can move away from the common story about debt.

By the end of the day in April 2010 five themes were identified for further development to move beyond the cycle of debt: Growing community education around money management, engaging the lending sector in the conversation about responsible lending, working to shift public discourse around the debt – wealth paradigm, working with strong community groups and identifying gaps in secondary education.  More importantly, perhaps, by the end of the day Good Cents had the commitment of a core group of people to develop these themes further.  Plus, and perhaps this is most important, they had strengthened the social fabric of Porirua in the process.

The next steps are devising actions that are less about problem-solving and more about future generation because, as Peter Block notes, “we cannot problem-solve our way into fundamental change”.  Problem solving leads to an alternative future only when it is embedded in a context based on strengths, relatedness and generosity.  Not surprisingly, this stage is an evolving, emerging and groaning stage because it involves an entirely new way of thinking, talking and knowing about the role of money in our lives.  It’s a shifting of the public discourse around debt, a change in conversation, language and the tasks involved.  This shift means less focus on budgeting and more on creating space for people to think differently about their whole life and how their finances fit into the things that matter to them.  It’s about working with what we have together as communities (including the huge knowledge local lenders have) and creating new paradigms in how we work together and with who.

Intent: Working together to make changes that generate prosperity in Porirua.

Key Learnings:

  • Reducing or eliminating the negative aspects of debt is complex and involves working at multiple levels at the same time – individual responsibility needs to be contextualised within the connections, ties and trust between people and organisations, the way we do things around here and the systems and structures within the community and beyond.
  • Similarly, getting the ‘the whole system in the room’ brings together diverse thinking in the same place.  This highlights common ground amongst individuals, of which some had previously presumed to be little. This initiated a strong desire to work together towards newly discovered common goals.
  • This way of working tends to be slower and more messy, it relies on busy people acting often out of good will, and makes good leadership really essential.

Key Outcomes

  • A core group of diverse people to develop a strategic plan for Good Cents, and to contribute to auctioning that plan.
  • A new and emerging model of working with and empowering people to grow financial stability and independence (through the Good Cents Course).
  • Growing network of relationships across Porirua that are thinking similarly about the importance of financial stability as distinct from a primary focus on managing debt.

Key contact

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents Coordinator
Wesley Community Action
Email: goodcents@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph: 04 237 7923

References

Block, P. (2008). Community: The structure of belonging.  Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc., San Francisco, Ca.

Story by Matt Crawshaw and Denise Bijoux.( June 2012)

People, place, reflective practice and transformational change: Makerita’s story

Initiative: Good Cents Porirua.Theme: Leading in and leaderful.

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Personal journeys are interwoven with the places in which we live. Context can be critical, and this is just as important in work situations as it is in personal spaces. At Good Cents, creating an environment that supports, enables and encourages is a key aspect of the personal, relational, structural, and cultural changes that support transformational change.

The first thing you notice about Makerita Makapelu is her positivity.  She’s a “the glass is half full” kinda gal.  As a self-described angry person she was when she was young, Makerita has since recognised that the context in which she lived was a key part of how she presented herself, and how she was assessed by society.  At that time she felt like an “invisible outsider” who was set up to fail, rather than being the recipient of compassion and support from wider society: “It was cold and non-forgiving. It was not a good space to be on that other side.  And I’ve always remembered that.  I learnt about compassion then by feeling the lack of it…but even back then I was wondering how to change that, and  I thought ‘I’m never gonna be like that’”.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Makerita embarked on what was to be a somewhat difficult personal journey.  The future did not look flash.  In fact, at times, it wasn’t even considered.

However, as life unfolded Makerita’s pathway turned out not to be as was initially expected.  In fact, those early experiences have provided Makerita with a very rich foundation from which to draw from in her work as team leader for the Wesley Porirua Good Cents course.

When she was young, Makerita felt the only thing she had any power over was to speak out when she saw injustice.  Her leaderful qualities were already emerging, albeit with mixed results: “I had to get older to learn how to do that effectively and respectively though!  I learnt, you know, you get more bees with honey and I could still show them what it was like on the other side and not get them angry about it”.

Reflecting on different situations gave Makerita insight into effecting change, and knowing when and how to step up or pull back.  Learning to notice change and communicate and engage effectively has been a key foundation for the many pathways Makerita has walked, and the way she now works in Porirua.  For example, understanding that environments reflect and perpetuate how life is experienced was made very clear to her when, after living elsewhere for some time, Makerita returned to Porirua.  Almost immediately she noticed that the city had changed and thought “If this city can change who it is and what it looks like, then so can I.”

Looking back at that time Makerita reflects on how when she was young, those in her peer group reinforced her experiences of being out of place, angry and invisible.  These relationships helped perpetuate the situation, and the systems she was involved with didn’t respond positively or constructively either.  Learning to look for and see the perspectives of others has been hard going at times that’s for sure.  Yet it is also those experiences that give her insight now with regard to the importance of environment, of relationships and of structures and systems.  “Environment is really important to me… and I think being away for some time meant I could see things differently. It’s something about seeing what you are looking for only, and not knowing what you don’t know,” she says.

There is nothing like having been there and these experiences and insights contribute to what Good Cents is doing too.  With a focus on financial wellbeing, Good Cents is working towards transformational community change in all four dimensions of the quadrants of change as described by Lederach and colleagues (2007).

At a personal level this means connecting with individuals working to identify the response and contribution that each person can make whether that is in the way they take ownership of their own finances or the way that they can support and encourage others towards greater financial stability whatever their role (from community leader to employee of a local lender).  Relationally it means working to overcome the social taboo that personal finances and especially personal debt has, especially in its tendency to create shame and isolation that paralyses movement to change.

Good Cents also works to grow understanding of and influence in the structural systems that support financial stability and reduce dependence on borrowing including participating in government forums and local conversations to share perspectives and grow expertise.  At a cultural level this means identifying and building trust and relationships with cultural leaders that ensure that Good Cents is appropriate and effective cross culturally while also encouraging a culture of growing financial stability. This stability could be a number of things from setting up savings accounts for children through to community based workshops.

Working in this way involves individuals, groups, organisations, and communities working together. It requires many leaders and relies on the development of a reflective practice that allows experiences to be generative, experimental and developmental.  Skills develop through a range of life experiences that may not always be perceived or experienced as positive, but can be reflected on, understood as assets and channelled into constructive outcomes, at all levels.

Intent

Effecting change through reflective communication and leadership.

Key learnings:

  • Some things are only learnt through experience.  We each have a history and what we bring as individuals is as important to community-led development as what we create together as communities.  All experience is valued, and contributes to our community ‘expertise’.
  • Drawing strength from aspirations can be a significant starting point for both individuals and communities.  earn to know when to lean on others.  Seek them out and, working together, small steps will become exponential over time, bringing dreams into reality.
  • You get more bees with honey.  Rather than tackling a situation confrontationally with a head of steam, being sweet-tempered and constructive tends to create more positive changes as well as developing effective and enduring relationships along the way.
  • It’s hard to see what you are not looking for, and to know what you don’t know.  A period of distance can help illuminate different perspectives and support new ways of being and doing in a place.

Key outcomes:

  • A personal shift from invisible outsider to compassionate community leader who is valued and recognised.
  • Effective reflective practice and well-honed communication and comprehension skills, as an individual, team and organisation.
  • Recognition of the importance of context and how to modify that via transformational change in all four dimensions.
  • Inclusion and valuing of a range of experiences within an organisation.

Key Contact person:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents
Wesley Community Action Porirua
MCrawshaw@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph 04 237 7923

Reference

Lederach, J.P, Neufeld, R. and Culbertson, H. (2007). Reflective Peacebuilding: A planning, Monitoring and Learning Toolkit.  The Joan B Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Story written by Denise Bijoux. June 2012.

 

Partnering and growing together: Good Cents, WINZ and course graduates.

Initiative: Good Cents Porirua.
Theme: Working together in place

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The Good Cents course is more than budgeting and offers new approaches of getting back in control of a person’s life and finances in a relaxed, enjoyable and supported way.  When an opportunity arose to work with WINZ [1]and WINZ clients, Good Cents jumped at the chance.  Like many good partnerships, not everything went according to plan but new opportunities opened up as a result.

The Good Cents course is embedded in a philosophy that encourages people to look at their own contribution to their financial situation and works to enable course participants to identify the positive actions they can take to reduce or eliminate their dependency on debt and grow their investment in their future.  The course developed out of conversations between women food bank clients in financial difficulty who shared their stories and found that they had some experiences in common.  This began to break down their isolation and helped them to support one another through a vulnerable time.

Drawing from what was learnt from these conversations and from the experiences of formal one on one budgeting services, which were heavily oversubscribed, a facilitated conversation emerged and a reflective course format developed.  The first courses were run in 2010 and Good Cents quickly realised that they needed to expand their reach beyond Wesley Community Action’s food bank clients in order to have a viable number of participants attend.  At the same time WINZ clients were being referred to Wesley for budgeting because they had approached WINZ for an advance on their benefit.  However these ‘budgets’ were considered to be of limited value in comparison to the Good Cents approach, and Wesley was not accepting these referrals.  From Good Cents’ perspective a standard budgeting approach can diminish personal control over money and developing a budget in order to borrow from future benefit entitlements does not necessarily support changed lifestyles. However because of legislation changes WINZ were still having to refer large numbers of people to undertake ‘budgeting activities’.

By working directly with WINZ, Good Cents saw an opportunity to satisfy legislative requirements in a more effective way while also offering the course to a wider range of people experiencing financial hardship and in a more central location.  Good Cents hoped this would also enable the course to run more often, with more participants each time.  So two Good Cents workers arranged to speak about their ideas to a WINZ staff briefing in February 2011.  This presentation was received extremely well and WINZ management were supportive and excited by the possibilities offered by running the course in their building, where other services were also co-located.

The stars seemed to be aligned and Good Cents anticipated a large influx of referrals from WINZ for the course.  However, over the first two courses very few referrals from WINZ were received and even less people actually showed up.  As well, WINZ referrals were also less consistent in their attendance so, while courses were held in the Community Link office, they remained largely sourced from Wesley Porirua connections rather than WINZ.  This meant that most people were travelling further to attend the course and Good Cents started to wonder how they could make the opportunity work more effectively.

To develop a way forward Good Cents booked in to talk to WINZ staff again.  This time the short presentation was largely delivered by graduates of the second course held in the Community Link rooms.  These graduates were well known to the WINZ as long term clients.  They spoke about the impact of the course on their lives, saying they now needed to ask for advances on their benefits less often, were more in control of their finances and had developed sustainable alternative ways of meeting their financial needs.  Because the case officers knew these women, they also knew that what was being said represented significant changes for them.

The impact of enabling graduates to speak to WINZ staff for Good Cents was almost immediate. Referrals began to flood in, from 8-10 per course to over 40!  WINZ clients became more reliable in their attendance as well because the WINZ officers were better able to articulate the benefits of the course.

The course graduates also gained from this experience.  Never before had they been asked to speak with WINZ staff before and never had they been the ‘experts’ informing staff in the inner sanctum of a WINZ staff meeting.  In a few minutes, this created a shift in the relationship dynamics between the graduates and WINZ staff and boosted the women’s self-esteem as well.

“Self respect,”Alinsky wrote in 1946, “arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises…To give people help, while denying them a significant part in the action, contributes nothing to the development of the individual…”.  In a less radical version of Saul Alinsky’s tradition, just as Good Cents offers ways for individuals to change their financial situations, so too did it create space for local voices to be heard by WINZ staff and in the process enable the growth of self-respect in the course graduates.

So far, Good Cents has been able to accommodate all of those enrolling.  The question now is how to ensure that remains the case. More Good Cents courses need to run to keep up with local demand, and longer term there is also the possibility of working with WINZ offices around the country to consider.  Locally, more facilitators need to be trained and this is the current focus of the small Good Cents team.  They are also exploring how to extend the course to include working people, those with caregiving commitments and others who prefer to attend after business hours as well as how to develop a format for adaptation, and with quality assurance, to other locations.

Quite a different set of possibilities and relationships have emerged as a direct result of working together in place with WINZ and with recent graduates too.

Intent:  Extending the Good Cents course to a wider range of people in a more central location.

Key learnings:

  • Working together opens new opportunities, that don’t always go to plan but can be even better than anticipated!
  • Always bring your people.  There is nothing like hearing from those who have benefitted. This demonstrates those benefits in tangible, emotional and practical ways and enables advocates to more clearly communicate and recommend the opportunity provided.  It also offers an opportunity for those who have benefitted to share their achievements and be applauded for them.

Key outcomes:

  •  Good Cents course regularly reaches a larger number of people, and from a wider range of situations.
  • WINZ staff members understand the benefits of the course and a more holistic approach to financial control and wellbeing
  • The Good Cents course is expanding – a training package for new facilitators is being developed and possibilities for extra courses are being explored both locally and further afield.

Key Contact person:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents Coordinator
Wesley Community Action
Email: goodcents@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph: 04 237 7923

Reference:

Alinsky [2], S (1946). Reveille for Radicals. Vintage Books, New York.

Story written by Denise Bijoux and Matt Crawshaw.


[1] WINZ is the commonly used acronym for ‘Work and Income New Zealand’, a  government department offering financial assistance and employment services.

[2] Alinsky principles have been incorporated into many community led development approaches, such as ABCD for example (see http://www.abcdinstitute.org/)

A ‘light touch’: Good Cents enables significant change at a range of levels.

Initiative: Good Cents Porirua.Theme: Leading in and Leaderful

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With the Good Cents course now being run from the Community Link centre in Porirua, there are now more and more referrals directly from WINZ.  This has sometimes been challenging at an organisational level, and also at an individual level.  In several cases, WINZ clients have felt compelled to take part and do so only to achieve their aim of getting an advance.  This is not how Good Cents works and has led to some deeply challenging situations, and ultimately significant changes for some of these people.

Many WINZ clients in Porirua are now directed to enrol in Good Cents courses instead of doing traditional budgeting.  Recent regulation changes mean that should a WINZ client apply for an advance, they must complete the ‘budgeting activities’ as required by law.  Essentially this means that they need to show how they are spending their money with a view to understanding why they have no money.  Good Cents, on the other hand, assists course participants to develop strategies for managing their money and reducing their debt, including learning about creating their own budget. These are quite different approaches and can mean that some people arrive on day one of the Good Cents course without completely understanding what the Good Cents course does.

In fact, some individuals are irritated by the requirement to provide WINZ with a budget at all – what they are wanting is a quick fix to what is often a stressful situation, and producing a budget slows this process down.  This irritation can be very much amplified when they also find out that Good Cents will not develop a budget for them, and that they have to do it themselves.  Further adding fuel to that fire of irritation is that sometimes it is not until day one of the course that WINZ clients realise that the course will take 8 sessions to complete.  Clearly, what Good Cents offers is not a quick fix.

From what can be a highly emotional start, however, some participants truly shine.  For example, when Diane (not her real name) started the Good Cents course in early 2012 and realised all of these things she was mightily annoyed.  Even so, she grumpily knuckled down to preparing her budget.  In that process, and with Good Cents help, she discovered she had power to change a lot about her situation and that she could make these changes herself, instead of blaming others.

Several alternative ways of managing her financial situation became apparent as Diane began to work on better understanding her situation herself.  For example, she realised that instead of paying off fines, she could possibly work them off.  She could certainly create the time required far easier than creating the repayment money.  She then asked Good Cents if she could do those hours with the Wesley Community Action in the Porirua office (where Good Cents is also based).  Good Cents did not offer Diane a place to complete her community service; she had to ask for it herself.  Since then Dana has begun to repay her fines by working in the food bank and will soon also complete community service hours by providing support on the next Good Cents course.

The key shift here is that Diane is now taking responsibility for her own situation and has learnt or realised that she always had skills that have enabled her to change that.  From a space of annoyance and distrust, Diane now feels believed in and empowered to take action for herself.  This also means that she respects both herself and others more too.

This space is deliberately constructed – Good Cents takes a ‘light touch’ approach (Blake and Pasteur, undated; Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007) in order to create space in which course participants can learn to do things for themselves around their money and wider lives.  The course strongly links with each participant’s wider life experiences and aspirations so as to sustain the learnings achieved on the course over a much longer period.  By being firm about what the Good Cents course will do and flexible about how this might play out with individual participants, different styles of personal leadership are allowed to emerge and these in turn contribute to wider lifestyle changes.

In Diane’s case, her personal changes with regard to her finances have contributed to other changes in her household.  Undertaking community service to pay off her fines initially contributed to an increased chaos in her home because her partner had to care for their young son and do more household related tasks than previously.  With Diane’s growing confidence, these issues were worked out and her partner has begun to grow in confidence too.  He is now more confident as a parent and is very supportive of her looking for paid employment as well.  Both of them now have more aspiration and are actively involved in the creation of their own future.

Intent:  The Good Cents course assists course participants to create their own budget in order to develop strategies for managing their money and reducing their debt

Key Learnings:

  • Even when the course content has not been fully described, those who chose to participate are already making an active choice.  Taking a light touch approach throughout the course means that from the get-go participants make their own decision about participating.  This underpins the subsequent decisions they make about significant changes in their lives.
  • By not providing easy solutions, course participants must step into their own power, and this is critical for sustaining changes.
  • Changes in one person can influence wider changes in their lives, such as with others in their households and this helps create supportive and empowering contexts hat also help to sustain new ways of living.

Key Outcomes:

  • Good Cents courses utilise the emotional situations that accompany some of the WINZ-referred participants to help those people move beyond a blaming mentality and into a space of self-empowerment and respect for both self and others.
  • Increased confidence to imagine a different and more self determined future and begin working towards it for course graduates.

Key Contact person:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents Coordinator
Wesley Community Action
Email: goodcents@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph: 04 237 7923

References:

Blake, R. and Pasteur, K (undated). Learning from practice. Empowering community organisations: A ‘light touch’ approach for long term impact.  http://practicalaction.org/docs/ia1/empowering-community-organizations.pdf

Taylor, M., Wilson, M., Purdue, D., and Wilde, P. (2007).  Changing neighbourhoods: The impact of ‘light touch’ support in 20 communities.  Joseph Rowntree Foundation.http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/changing-neighbourhoods-impact-light-touch-support-20-communities

Story written by Denise Bijoux and Matt Crawshaw.

Failing Forward: Good Cents skills help tackle budgeting blues.

Initiative: Good Cents
Theme: Leading and leaderful

failing_forward_good_cents_skills_help_tackle_budgeting_blues

Completing a Good Cents course has had many benefits for Kay (not her real name.)  A $2,000 debt with the IRD has been cancelled; she has managed to repay outstanding debts with two loan companies that were costing her $110 per week; and, perhaps the main benefit, she has regained confidence in herself.

Wesley Porirua Manager, Makerita Makapelu noted that when Kay started the 8 week programme, she was by far the quietest in the group.  Not, perhaps, a quality expected of a potential leader but a leader is exactly what Kay turned out to be.

Life had not been easy for Kay.  Her mother died when she was 12 years old, and although her working father could sustain the family financially, Kay chose to leave home at the age of 14 to go and live with a sister.  Leaving home and learning to cope on her own was a huge ‘wake-up call’ for Kay and she found herself struggling.  A brief attempt to return to school at 15 was unsuccessful, and by the age of 16 she found herself ‘on the benefit’.  By 18 she was pregnant and living with another sister to make ends meet.

Sharing accommodation with others is not something that a much wiser Kay now recommends, “I won’t share my home again.  I like to do my own thing.”  Sharing accommodation back in those days often meant loaning money to help friends and family.  It was perhaps during this time, that Kay developed a habit for loaning and borrowing money, without being fully aware of the consequences.

“I remember on occasions being asked by a friend for money, so I would give it to them even though I was often in debt myself,” recalls Kay.  However, as Kay later realized, her friends’ money worries often occurred because their partners were “playing the pokies, or drinking,” and Kay’s loan money only served to encourage these bad habits.  Kay now recognises that her priority is looking after herself and her two sons, and that loaning or borrowing money is not as easy as it seems.  There are repercussions.

Over the years Kay had approached Wesley Community Action in Porirua on several occasions, either for counselling assistance, or more recently for food bank assistance.  On one of these visits in 2009, she was asked if she would like to participate in the Good Cents course, and decided to take up the opportunity.

One of the first exercises she completed on the programme was to record every item she was spending money on, for a whole week.  She had never done this exercise before, and was amazed at what she learned.  “It really opened my eyes. I had got into the habit of short term loans and was in debt with three different loan companies,” recalls Kay.  It wasn’t big debt, but she was borrowing money to spend on things like video games for her oldest son.  Her loans were costing her $202 per week.

The exercise also showed her how to cut back on her unnecessary expenses, and she quickly began to pay off two of the loan companies.  However it wasn’t easy to turn her back on the comparative ‘easy money’ provided by the loan companies and, during a weak moment, she re-borrowed from one of the very companies she had just paid off.

The short term joy of having ready money again was followed by the realisation that she was back on the treadmill, struggling to pay debts.  This learning was shared with others in her Good Cents group, and Kay moved quickly to repay the money she had just borrowed.

Part of Kay’s Good Cents programme involved learning to communicate and to talk about the issues of debt.  The focus is on participants taking greater ownership and control of their journey to improved financial stability rather than traditional models of a professional budget advisor who decodes a person’s financial chaos for them.  There’s also a strong emphasis on understanding the underlying ‘drivers’ of their difficulties – these drivers are frequently bound up with social and emotional issues.  These were skills Kay put to good use when debt collector BayCorp rang her demanding payment of overdue school fees for her son’s education; armed with her ‘good sense’ skills, Kay quickly realized BayCorp were requesting weekly repayments that were well beyond her means, and negotiated a better outcome.

In the same way Kay faced up to an old debt with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) that had been ticking away for 16 years and had now grown to a debt of over $2,000.  Negotiations with the IRD followed and eventually the debt was cancelled on hardship grounds.

Kay’s leader qualities are illustrated throughout her story.  She is strong in her decision making yet reflective. She can admit mistakes and do something about them.  She was able to ‘fail forward’ (Maxwell, 2000) on her journey – staying focused on the destination even when faced with disappointing experiences.  These leader qualities may not have always led her onto pathways that were straight forward but they have certainly helped her to learn from her experiences, and create new pathways for herself on several occasions.  Leader qualities are also evident in how Kay talks about the Good Cents programme: what she liked about the programme was that, “while other courses tell you what to do; Good Cents helped to put me in charge of my money, so it was me making the decisions, not someone else.”

In the process, Kay has found her confidence, and is clearly proud of her achievements.  She has regular work in a local supermarket, her family is eating cheaper and more healthy food, and life is good.  Looking ahead, her first priority is paying off the remaining loan, and beyond that she plans to save enough to take her family on holiday.

Given Kay’s new found confidence and her Good Cents skills, there is little doubt she will achieve her goals.

Intent:

To create a space for people to create change in their financial situation in a way that is self directed, that helps to break down the barriers of isolation and the sense of being a victim to ones situation. Its’ about helping the participant to realise that they are the key expert in their situation.

Key Learnings:

  • Leader qualities can be found in many different situations and frequently where we would not think to look.
  • People know and observe when they are being given an opportunity for their own empowerment and control.  When they see this happening they take ownership.
  • There is real strength is sharing common experience with others. It grows confidence and a sense of hopefulness.  There is something about the power of being understood by another that frees a person to create something new.
  • Creating change in a context of relationship enables learning from hardship and unexpected difficulties that would not be possible in isolation.  People are a harsher judge of themselves than others are and encouragement is needed to move forward.

Key Outcomes: 

  • Kay experienced significant growth in confidence both in herself and in her role in supporting others – especially her extended family.  She understood that she was the want to lead by example in this space.
  • A new determination for Kay about being at the centre of creating change for her future. Actively working to model this for her children.
  • The Good Cents course directly benefited from a relationship with Kay learning about the twists and turns of a person’s journey to greater financial stability and how to facilitate, encourage and support that.

Key Contact:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents
Wesley Community Action Porirua
MCrawshaw@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph 04 237 7923

References:

Maxwell, J.C (2000). Failing Forward: How to make the most of your mistakes. Thomas Nelson.

Story by Peter Mitchell and Denise Bijoux.

 

Good Cents Community Pantry: Growing skills, social connections and food.

Initiative: Good Cents Porirua.
Theme: Creating and sustaining momentum

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Good Cents emerged out of conversations between women food bank clients in financial difficulty who shared their stories and found that they had some experiences in common.  Alongside its flagship Good Cents course a new initiative is growing: a community pantry. 

Wesley Community action has run a food bank in Porirua since 1993.  The food bank from inception has been a hub of the community service centre that has developed in Porirua.  All manner of related services have since developed out of needs often first identified because of relationship with people accessing the food bank.   A latest example of this is the Cannons Creek Community Pantry which has just completed its first year.  It aims to evolve the current food bank from only providing food into a place where people can come to grow and harvest food, share skills and learn about gardening, cooking and healthy eating, all while also building social connections and confidence. Already food is harvested from the garden by volunteers for their own use and for inclusion in food parcels.  As production increases, it is intended that community meetings and Tangihanga will also be supplied.

This evolution has been generated through discussions with those in the local Porirua community, including food bank users.  These discussions support data from national studies that show the links between inadequate food security and low incomes, as well as to obesity and chronic disease and they also reveal that communities who experience these situations also have aspirations and skills to share.

In Cannons Creek, these aspirations and skills include growing ‘a good food community’ that works collaboratively to address the reasons why some people do not consistently have enough food.  A generation ago, home vegetable gardens were commonplace in Cannons Creek but these skills have slowly been lost as the pace and nature of contemporary New Zealand communities has changed. Relearning to rely on less supermarket based forms of food provision is intended to not only fill cupboards but also to grow a work ethic, a sense of community participation and reciprocity, reduce social isolation and improve education, skills and health and wellbeing.

So, with the food bank continuing to be run as an emergency food programme, the Cannons Creek Pantry project embarked on the development of non-monetary alternative ways of establishing regular food security.  With some substantial planning, the north facing slope of the Porirua office was cultivated into a garden that could supply the food bank and other Wesley programmes. Now, one year on, 110 square metres is in production and people who use the food bank now have a way of contributing towards the pantry by volunteering in the garden.

This idea of offering something in return particularly resonated with those who felt embarrassed and ashamed of needing food parcels, and also with those who once had vegetable gardens of their own. It quickly became attractive to others wanting to learn about food and gardening too: food bank users are invited to pick their own produce for inclusion in their food parcel which gives them a sense of what a garden can be and the taste and quality of freshly picked food.  It also creates a more ‘natural ’opportunity to talk about their situations including how gardening might contribute positively.  It has often been the case that someone who picked for their own food parcel on one day comes back to help out on another.

Locals have also contributed to the garden by donating tools and seedlings. Over 100 tools now comprise a tool library, from which families can borrow tools on a long term basis for their home gardens. These home gardens are also supplied with seeds, plants and advice and, in less than a year, 14 households have taken these offers up directly and grown home food gardens.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that they have been sharing the tools, plants and advice over their garden fences too, which is exactly what is strived for!

Achievements go beyond food production.  Clients and community service workers (ordered by the Courts) increasingly describe themselves as ‘wanting to help the community.  Responses from participants so far indicate that volunteering in the garden changes the kind of food they eat, grows their self esteem and sense of giving and receiving as well as their understandings of the local physical and social environments.

In some cases, these understandings have been developed by skill building sessions.  Such sessions have been held in relation to composting, planting and cooking as well as gardening with kids and a tour of inspirational gardens.  Such sessions have been run, where possible, with community members taking a leading role and this has really helped to build a sense of ‘team’ amongst the core volunteer gardeners.  Members of this team regularly tend the garden on weekends and in holidays and have provided crucial weeding and watering services at critical out of hours times.

Along with the building and managing of these volunteer relationships, the Cannons Creek Community Pantry is also building new organisational relationships, both locally and internationally. Donations of both goods and money have been received as a result and the Pantry is contributing to an international learning network run through The Stop in Toronto.

This progress has not been without it stresses, however.   Volunteers’ interest waxes and wanes, and can be affected by who else is interested too.  When new people begin to take ownership of particular patches or aspects of the garden, sometimes those who have been there for a while move on.  Opening up the garden to food bank users has also added a layer of chaos to the garden and regular volunteers.  Relationships between staff and clients become more blurry as individuals bring along family members to help and not only share the work but also many cups of tea with both staff and visitors.  The house in general has become much busier as the garden has developed and this has required some gentle but firm management.  As well, volunteer gardeners often receive more food parcels once they start volunteering than when they were not.  This is an interesting dilemma yet to be resolved.

Intent:  The Community Pantry aims to evolve the current food bank from only providing food into a place where people can come to grow and harvest food, share skills and learn about gardening, cooking and healthy eating, all while also building social connections and confidence

Key Learnings:

  • People respond to an opportunity to give back in a meaningful way and are empowered by their own participation.
  • Over time, someone’s empowerment will lead them first to take more prominent roles and then to move on to other opportunities.  This leaves gaps and can unsettle things for a time before new involvement and leadership emerges.
  • Developing and maintaining strong relationships is a crucial in both developing and sustaining innovative developments to community services.  The strong relational (rather than compliance) model on which the food bank has always run is what enabled the vision to transition to a pantry model.

Key Outcomes:

  • More people are now involved and the volunteers are drawn primarily from the local community not from other suburbs.
  • The garden producing good food and is providing a model for others.  It’s also a place where peoples hidden talents can be valued and celebrated.
  • With the support of the tool library, seedlings and mentoring, many new gardens are being planted in only a short time.

Key Contact:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents Coordinator
Wesley Community Action
Email: goodcents@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph: 04 237 7923

Story written by Matt Crawshaw and Denise Bijoux.

June 2012

Good Cents Core Group: Lived diversity

Initiative: Good Cents Porirua.

Theme: Creating and sustaining momentum

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There is no disputing that bringing a diverse and committed core group together to help guide Good Cents towards being more embedded in the Porirua community and to thus catalyse increased financial wellbeing throughout Porirua was a good idea.  Working together over time has, however, been an evolving, emerging and unpredictable experience that highlights both the achievements and challenges of sustained momentum.  

The Core Group of Good Cents emerged from a Beyond the Cycles of Debt: What would it look like? Forum in Porirua in April 2010 and their energy for change was obvious!

Each member brought different skills and connections and also had different aspirations and intentions in their role within the group.  For some, the function of the Core Group was seen as a vehicle for them to actively contribute to making a tangible difference in the Porirua community via Good Cents, complementing and working with the Good Cents staff and the wider Porirua community.  For others, the Core Group has been envisaged as holding the various contributing threads of an aspiration together, with no firm pathway in place.  In this spirit, what the group focuses on is always emerging and it may not necessarily ‘do the doing’:

“…for me it was new territory which means there doesn’t have to be clear outcomes for the group. The thing that is needed is a clear destination.  We may not yet know how to get there…” 

In practice, both of these perspectives are important and finding a workable balance between them has proved tricky.  For example, it took the better part of a year after the 2010 forum to get to agreed themes and areas of focus for the group and some members became frustrated by what they perceived was too much of a “talkfest”, while staff at times felt burdened by what felt like a lot of extra work.

On reflection, those close to Good Cents, including members of the Core Group, now realise that the group needed more guidance in these early stages.  Holding space for creative conversations is valued but so too is directing those energies and, for some group members, the amorphous nature of conversation during group meetings, rather than capitalising on the energies and skills within the group, may have instead stifled them to a degree.  As well, and in hindsight, group members brought different levels of understanding about community-led development and these led to different assumptions about the focus and role of the group.  Even so, over this time a business plan was developed and this is recognised as a significant outcome in and of itself.

The purpose of this plan http://www.wesleyca.org.nz/good-cents-porirua-business-plan-released/ is to communicate “who Good Cents is, what we want to achieve, and how we think we can achieve it.”  Reflecting the journey so far, it is recognised as an evolving plan that establishes a strategic vision and set of action plans, while also understanding that both the horizons and ways of reaching them may well “change and shift”.

The business plan helped provide a framework for the further thinking and development of Good Cents and accountability to supporters, funders and the community.  It also revealed the many “small wins” that had already occurred and helped those involved in the Core Group to see the cumulative value in these.  For example, a fortuitous encounter with Deputy Prime Minister Bill English when he visited the local WINZ office and sat in on a Good Cents course plus a connection with new National Party MP Alfred Ngaro through Inspiring Communities, culminated in Good Cents presenting at a parliamentary forum in May 2012 to an engaged audience of MPs.

Other small wins are closer to home. Individual stories of strength and change have been printed in the local newspaper and conversations of collaboration are happening with Pacific Island church Ministers through the Pacific Island Ministers Forum.  These are achievements in their own right and, alongside the things that haven’t quite worked yet, they are also the incremental evolutionary changes that collectively illustrate the beginnings of fundamental change when it comes to financial wellbeing in Porirua.

Tim Harford (2011) talks about such incremental changes as “…the evolutionary mix of small steps and occasional wild gambles” as “the best possible way to search for solutions” in the context of adaptation.  For him, such changes are critical because they are the products of “ongoing ‘works for now’ solutions to a complex and ever-changing” (p16) situations, such as that within which Good Cents works.  Yet this can be a supremely uncomfortable situation because it is largely the result of trial and error: we don’t know if a tactic will work, but when it does rather than simply replicate it, we must grow it and adapt from it.  This means that the process and journey are just as critical as any small changes. How things are done, is just as important as what is achieved and how these achievements are linked to produce whatever happens next.  The challenge is in the process as much as achieving any outcomes (although outcomes are important too!).

For those in the Core Group, the journey (both how and what) is still unfolding. There is no map, but there are signposts.  Being able to nurture and sustain the energy required, bringing those already engaged along too and growing the movement with others along the way means BOTH thinking and acting differently at an individual level, an organisational level and as a community.

Like the initial period of many cutting edge innovations, the ‘results’ do not yet exceed the efforts put in which means that the diversity and commitment of Core Group is all the more important.  The art and creativity in weaving different skills, connections and aspirations is no easy or quick fix yet it is these processes that underpin the relevance and impact of any outcomes.  Working to the strengths and skills of those who become engaged and seeking out those with skills and ideas to bridge gaps then allowing energy to mobilise in the areas those involved are most interested in allows people to shine.  Done in a collaborative, leaderful way, it can also grow the capacity of others, who can then be supported to work to their own strengths and in their own areas of interest, including bridging gaps.

This can, however, feel quite disparate and disconnected at the same time as it is energising so the ‘weaving’ is as important as the pursuit of particular actions.   As well, working in this way may mean individuals come and go as their energies and areas of interest fluctuate, and as Porirua’s journey of community wealth shifts and change.  Embedding and catalysing change requires a balance of continuity and change that builds on the existing strengths and character of Porirua, in all its diversity and taking a flexible strengths based approach allows people to work within their own capacity in ways that are most relevant and useful at a particular point in time.

More short term small wins will build on those already happening, growing strengths and bridging gaps together in ways that work and adapt for this community.  And for the Core Group as well.

Intent:  The Core Group helps to guide Good Cents towards being more embedded in the Porirua community and to thus catalyse increased financial wellbeing throughout Porirua.

Key learnings:

  • Commitment to a particular initiative or cause from diverse perspectives means that understandings, aspirations and contributions can also be quite diverse, and difficult to align and/or feel like traction is being made.  Having a clear common goal is critical and communicating how diverse perspectives can contribute to that goal helps bring alignment, understandings and traction.
  • Working to strengths and where energy is naturally mobilising tends to yield small wins quickest.  Sharing these wins grows the energy into new directions that also yield relatively quick small wins.  Together, and incrementally, these become locally generated, relevant changes. Overall change will take time.
  • Working in this way can feel disparate and disconnected which, coupled with a shifting and changing horizon, can be difficult to see significant changes from.  Ensuring the various activities are linked, interwoven and even interdependent on some level helps to support the collective nature of community change.  Some continuity and stability amidst the various efforts is important.
  • Not everything has to be done by staff – the Core Group exists because individuals want to contribute! Let them!!

Key outcomes:

  • The Core Group brings a range of interested and skilled people together for a common purpose that extends the capacity of Good Cents and offers opportunities to take Good Cents into new directions.
  • The  co-created business plan now helps focus and guide the next steps of Good Cents actions and development.
  • Development of creative processes of working together are exposing members to different ways of doing things and forging new levels of respect for and understanding of one another, as well as for themselves as a collective.

Key Contact person:

Matt Crawshaw
Good Cents Coordinator
Wesley Community Action
Email: goodcents@wesleyca.org.nz
Ph: 04 237 7923

Reference:   Harford, T, (2011). Adapt: Why success always starts with failure. Little, Brown. London.

Story written by Denise Bijoux.